Information is useful only if it is accurate and consistent across all
forms of delivery. There's nothing more frustrating than finding 3
notices for the same meeting in 3 different places or formats, and they
give different times or dates because different people posted them, or
they were manually posted separately and someone failed to update them
together. Calendar and general notices should be stored in one place and
from there automatically distributed to various places in various
formats. Done properly, once set up it's no extra work at all (beyond
checking once in a while that everything is working). Even better is
when old/obsolete/past due/superseded notices are automatically removed
(possibly archived) and replaced by the current notice (think Meeting
Notices).
The only fly in the ointment is when someone manually grabs a notice
(cut and paste) and distributes it outside of your system control (e.g.,
on another LUG's site). Then, you have no way to update or correct it
beyond trying to find the poster and getting them to correct it.
Something that may be useful in that case is the ability to notify
interested parties (via email) when something has changed, so that they
can update external copies. If someone at, say, CDLUG is cutting and
pasting our meeting notices onto their site, you can assume that they
would be interested in hearing about updates via email. Is there a
common format already existing that can handle all this, say, via an
emailed link? That is, push notices to other interested systems so they
can automatically stay updated?
The world is coming to an end on December 31, 1999! Pass the word!
On 5/15/2011 6:32 AM, Sean Dague wrote:
Community is about making information available and accurate in as
many forms as possible. Yes, it is extra work, but that's part of what
being a good leader is about.
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
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Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Jun 1 - Zimbra
Jul 6 - Jul 2011
Aug 3 - Scala - 100th MHVLUG meeting
