Group Leaders meeting
Wednesday 26th April 2023
at Crosfield Hall Annexe, starting at 2.00 p.m.
Publications update—John Dick
Having been involved with the newsletter for around a year now, I thought it might be useful to mention a few points for the future;
1. It seems almost impossible to get any feedback, so I am working a little blind as to whether the content is what members want to see, do they find it useful, what else could I add.
2. We are limited to around 20 pages (10 double sided A4) due to cost of printing these days, its in B&W as well. The full colour version is available for download or viewing on our website and the Flipbook version is one of the best ways to look at it. I also email out a full copy to every member apart from those who have indicated they can’t use the technology and want a printed copy. (did you know that a large number of u3a’s now send out the website newsletter link only, not the full document, to reduce stress on the u3a email service)
3. It would be really good to receive articles from more groups and include 1 or 2 photos, keep them as short as possible please.
4. The Newsletter is a good way to advertise your activities past or coming up to all members, generating interest outside of your group perhaps.
5. Don’t forget that our website can also be used to fully update all members on your groups activities, meeting location and times, etc. Just update your group pages or send to me to do for you, people who monitor pages tend to look at those that change regularly.
U3a Website update
SiteBuilder to SiteWorks update
Update: The Alpha testing stage of the project has started with one of the Pioneer u3as, White Cliffs u3a. Taunton u3a and High Wycombe u3a will follow.
A ‘Starter Site’ version is still under development and testing will follow. When ready for distribution, it will be made available to new ‘start up u3as’ and to u3as who do not want or need to migrate data from a SiteBuilder site.
Hosting: Arrangements have been made to set up 10 testing sites and a first batch of 100 production sites using the same hosting supplier as Beacon and approval is being sought to continue with them. A website management tool will be required to handle the automated implementation of system-wide upgrades in the future.
Implementation: We expect the process to be along these lines. In the months ahead, volunteers from our Migration team will contact all SiteBuilder Web Managers to agree a migration sequence number. Your u3a will be added to the migration schedule. A few weeks before your migration date, we will add the names of your web managers and their nominees to the training and induction timetable and you will be allocated dedicated migration support. Our support teams will then provide documentation, training, FAQs and a Help Desk.
Nominees: This is you!! Group Leaders who would like to edit their own pages need to let me know by email please so I can add you to the training schedule. The Management Team should also confirm if they require access to the web site pages.
Sample Sites:
Tiverton: https://www.tivertonu3a.org.uk/
Chorleywood: https://cw-u3a.org.uk/
Portsdown: https://www.portsdownu3a.org.uk/
Cheltenham: https://www.cheltenhamu3a.org.uk/
Impact to Romsey: Over the next few weeks I will be liaising with the project team to agree a migration date for us. There is preparation work to complete beforehand and we also need to agree the actual date, remembering that we have to fit in training days to learn how to edit the new site. As you can see, we will have many opportunities to change the look and feel of the site.
