The Glen Waverley Uniting Church PSALTERThe Communications Committee met on Thursday, 28 Jan 2010.
There were present RobinPope, LynMcDonald, KenCoutts, FayeWagon, RossMackinnon, JitTan, JanClear, JohnKenez, JohnHurst.
JohnHurst chaired the meeting, and started by reading to the committee the CommunicationsTermsOfReference from some years back. Agreed that it was a large task for the committee!
Discussion over a range of issues took place. Touched upon were:
- the bulletin - needs 'fixing', and needs an editor. For example, the ordering and collation of information could be improved. Why is the organist on the front page? Why was there a blank page in last week's bulletin?
- Newview - news gathering and edit were main efforts. Ken not around for much of the year, Ken and Faye were the mainstays of production.
- the web page - is out of date: fete and Xmas news figure prominently!
- big question of maintenance and effort for all these.
Lyn showed a one-pager on LauraMorgan's placement in the NT, and the challenge of how we publish it to the church.
- security and privacy of what is placed on the web.
- Ross commented that information was often hard to find - for example, what is the story behind the jars of honey on sale each week?
- format of bulletin: e-copy versus printed. e-copy is effective for people not able to attend church to keep in touch (e.g. overseas)
- notice boards: must be seen as complementary to e-media, not as exclusive alternatives.
- there is a danger of overwhelming people with too much information.
- there is doubt about how much of the bulletin is read and digested.
JohnHurst then talked about his vision for a church wiki page, and how it might address some of these issues. Points he made included:
- Just like a web page - can fulfil the same function, but also:
- same format URL (address) and clickability as standard web page. no addition computer literacy required.
- access can be controlled from fully open to all web users, only open to church people, through to only open to particular church groups (e.g., Elders).
- Every page can have an authorized set of authors (that's an authorful pun!, John)
- Many authors for each page can spread the load of maintenance.
- wiki could handle Bulletin, Newview, individual group news/reports (e.g. Council agenda), as well as duplicate the existing web pages.
- people can subscribe to just the pages they are interested in, and get email notification of updates for timely dissemination of news.
- non-internet users could have Wendy print out updated pages for them, say each week. Such pages also go to notice boards as a matter of course.
Agreed that the top priority was to address the bulletin issues. Action: JohnHurst to draft a wiki template, and talk to Wendy about including that as part of the weekly emailouts of bulletins.
Jit raised the question of photos. Commented that next Sunday with commissioning of Elders and Councillors was a good occasion to record on film (or pixels). Again, cttee will need to address privacy and consent issues.
Meeting closed at 9:50pm with a prayer from the chair.