Money is always the hold back to any change. Maintaining web sites at local levels can cause finance problems with some of the smaller/inactive committees.

Would there be any way that the DPVA negotiate a state wide discount price for any and all Democratic web sites in the state. I know that will be a challenge since we all have different providers, but I am sure the guru brains can figure that out.

Gordie:

Actually the answer to provide hosting and domain services for local committees on the cheap is very easy. First someone needs to get a hosting service, a useable domain and unlimited subdomains as part of the hosting service. For example, someone could get a hosting service for $120 and register VADemz.org as part of that service.

Lets say Nelson County Dems did not have the great web site that they do and wanted one. We could create a subdomein nelson.VADemz.org and add a web site and it would cost no extra money at all. In fact Campbell County and Danville do exactly that. They use the 5thCDdems.org domain.

I could create another 100 subdomains and it would cost no money at all. Actually this kind of thing is a very good entry point for local committees with no budget.

The only real concern is the web site itself ...which is a major point of the proposed discussion group.

One very smart developer (Brian Patton) uses a Wordpress template for a number of his web sites. Theoretically we could develop a template for local committees where the assigned web master would add content, much like a blog. They could add news, events and all sorts of things and not have to worry about the geek portion of the web site.

In a format like I mentioned, the geeks could focus on providing things like the LTE or links to services or other Dem web sites that would update the local committee web site from time to time.

The key is getting the technical people together to brain storm how we can do this. If we come up with a workable plan, getting funding for this is very doable from a number of sources.

about Nelson's cost, but I seem to remember a figure under $100. I was thinking of the DPVA, but maybe the 11 Districts could do the job easier.

Apologies again for long comment. The meeting is a good idea, and here's one way to leverage those relationships and take advantage of the work done over the longer term.  First some background. An immediate problem with the web sites is that one major intended audience for the specific problem, local committees w/o web presence, isn't explicitly part of the equation, and neither is the VADP. 

In the short run, that may well be addressed and resolved relative to the web sites project, but the problem is really more general than that. One way of characterizing longer term goals is a matter of figuring out ways 

-- to facilitate communication and to share timely information among a loose confederation of fairly autonomous and geographically dispersed entities (local committees).
-- to provide for a higher level of individual participation or harness grassroots energy and know-how - same thing, different POV.
-- get a handle on security and a reasonable approach to information sharing and protection.

This is an all too common phenomenon.  You see a big build up of grassroots/ netroots energy and ideas (all of those comments), focus (the meeting), and then everything dampens or dissipates back to Babel and many are left a bit disappointed.  How can all of that work and knowledge be preserved and maintained for easy use in the future?

Meanwhile the VADP will have a new web site so you've already got a split by definition, and we don't know what that will include. I see a potential for stove-piping and that's such a bad move and an energy waster even when it's accidental.

Half the time new software creates more problems than it resolves, but in this case because of the organizational structure - the loosely affiliated collection of autonomous entities - it may provide part of a solution, not just on this problem, but on others.  The missing pieces for getting started are VADP collaboration and someone to host and administer the system.  Greg, if you're already planning this meeting, can you address those two issues?

A content management system (CMS), or some variant that "lives" near the boundary of the netroots and committees may provide part of the solution here.  Mature GPL'd products are immediately available, so no need to reinvent the wheel.

Just for starters, a CMS can hold just about everything you need for the local websites project as one fairly small project among many.  Relevent built-in structure can handle -

-- uploads and downloads
-- group or individual editing
-- forums (a location for continuing this thread in appropriate privacy)
-- FAQs, how-to's and other static material
-- user and group membership access control

Granted that's starting to sound like an advertisement, but those are core capabilities of a decent CMS.

Suppose for example, at your meeting you work a set of suggestions about what to include or not to include along with explanations.  Then you can summarize and preserve that material going forward, keep it updated as things change, and have it all in place next year so that someone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and fly by the seat of their pants.

This gets you the means of documenting and preserving the knowledge base and experience, i.e., catching things at the dissipation point.  It frees up the original contributors to come up with new ideas as they ramp down to roles of volunteer consultants to the work they've already done.  It provides a space for developing and testing in a collaborative way.

I'd suggest giving the CMS family of tools a really hard look ahead of your meeting, maybe even get a functioning prototype up and running.  At the very least, check out what they can do for you because it's not hard to explore them. Proof of that concept I just installed one of them locally and it took about 10 minutes to get it up and running and I never tried on Microsoft before.

I'm assuming you're running your own server or at the very least a hosted situation with oodles of flexibility.  Certainly the maintenance and customization are where the work ends up more behind the scenes, security is an issue, and some of these things do have a steep learning curve for the administrator.

The security and maintenance issues would be up to the maintainer/ administrators, and those roles really do need to be somewhat concentrated and centralized.  Typically, a CMS has enterprise scale, way more than what someone needs to manage a handful of code snippets, but it isn't as hard as something like Oracle.

Which CMS?

Barely scratching the surface here,  mediawiki is sort of a CMS but way too large (server farms).  Some other wikis are not flexible enough.  One CMS I played with some years ago is plone. Easy to download, steep learning curve, not the best documentation. What I do remember was that I always found it hard to figure out how to customize the thing, but I didn't spend all that much time with it because it was massive overkill in my situation.  I'd say not plone unless you're a python expert.

Some that may be better suited -

-- drupal
-- joomla!
-- egroupware on top of  xampp

I'm leaning towards drupal, if I had to choose right now.  Maybe it can be on top of xampp, too. Don't know.

If there's more downside, I'd be interesting in hearing...

This is constructive and not meant in any way as insulting.

For an individual or even one who has never done a web site, all that is pointed out is true for the first timer. When I am making my suggestions I am assuming the people who have web sites or even are software designers would be laying the ground work for a mass project such as getting so many committeees involved. There has to be experience on the committees. RK is one heck of a good organization with knowledge and some one laid out this system and has the knowledge to do get the right programers/software. Sticking with the reliable systems.
What the group meeting would be setting up; what should be on these sites; the best way to finance; and of course to find and train webmasters, plus other items.
Meetings can be frustating till the nitty gritty is worked out and some people, namely me, would get frustrated because it is moving to slow or some one does not like my ideal or some one is not in tune with the group.
Sitting in on projects that took 3 years and longer is frustrating, but know what it all works out at the end. The only project that did not work out was when the boss over rode me and purchased the job anyway. Of course 2 years latter he apologized in a meeting that he made a mistake. That floored me, admitting a mistake from one's boss and infront of others.

Thanks again for your comments.

Not insulted at all. Greg mentioned Brian Patton's templates and a CMS/ wiki is a decent vehicle for sharing things like that, if Brian is interested.  And that's why I mentioned it in the first place. It's not intended to replace face-to-face meetings, web sites or anything else.  And yes, the details of vendors and domain names has to be hashed out among many other things.

Greg also talked about development, and it's a good environment for that, too.  A CMS would be of more interest and use initially to the folks you mention, those with experience, as a way of working on a large project.  That's the point. They're all online and would be the ones to benefit first since they could continue working between meetings.

And once such a system is in place, there are many other projects that could reside there very naturally.  And those projects aren't necessarily technical in nature; it's extensible to non-development work.  So we're talking about growth potential.

So this isn't an off the wall suggestion, but I can understand where it would seem biggish or overwhelming. And I understand also that when people are used to working alone, it's a bit of a change. Still it's a very common way of getting work done when people in a group are not in the same physical location. 

Imagine if at the meeting some little known but important fact about committee web sites comes up.  This way it can be documented and saved going forward.  New webmasters come along and they have resources from day one.  So it addresses even another problem - what to do when new webmasters come along.

Looking back over your comment, maybe I wasn't clear on something.  An RK change didn't cross my mind - just that this *particular* discussion is releated to groupwork tasks, and would benefit from a level of protection within such an environment.

I hope that helps clear things up a bit. I'm sure they'll do what's best for them, I just don't want to be an information hoarder.

Your approaches seem so logical, efficient, and "doable".  What you've described would be an enormous help to those, as you say, who aren't geeks.  I've seen in several committees the problem of finding the domain service, and trying to figure out the design and technical requirements of the task.  It can be discouraging, take a long time, and is probably why some sites are lacking. 

Again, thanks for the discussion and hopefully a solution.

In Virginia's 1st District our campaign set up a site to get and keep folks in contact with local committees, provide information on events, and then add quick visuals of campaign appearances.  www.Virginiadem.com  keeps fulfilling the role and, despite moving many visitors over to our full campaign site for the general election, the number of visitors continues to spiral. 

I hope the DPVA's new site will have something like www.virginiadem.com for each congressional district and designate someone to handle information from local committees (nothing worst than a site that never changes).

Regards,
Shawn