At our last meeting one of our members raised the issue of our web presence. The concerns raised include a number of user interaction problems. For example: the currently deployed theme is somewhat unattractive; the plethora of categories makes navigation a pain; the reverse chronological ordering of sibling comments is counter intuitive and a barrier to finding the newest comments. Another major concern on of communication. We aren't spending time keeping this site up to date with our progress as a group. The most active and focus attracting portion of the site is the "Member Tweets" block in the right column where there is an over representation of software development updates which could be putting non programmers off. In an effort to address these concerns we have decided on a number of action items.

We are looking at deploying a new theme based on a reasonable specific set of selection criteria. The criteria so far is: Ability to show global content blocks for mission statement and 'potential member' introduction, Works with minimal hassle and minimal wasted pixels on displays ranging from 800x480 (EEE 701) to 2560x1600 (Fancy 30" wide screens), Aesthetically pleasing, Appeals to our audience of Hackers, Appeals to our audience of Artists and Standards Compliant. There is a discussion on the committee mailing list regarding this and we welcome input from committee and non-committee members.

We will be making some configuration and taxonomy changes on the site to cut down the number of sections to just three: "Projects", "News" and "other". The ordering of comments will (or has been) looked at. We also hope to setup some focal blocks on the front page to present a better overview of who we are and what we are hoping to acheive. There will be a bit of work involved in moving posts around but we'll work through it as we go.

However the majority of the work will be in blog and project posts like this. We have several really interesting projects being worked on by our members which all deserve a bit of promotion, We've got a documentory film project under way and we're making progress towards setting up a space. All of which we hope to do a much better job of reporting on.

With these changes we expect that visitors will have a much better idea of what we're doing and how and why they may get involved. If you have suggestions or requests; get in touch in the comments of the mailing lists and we'll endevor to accomidate them.