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Hi folks! I took somewhat sketchy notes at the meeting. Let me know if there are any ommissions or corrections. I'll mount an HTML version linked to the CCN IP Committee page ASAP. Cheers! Chris - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Information Provider Committee Meeting Chebucto Community Net December 10, 1998 The CCN Information Provider Committee met on Thursday, December 10, 5:00 - 7:30 at the Pearson Institute Reading Room, 1321 Edward Street, at Dalhousie University. Present: , Ed Dyer, Ashwin Kutty, Christopher Majka, David Potter, Mark Rushton, Jack Uthe, Andrew Wright Sending Regrets: Angela Horne, Susan Lilley, Sue Newhook, Michael Smith, & Colin Stewart. Agenda Items: 1) IP Attrition: Ideas on what we might be able to do? There was considerable and spirited discussion on this topic. It seems (from recent analysis by David Potter & Christopher Majka) that most IPs (95%) on the CCN are aware of our graphical capabilities and so this is not a major factor in terms of IPs migrating from our service (with some exceptions). A key area is developing methods (perhaps through an IP Loyalty Program of the type suggested by Richard Rudnicki) of creating/solidifying a relationship between the CCN and the IP organizations which goes beyond the relationship we have with the IP Editors. An important aspect of our service which we should/need to stress/publicize further is our extensive support of mailing lists. We need to try and convey to IPs the functionality and advantages of mailing lists. Technical representatives agreed to examine the possibility of creating an in-house graphical URL statistics display/script, something which it was felt would be easy to implement and attractive to some IPs. It was noted that the Halifax Regional Library keeps an extensive catalogue of clubs, groups and organizations in the HRM which would be a good potential source of organizations who it would be worth approaching viz-a-viz becoming Information Providers. There was some discussion of how to actively recruit IPs to the CCN. Some of this can, and indeed is, done by CCN-IP members on a sporadic basis, however a wholesale campaign of this sort is really a function that should be carried out by staff and is sufficient work that it is beyond a purely voluntary capacity. 2) FTP to IP directories now up & running: Process & Procedures. Congratulations were extended to Michael Smith for his work in helping to get this functionality up and running on the CCN, a feature which is of definite and great interest to many IPs. Tests thus far indicate that it is very simple to us, robust and works flawlessly. A great technical plus is that the FTP 'put' function automatically generates and includes the correct <link> elements and the RCS comment files, thus neatly solving one of the potentially problematic areas of FTP to IP directories. Michael is still soliciting other volunteers to 'torture-test' it for any bugs before the service come out of beta-test. Once this is done, the intention is to implement it across the board automatically for all IPs and IPEs to be able to take advantage of. It will be necessary to create some documentation for this (which Chris M. & Michael S. have volunteered to do) and thence to integrate this aspect of functionality into IP Training. 3) CCN Welcome Page now up & running: Repercussions? Congratulations were extended to David Potter on all his hard work in getting this feature of the CCN Interface up and working. It is now fully operational and working correctly. The degree to which various CCN groups are taking advantage of its capabilities is still quite varied. All units of the CCN should be encouraged to make the most of it so that it assumes its full role as an important conduit of CCN information. David Potter also discussed the future possibilities of using group mail to convey messages to identifiable groups on the CCN through the vehicle of the Welcome Page. There was some discussion viz-a-viz how long it takes to load, however, David Potter's monitoring scripts seem to indicate that it reliably does so within 6-15 seconds. There was also some discussion on how users could opt-out of the Welcome page to default to the Home Page, however, it was decided not to emphasize this since the entire raison-d'etre of creating the Welcome Page had been so that we could reliably communicate with CCN members logging in to the system and convey certain information to them. Thus to facilitate opting-out would be to shoot ourselves in the foot. 4) CCN Featured IP now up & running: Process, Procedures & Consequences. The Featured IP link is now up and running at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Policy/messages/ip/docs-html/featured.html and two IPs have thus far been in the rotation. It was noted that we should endeavour to keep this information fresh so that the Featured IP changes every two weeks or so. Chris M. has a couple of entries in the queue and is waiting for copy from them. He will also shortly publicize the feature to all-ips and solicit further entries. Chris Majka noted that the Featured IP capability was palpably achieving its purpose in that URL hits to the Law Reform Commission had jumped enormously (perhaps five-fold!) in the interval after the link was introduced. Some of this may be attributable to other sources however it is very clear that a substantial number of people are actually following the link and learning about a CCN IP. He also noted that he plans to introduce some sort of simple icon that recipients can add to their websites identifying them as such, giving a certain degree of cachet to having been thus selected. David Potter noted that we would look at the script to check to see that this link was not appearing overly often in the Welcome Page rotation. There is now (as per Mark Rushton's suggestion) a web-based set of links (from appropriate IP pages) to the Featured IP page, thus making this resource accessible to our web-users and hence opening up the possibility of adding logos and other graphic elements to the page. 5) CCN Site Map now up & running: Feedback? Further ideas? The CCN Site Map is now up and running at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/site_map.html. Congratulations were extended to Christopher Majka in getting this interface feature up and running. Mark Rushton had fixed a coding bug; pointed out a spelling typo. Various methods were discussed to further enhance the functionality of this feature, including the possibility of javascript pop-ups to be able to show more detail and to enlarge areas of the map so that the type was not quite so small and hard to read. 6) Virtual Domains now up and running: Process, Procedures & Costs. There was considerable discussion of this topic, particularly the rate structures that the Board of Directors is proposing to charge our non-business IPs. The IP Committee was _unanimous_ in its conviction that a $400 _annual_ fee was: a) Not what its understanding ever had been for this rate structure. It was rather its belief that this fee should be a one-time set-up charge; b) That it was excessive and would put this feature out of the range of the