[web-team] Re: [Officers] Cisco rep, Feb announcement, web team help

[Heather]

> On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 01:45:18PM -0800, Heather wrote:
> > Sorry.  Client stuff piling up is good for my mortgage, but bad for my email
> > response time.  I fell victim to a common sysadmin bug, of assuming that
> > because some things are simple, they actually take zero time.  They don't.
> > Bummer for me!  (Note, not all the "simple = zero time" items are SVLUGs.
> > The meetings page isn't a zerotimer.  That in fact is why it fell behind the
> > desk, because it [a] isn't paid work and [b] takes more than small-N minutes.)
> > I really *do* have to go back to being "Web Coordinator" instead of "the only
> > SVLUG webslave but with a kinda neat title".  With apologies to Winston who
> > busts his butt to keep the linkfarm free of dust.
> 
> Who's Winston?  He's not on officers.shtml...

Winston is my other active companion on the web team.  I see him on the list
every once in a while.  He basically agreed to own the link farm, which is
huge, and leave the rest to me except for an occasional moment here and there.

When the webteam was near a dozen people only three had titles.  Linkfarm
herder was never one of them; though perhaps it should be, it suits us
fine that the whole web-team gets link complaints/offers, since then we can
discuss whether new links are worthy.

> > I'm fixing meetings.shtml and its kindred now...
> 
> Joyce and I already did, last night, as well as officers.shtml -- as
> we said in our message last night, we removed most of the people
> listed there who are no longer around.

The layout has been repaired so the bigger blabs are 3-across cells, and
older months have been moved to prevmeet.

There is now a clean "template" usable for cloning at the mid-top of
meetings.shtml, so it should be much easier to drop in upcoming months
with the right layout now, and not too much to snip.  Hope that helps.

> I have to tell you, I was shocked when Marc showed me how small the
> SVLUG team is, compared to what the web site claimed.  I thought I was
> signing up as a member of a much larger team, and would have much more
> support than what turned out to be reality.  We've got to keep that
> page up to date, so we can keep positions filled as they are vacated.

At one point in time the team was large enough to need one of the bigger
tables at Chevy's.  About 8 to 10 people.  But when folks stepped out for
life reasons or social misgivings, things kinda floated along and we didn't
gain any. 

Losing Lisa hurt the worst;  I didn't realize how much help the automata
were.

> > I can be whapped on the head ANYTIME by someone paging me.  That's what it 
> > is for.  800 938 4078.  Do not be afraid you are "interrupting" as I use it
> > for all communication with my out of town family when they know I might not
> > be at home at any given hour.
> 
> Ian "fired" me once, as CVS administrator and hosting provider for the
> ERPS group, because I couldn't keep up with my mail.  I kept giving
> the group my 800 number, but nobody would call.  I was pretty upset.
> It took me lots of procmail and perl code and two years of work to
> catch up on my inbox, but after getting caught up, in retrospect I
> think he did the right thing.

I have a habit which *tends* to keep me up on my inbox.  Specifically,
I *don't* pre-filter, and lists whose traffic is so heavy I simply can't
even try to keep up, I fire.

None of these change the fact that when my office becomes a machine lab,
my console is busy.  Once upon an age ago I was considered odd even among
my social group, for responding to mail in less than a day, even some of
the time.  Nowadays if I don't respond within three people make "where's H?"
noises.  I really can't win that if I plan to call it a battle... 

And then there's the Haze I go into when I start processing Linux Gazette
and don't come back out the other end for about 4 days.  I actually DO read
mail during that time, but I don't respond very well.  Otherwise starting 
my mailer tends to eat a few hours best spent elsewhere in most cases.

> Heather, we've been scrambling this past week to get things put
> together without you.  We didn't remove your name from officers.shtml
> during the cleanup because I consider you a good friend.  We still
> love you.  Swooping back in and "taking charge" again right now is the
> wrong thing to do though.  You're still behind on your mail, and
> haven't even caught up to the traffic about Joyce.
 
I've spoken with Joyce and advised her that I approve of her joining the
team.  I'm perfectly happy for her to take Tentacle Number One, she seems
web clued, and it's a good thing.

checklist of SVLUG-ish things --
	1. meetings current 
		(check, you did most of that, thanks!)
	2. known future meetings mentioned
		(?)
	3. is the linkfarm actually clean?
		(lynx-traverse check)
		(human traversal takes long but I dunno when Winston 
		last did that.)
	4. 'fest page needs total cleanup... but I don't think that
	   was a matter on mail specifically, it's just been piling up.
	5. continued merging of mailman/normal website interfaces so the
	   evil layout mailman uses is either fixed to match, or is wrappered.
	(netiquette has been okay for a month or two but the links across
	are poor and hard to use.)

> Take care of your clients and yourself -- that *is* most important; if
> you can't take care of yourself, you're no use to anyone else.  Stick
> around, get caught up on your mail, and we'll see how much load you
> can handle as you dig out over the next few months.

Thx.

> > I approve of Margaret Wendall being added.  I saw a couple of other
> > people proposed and I see no special reason to veto them.  If I have
> > to chase down their email addresses to appove them explicitly, um,
> > it'll take longer.  
> 
> Tell you what -- I'll help Joyce go through the recent web-team
> archives, see who else makes sense, and add them to the list.  

Thanks bunches!  :D

As I mentioned to Joyce I may have to fetch Margaret's address from other
sources, I'm not sure how well or even if Marc knows Margaret (she's a fest
regular) so he probably would not have auto-approved her without comment.

There was someone at last month's afterdinner who seemed good ... Ian 
recommended him highly enough for me ... but sadly, I've spaced on his name.

> > I need the following Extra Tentacles:
> > 	1. someone to "own" the proper meetings page itself, meetings,shtml.
> >            That person needs to be willing to follow the template which is
> >            already in there.  
> 
> Ownership is ownership, not stewardship.  That page is a wreck, and
> needs to be reworked in terms of how it's updated.  It needs to be
> automated, as does the meeting announcement on the home page. 

I agree.   BayLISA has a trick whereby a fairly plain text file roughly
of the form:

	Speaker:  John Q Public
	Topic:  Real End Users Using Linux
	Speaker-URL: http://www.my.site.net/
	Abstract:
	...free form text here a'la email...

The filename controls which date it's for, which may not be the brightest
thing, but works over there.  (there are things that don't work over there 
too, or I would have just dragged it across at some point.)

In our case we could also add "Bio:" so it gets its own box, but this
kind of thing certainly could be done by Joyce with a friendly perl script,
I suspect...

And to explicitly state, the "BALUG" Item on the front box is part of an
agreement between Marc and me, that now that BALUG has a serious Speaker
Coordinator (and thus they have speakers ahead) it can be listed there,
amd 
	...changing hats momentarily...
	SVLUG can be cross-mentioned and linked from BALUG too.
	...back to the usual hat now....

> I'll help Joyce do that, with input from Ian.
>
> > 	4. We have no CGI wizard, and have not for a while.  
> 
> We do now.
> Steve

Excellent.  The last shot at it around the time Lisa was stepping down,
was someone wanted to do a Yahoo! stocks widget, but he didn't want to do
anything else CGI related, and the team didn't feel he was trying to be a
team player, so he didn't end up doing his thing either.

Welcome aboard.

  . | .   Heather Stern
--->*<--- Starshine Technical Services
  ' | `   SVLUG Web Content Coordinator