This is the web minister's report for the Barony of Ildhafn, for May-July 2014.
I took office in December 2012, and intend to complete at least a two-year term.
I'll advertise the position this quarter. I'm happy to do another 12-18 months in the office, and expect I will, but I'll advertise it nevertheless.
Ildhafn Website
Not a whole lot has happened in the last quarter: I've been occupied with other things, and most aspects of the website take care of themselves these days (or rather, many of the active members of the barony know how to use it, and do so with minimal help from me).
The next quarter will be rather more active, as I'll be less committed to other projects (yay! show! dancing! music!).
We've had the - now usual! yay! - stream of happy comments from assorted people finding all sorts of cool stuff on our site, whether it's music, shoe-patterns, service-plans from past feast, recipes, or whatever. A few more people have started posting stuff to the site: always a good sign.
I keep notes about plans, ideas and changes here:
http://ildhafn.lochac.sca.org/webwright
Social Media
We continue to have a limited Facebook presence.
I'm not a FB-user at all, so I'm relying on others to maintain this. Eleanor Hall set up the group, and Bridhe has recently started her helping her maintain it - vetting posts and members, etc.
Initially, we very tightly controlled who could post there - "start conservatively, see how it goes" was the idea. We've now opened it up so that all members can post, at Inigo's request. So far so good.
We intend that our website continue to be the canonical source of information; with the Facebook page being an addition to that that allows us to reach more people.
We're not doing anything as a group on other social media, at this stage.
Webforms
The biggest part of my recurring workload is making booking forms for events, and I'd like to reduce that. It makes our events a bit too dependent on me (and makes me slightly grouchy: never a good sign!).
We've got a nice set of forms going, and have refined them a lot over the last few years. They're easy to fill in and spit out useful data for stewards. The down-side is that the back-end is a bit complicated: not something I can throw people into without a some training. The other downside is that it still takes several hours to update a form for a new event, so I can't always respond to a steward's request for a form immediately: it may take a few weeks.
So: I need to get more people with the skills to update a booking form for a new event; and that means I need to find time to run some workshops. Hopefully, this quarter ...
I realise that most of you would rather have one-on-one help when you actually need it, but for my own sanity and scheduling we're going to have to do this in groups, I'm afraid.
Cluain
The slow process of getting Cluain's new site in order continues, slowly. The hold-up is simply that each stage needs William de Cameron and/or me to have substantial free time at the same time as Ed and/or Svartr, and we're all busy people. Ideally, it needs us in the same city.
Labour weekend might provide something of an opportunity.
We'll get there!