Items for development

Quick review of the discussion about future site plans...

It looks like what Suzanne raised in her comments to this post can be addressed by creating groups.  We'll switch the news from TCAC block on the site front page to show news from the Teaching Scholars group.  I might spend some time with folks touring the site and talking about best ways to use it.  Especially, in that category, creating discussions to follow up on the live events and programs.

RSS feeds will become more visible, and perhaps even have an additional page with a directory of feeds.  I have a feeling that that might be useful just because this site is more complicated than a blog.  With a blog, you generally just have one feed for the blog, because there's really just one kind of content.  This requirements we had for this site are much more intricate than those of a blog (Cathy and I can regale you with hours of discussion we had -- no exaggeration -- about whether Wordpress could handle the requirements we were given!).  A feed for each group is the easy part.  Does this call for separate feeds for each type of content (post, collaboration/wiki, event, static page)?  Cathy's question about taxonomies is also important here -- a taxonomy would let us feed by those.

We'll also attack what I'm understanding as an 'in-out' mechanism for web resources.  People send a URL to a web resource in to teachumw.org via some mechanism (maybe through the existing Add a Resource feature, maybe aggregating via delicious.  It might be quickest to start with the existing mechanism).  Then, there's also a feed coming out of teachumw.org of all those new resources.  As above, that's an intricacy that goes beyond what a blog does, so figuring out where to dig up that link will call for some of the fancy footwork that Cathy and I have become so expert in!    Seems intuitive that a feed off of the other resources might be relevant, too. 

Steve's point about letting people get their info the way they want is good.  Currently, under the My Membership link under the Group Tools, you can say whether you want email notification of new material.  Is that just too hidden, or do we need something else?

There's my understanding of where we are after the meeting.  As always, please add comments with thoughts, further reflections, corrections/clarifications, whatevers.