[theforum] Re: google adwords: next step

[William Anderson]

Mike King wrote:

> I totally agree that we need people to manage projects like beo adverts 
> and the weo redesign. There must be a number of projects that have died 
> a death because no-one 'owned' them.

True 'dat.

> Personally, I feel that we need someone to drive evolt.org forward. 
> Someone with a vision of what evolt shoud be, and the backing of the 
> rest of the members to get it done, or at least on the way to getting it 
> done. A CEO, if you will. Not permanent, but elected and with some power 
> of choice.

A President of the evolt.org? :)

> I'm only putting this out there because I feel that evolt is dying. I 
> would love to help more, but there's the back-biting, in-fighting, 
> lethargy and general lack-of-decisions-made which has always put me off.

I admit some of this has affected my drive to contribute more fully too. 
You've found a nail sticking outside the box, and you're hammering it right 
on the head, my fine feathered friend.  Yes, i know you don't have feathers, 
it's just a phrase.  Yes, I can see the lack of feathers, Mike, you don't 
have to do that ... NO, PUT THAT AWAY MIKE!  NOW!

> There's questions we need to ask ourselves. I belive it will take 
> someone with a leadership role, to take evolt forward:
> 
> - Are we extinct. Is there a need for an evolt.org in the current 
> working-web world?

Good question.  evolt.org as a legacy resource through it's large corpus of 
articles and list archives is fantastic.  As to how relevant it is in 
today's world, I can't say, as I'm a bit behind the times in the sphere of 
web design as it is :)

> - Is thelist as good as it used to be? If not, why not?

I rarely dip into thelist, so not my place to say, but perhaps that's partly 
the point?  At least traffic is still high and mainly ontopic - 
monkeyjunkies had pretty much died a death even before Lycos pulled the plug 
on the life support.

> - What projects are evolt.org undertaking and why?

At the moment they really should be (in no real order):

1) Redesign evolt.org using modern web standards and techniques.
2) Build evolters.org to increase and enhance community tools and
    communication
3) Rebuild browsers.evolt.org to take greater advantage of the mass
    of software archived by aardvark and others, and to increase the
    amount of information held and displayed about each browser.
4) Rebuild the "admin" structure to more easily facilitate future
    project incubation, operation and completion; to more easily
    administer existing and future member facilities; to more easily
    and fairly (if not at present) represent the membership in high-
    level decision making.

> - What does a member get when they join evolt.org?

At the moment, they get write access to the community.  I think evolters.org 
will be a nice bonus for members both current and future.

> - Why should they join evolt?

As I said, they get to contribute, but I suppose if the focus of the 
community is meandering without guidance, what good does it do if they get 
to contribute?

We need to shake up the community, but more critically we need to shake up 
the community administration.  Let's get off our arses and do something.

-- 
_ __/|  William Anderson      | Brodie: The Force is strong with this one
\`O_o'  neuro at well dot com |    Jay: Dude, don't encourage him
=(_ _)= http://neuro.me.uk/   |  -- Mallrats, (1995)
    U  - Thhbt! GPG 0xFA5F1100 |