October Meeting Overview

The October meeting of MadTech was held last night, Wednesday the 22nd of October at Escape Java Joint on Williamson Street. There were eight (8) people in attendance. We covered the following topics: (1) Quick Introductions, (2) News & Announcements, (3) Presentation from Dane Co. TimeBank, (4) Website Review: New Routes, and (5) Next Meeting Agenda.

Note: You can vote for all Poll Items TODAY! Go to: October Meeting Polls at PollDaddy!

(1) Introductions & Attendance
The following people were in attendance.
- Alnisa Allgood, Executive Director, Nonprofit Tech, http://www.nonprofit-tech.org/
- Gale Petersen, Media and Technology Co-Director, New Routes to Community Health, http://www.newroutes.org/
- Elaine Glowacki, Coordinator of Member Relations and Services, Wisconsin Nonprofit Association, http://www.wisconsinnonprofits.org/
- Dave, IceCube Neutrino Observatory, http://icecube.wisc.edu/
- Peter Keuler, Founder, Altruism Foundation, http://www.imnotignorant.org/
- Gary Messinger, N2N Coordinator, Dane County TimeBank, http://danecountytimebank.org/
- Lance Owens, Director, Work Opportunity in Rural Communities,
- Eric Howland, Executive Director, Danenet, http://www.danenet.org/
The following people notified of non-attendance.
- Frank Paytner, Founder Listics, http://listics.com/
- Doug Whitfield, Founder OMG!, OMG! on Facebook

(2) News & Announcements
I quickly went over OMG! (Open Madison Group) announcement of the yet untitled, Open Everything conversation scheduled for Sunday, 7 December 2008; with question of whether MadTech wants to act as a sponsor for the event, as well as to spread the word to other potential communities. The Open Everything Conversation event is basically an opportunity to bring people together from 10 target areas/communities working on 'open' topics, including open source, open access, open art, open courseware, transparency, free culture, and more. This meeting would be a combination 'state of the union' who's doing what, and what are we doing; combined with some brainstorming and organizational efforts to increase communication, collaboration, support, and educational opportunities amongst the communities individually, and the 'openness movement' as a whole. A poll on whether or not to MadTech will support, is going up to day.

(3) Presentation Dane County TimeBank
Gary Messinger graciously agreed to provided us with information on the Dane County TimeBank, so that MadTech could decide if we wanted to participate in the program—individually and collectively. The general overview: TimeBank is a way that people and organizations can exchange time/efforts with each other. For every hour you contribute, you earn an hour that can be used to gain some offer services. Hours are exchangeable across the board, so you don't have to provide service to the individual you received aid from.

There are currently more than 70 organizations, and 835 individuals that participate in Dane County TimeBank (and it should be noted that Dane County TimeBank is part of a much larger organization of TimeBanks across America). They've recently celebrated three (3) years here in Madison. There is no fee to participate as individuals, and a sliding scale fee to participate as an organization. MadTech is considering promoting both individual and organizational/group membership. This question will also be on the forthcoming poll. While the organization/group participation is up for a vote; we strongly encourage individual participation. Please visit the http://danecountytimebank.org/ to learn more and to join.

If your organization is interested in learning more about TimeBanking, please contact Dane County TimeBank at (608) 663.0400.

(4) Website Review: New Routes
We only had time for one website review, so we looked at and discussed the new vision of the New Routes to Community Health website: http://newroutes.org/. The new vision/re-working of the New Routes website was just completed about 1 month ago, with the goals to put more user/grantee contributed data front and center and to increase exploration of the site. Gale Petersen mentioned that so far the new look, feel, and direction, does seem to be increase usage. Sept stats were for about 1400 views for the month, and October stats have already surpassed that.

Discussion about the width of the center content area was had—could it be made flexible width, or at least have a minimum/maximum width for larger screens. What issues may come up, with the 3 column format in fully flexible layouts versus semi-flexible layouts. Discussion around the tag cloud in the left side bar was also had. The potential for the tag cloud to grow exponentially was had, then the clarification that it is actually a topic tag cloud and not a keyword tag cloud.

Recommendations to make subscription to the newsletter more clear, by adding either a default email address like email@email.com and change the submit button from [Go] to [Subscribe] or something more appropriate.

General like of the new colors, new focus, and upfront placement of content. Some concerns about page lengths and scrolling. Some concern about spacing and front page and some section pages (like blog) looking too crowded. Possible addition of more white space. Possibly by adding margin above or below the