At work, we’re in the midst of another design code led competition and when the project began I launched a website for the design team using the impressive CMS from drupal.org. So far it’s been very successful.
So when Friday’s copy of BD landed on the desk and I skipped straight to Ian Martin‘s column on the back page, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his impeccable timing.
Friday:
A few weeks ago, I foolishly agreed to join a team working pro bono on a community centre extension. Geoff, the semi-retired architect and churchwarden who agreed to maintain the project website, seemed full of energy, and jokes.
The first warning bell went off when the homepage acquired an intro, featuring a Flash-animated cartoon version of Geoff in a hard hat asking you where you wanted to go. Original buttons – Latest Drawings, Planning Update, Treasurer’s Report and Team Contact Details – had been turned into a History Of The Community Centre, Have Your Say, Meet The Parishioners and Geoff’s Worldwide Wonderful Web.
The past month has been fairly quiet – waiting for the planners, fundraising, continuing, etc. Geoff, though, abhors a vacuum. A weekly digest of “project news” appeared in the form of an email newsletter, which now includes a section called Geoff’s Go-Tos: “I challenge anyone to find a weirder collection of knitted bungalows on the net!”
…
From today the weekly project newsletter will be supplemented, says Geoff, “by a daily blog, with podcasts and moblogs. The RSS is fulltext. Trackbacks and comments are on and unmoderated. Keywords are tracked and shuffled in a folksonomic zeitgeist. Technorati link cosmoses are constellated in real time…”
Saturday:
It turns out that the community centre extension had been built without anyone noticing.
Sunday:
Turn self into podcast, in the recliner.
Thomas Vanderwal, inventor of the word ‘folksonomy’, might be pleased to see his creation spread from the pages of the Observer into other magazines.