Fresher's Guide (was: [committee] Meeting today)

[Davyd Madeley]

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 23:34 +0800, David Adam wrote:

> > For what it's worth, I loved my fresher's guide, all 12 pages of it.
> > While already familiar with Linux, I must have read the fresher's guide
> > about three times on the train home. Perhaps that's just the kind of
> > person I am. I tried my hardest to recreate that level of affection for
> > the '04 freshers, but apparently with little success.
> 
> Whoa.
> 
> I didn't mean to step on your fingers :-) I, also, read the Fresher's
> Guide several times (mainly because I could never remember the WAIX SSH
> address). I also really, really hurt my eyes (I believe I mentioned the
> whole text-size thing). It eventually got lost (along with my gym locker
> keys) during the Great House Move, but I also downloaded it, oh, a few
> dozen times (over dialup. The download size BIT).

Never fear, no offence taken. I seem to recall the year the fresher's
guide was published in TeX there was an online version available. I like
the idea of the Fresher's Guide becoming two documents.

Fresher's Guide Lite (two signatures)-
 - Cover
 - Inside cover: events for 2005
 - Page 3: Greetings from President, Editorial
 - Page 4-5: About the UCC, getting involved in '05, committee
 - Page 6: Finding the clubroom, getting an account, more information
 - Page 7: Sponsors
 - Page 8: Map, Drink Voucher

Then all the technical information, that which consumes the most space
in the book will be on the website. Ideally most of it will be located
in a section marked "Resources for Freshers", with links to other
sections for machines, history, photographs, committee information, &c
&c. The resources for fresher's section will also contain the
information on the 8 pages in the Lite version, as well as the PDF of
the Lite version (may as well).

> > Infobase has basically degenerated into a pile of crap. It's hard to
> > maintain, requires knowledge of obscure DTDs (at least two of them),
> > requires incredibly strict parsing, and is generally a pain.
> 
> Fine. rm -rf * and let's find something better.

Indeed. I really am very tempted by Plone. Just need someone to install
Plone, Zope and the other components we need and we can start porting
content.

> > This was suggested a while ago, but nothing ever came of it. I propose
> > someone with a digital camera lend it to the club for a few days for
> > some photography, door members, wheel members, committee and machines.
> 
> Yep, you can borrow mine (maybe at the Cameron Hall reopening or
> something).

Excellent. While we're at it we can do things like update the keys
database and who knows what else.

> > The best way to become a webmaster is to ask ;)
> 
> But with great power comes great responsibility. And you can retrofit that
> to small amounts of power. (For the record, being a webmaster for one
> student society is quite enough, thank you.)

Ideally, we want to make being a webmaster easy enough that the work is
not commonly left down to two people to do. That when DAdams notices
there is a glaring mistake and has 5 minutes at work can click edit, fix
it and save it all via a web interface. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming
that we'll all want to write web content, however it's a nice dream.

> I do not belive that we can do this "one part at a time". If there is no
> incentive to get information online - that is, the thought that "if I
> don't write this page, tides of first-years are going to be asking me how
> to get MP3s off the network" - it will not happen. If we reduce the
> Fresher's Guide without writing the additional material, then tides of
> first-years... well, you get the point.

Right, let's do it! It should be the kind of thing that's easily
achievable over Christmas (after all, I intend to take my laptop with me
when visiting my parents, and sit on their wireless link on IRC all
Christmas break, drinking cheap Australian sparkling on the back patio).

> I also am slightly worried that I'm taking something that is so trivial in
> the galatic scheme of things so seriously :-) My apologies to those of you
> who really, honestly couldn't care less.

For me, the big plus of this plan is getting a new website.

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley              http://www.davyd.id.au/

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