Hello all
Now my personal contribution.
As I have said before (eg at the discussion at Conference this year on the
Society's publications/website) I in no way wish to denigrate Simon Wilson's
efforts and achievement over several years with the SoA website. Nor do I
wish to denigrate Matt Stephenson and the team who are stepping into his
shoes. But...
I have much sympathy with the person who suggested that employment of a
professional web designer would be a good use of Society resources. I have
full sympathy with the views of those several members who feel that they
have not been asked about what the SoA spends its money on (perennial point
re reading your SoA mailings and going to meetings borne in mind of course)
and have felt personally for some time that members of Council or the
Executive Secretary could intervene on this list to give us information in
these as in other matters without damaging their positions respectively as
elected officers and a key employee of the Society. I think we sometimes
(often?) operate too much on a 'need to know' basis and not enough on a
'FoI' one in the SoA.
HOWEVER the point is that it is ongoing maintenance which makes or breaks a
website, however professionally designed, technologically superior or
comprehensive it is at the outset. I do not imagine that even if the SoA
used our resources in what to me seems a sensible way, ie by using a
professional to design our website, those resources would stretch to having
that professional on the permanent secretariat staff to deal with the dribs
and drabs, however regular, of updating. So volunteers such as Matt S would
inevitably come in somewhere, despite the 'second level of bureaucracy' (as
someone called it) and the tedious admin that entails.
Yours in a somewhat contradictory position
Sarah
and in pedant mode, ps for Richard B - don't think A2A is regional, it
covers the whole of England and includes national subject-based projects.
Good for rhetorical tripartite sentence construction though, I admit...;)
sjaf
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