Technology
Committee Meeting
June 10, 2002
Present: Steve Boston, John Rollins, Johanna Young, Michael Francaviglia, Jan Paxton, Scott Bennett, Robert Harwood
Next Meeting: Monday, September 9, 2002, Christ Church 6:30 supper, John Cooks.
- Feedback from workshop
- Feedback from Creative Congregations
- Proposal from John Rollins for new software addition to diocesan software
- Request from Michael to consider a new database program for Episcopal House
- Update on budget expenditures to date
- Update on the editorial Board Michael was working on
- Plans for the future - convention, more workshops of what kind?
- Cold Fusion
Minutes
1. Workshop: 3 sites went up immediately, Lincoln Park will go up as soon as Cindy unzips the MAC files. Rob has the opener on his computer, for future refererenc
2. Creative Congregations: About 400 people attended. Cindy had about 8 folks. She tried to use the new projector, but hadn't configured her laptop and so she did crowd around the computer. Jan and John had about 7 folks. We had several good questions.
3. Software proposal: This is a response to calls John got from Districts 10 and 3 who want websites. There is a product called Article Manager. It works along the lines of webmaster creates templates for the work, but the field is generated by users with passwords. User goes to a url and logs on, enters their stuff and then punches publish. There are levels of accesss - primitive rights would be checked and maybe edited, all the way up to publishing. This costs $350 About. We will need to check with IDT to see if it supports it, but it comes in several platforms,so we should be ok. Steve will call IDT and see what they will do. Need to purchase, install, develop templates, train.
4. Database: Michael went to the web conference in Denver and was convinced that Corel is not a relational database. People say we should go with Access. Rob asked what the job is. Want all information about people and churches and to be able to hit a button and get what you want. Right now everyone keeps their own databases. We have Access. There is a Vendor who will do the training and guidance about how to set up the files and how to convert the Corel files to Access. Quote was $8000 with the training. Charging under $80/hour. Steve says that's a good price because there is a lot of work involved in the project. Rob will be willing, if his data base person is available, to donate the building of the database (Helene Kilichowski). This will enable Michael to have the relational database. This is step 1. Step 2 is to make the e-mail entry into the database. There is a real need for training - the reports are ugly unless you really learn to make it work.
5. Budget Update: We spent all last year's money on the projector. Michael will order the cabinet. We've spent about $3000 of our $6000. Steve needs. the letter from St. Phillips soon for the Acrobat purchase.
6. Editorial Board: We don't have one yet. This is coming out of Michael's Denver trip and the Voice new editor on a need for communications changes. There will be a board by September
7. Plans for the Future: Convention will be "Racism and Multiculturalism" and Michael is calling together a focus group. They will brainstorm how to envision convention built on this theme and Michael has some resources. The hope is that it becomes educational, learning... away from the legislative and into programming. That kind of program will need video cameras and projection screens. We've discussed that before, but this would be the time to do it. We'll be in Teaneck. We'll probably need to get someone to come in and do it - need lights and stuff. Dreamers will drive the technical needs.
If we're going to use Article Manager, we'll need a fall workshop to implement that. October 5. 8AM -Noon, (or November 2) This will be hand invited - rep from each district and commission. Jan will determine who makes phone calls. We will invite by e-mail, follow up by phone. Scott and Steve will help with phones. Perhaps Don Roberts (Secaucus) will be interested to work with districts.
8. Cold Fusion: If we ever can go to a database website, Nina can do this, but we're not there yet.