Agenda:

• Weblog - Nina - forcing a blog to mimic a discussion group - use a team blog which allows one person to initiate and invite others to join. This would be a place to allow people to have a discussion group without using the newark list. There are no ads, the terminology is different, so some education would be necessary. Steve sent out 2 pieces of shareware that would allow us to do this on the cpg server and we would administer it ourselves. Russ has asked cpg about it but hasn't heard back. Nina's site is free - blogger.com Using the blogger site would remove it once from us and give everyone a chance to vent without clogging up the newark list - we would be enabling the conversation. Nina would be willing to set it up, but she would not like to moderate it. Let's try putting it up on www.blogger to see what happens - what use it gets, serves a purpose, is used appropriately.... 3 month trial balloon starting after Easter.
• Post Convention Summary - 2 goups tried to have something presented during lunch that we couldn't handle - one was a problem on their side. The other one didn't run because of the ads and then when we tried to run it, it was an mpg and we couldn't run it. Stuff to run should be just slide show format and Michael should approve it beforehand. Perhaps the dvd stuff from parishes should be put at some tv somewhere in a hallway, rather than in the main room. Other than that, the support went well. John's switcher worked really well. Russ guesses that we will not be going back there. We need to determine whether the ballroom will be wired wherever we go.
• What is needed at Episcopal House RE: Communications - Russ - Katie just arrived! Michael and Katie have not had much chance to talk because the transition has been so quick. Michael is concerned about security with blogs. What gaps need to be filled? What is going to happen with quarterly mailings and who will mange Voice InBeween. Katie has no idea tonight because she hasn't been involved in any of this yet. Susan decided what she wanted to put up because something was needed when the number of issues was cut. She did it using article manager. John can set Katie up so that she can do it herself. The photo-voice was an addition which might or might not be continued. Johanna did the whole lay-out and put together the pictures and e-mailed the whole thing to John. The message going forward is that we're here to help when you're ready. The quarterly mailing is dead. John suggests that we could have a single index page of pdfs of their flyers (or send us the file and we can create it) and folks could print them out from the index page. Bottom line: let us know how we can help.
• Parish Software - Dennis - he's not here. He wanted to set up a sub committee to recommend and provide parish admin software. We had had that discussion with one company. We didn't seem to have the resources and funding to do something diocese wide and provide congregations free software. Steve said this came up at convention. Steve was thinking to propose to CPG to provide this to all the churches who use the cpg site. There are standard accounting practices that should be followed and this would be a way to provide consistency. Steve is willing to go down to CPG and have the discussion. John says the person to contact is The Rev. Clayton Crawley.
• Bethsaida and Website - they keep asking that their talking software cannot use our website. Best guess is that it can't handle java scripts. Nina says they're using windoweyes. It should read the alt tags. If the screen is crowded with a lot of stuff, the interface is noisy and just says graphic graphic graphic.... One of the solutions is to have a site map. It is a pain to update. John asks Russ to explore with them whether there is a more up-to-date program that will read a java script. Has anyone asked the company?
• Bethsaida Team Workshop - They're having a workshop on assisted listening devices on March 9 and we may get questions as a result. If you can go, please do.
• Percept - Steve, Scott, Russ and John have been on the site. Census and percept are both zipcode related. Russ said that percept is 1.5 miles from the church. Steve would have liked to be able to build a larger community in one file. Russ said there are committee log-ons. Is the level different than the congregational level? Russ will check with Kitty.
• Website - Diocese of Washington - Russ had an e-mail discussion between Dennis and Steve about the Dio. of Wash. web site. Steve says its a marketing web site - all the services we would offer and we might want to put something like this together. <http://www.edow.org/technology/> Steve would be willing to put together something like this for us. (after Easter!)

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