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Draft

This is an incomplete draft. Feel free to comment or jump in.

Values

  • Transparency: It should be easy to understand what is going on with JA-SIG, where the software is, what progress has been made, how to get involved, whom to contact. It should be clear who the committers are on various projects, who makes up the JA-SIG Board and various steering committees and working groups. The website should showcase the JA-SIG membership and commercial affiliates.
  • Resilience: The JA-SIG website hosting infrastructure should not be fragile. It should be well understood how to bring it back online when it goes down. It should be backed up regularly and have good uptime.
  • Marketability: The JA-SIG website should be attractive, pleasant, and effective in communicating the JA-SIG message.
  • Ease of editing in oft-edited ways. Common communication needs should be easy to meet. Uncommon needs should be possible to meet. In particular, it should be easy to post about news, newsletter availability, events, releases. It should be easy to edit the memberships of boards, committees, committer lists, etc.
  • Open source: JA-SIG is about open source in higher education, and so we value open source and prefer using open source solutions. Value for open source extends beyond Java, so JA-SIG desires to disassociate itself from its original acronym meaning.

Goals

From these values result certain goals:

  • Good design of information architecture. Much has been articulated about the importance of information architecture in effective website design. If a new ja-sig.org is to succeed, it needs to be well-information-architected in keeping with the named values.
  • Migration to a more mainstream open source content management system. Hypercontent is esoteric, poorly adopted, and has poor usability. Migration to a more mainstream opensource content management system will increase uptime, confidence in our solution, ability to recover from problems, and will set the stage for a more effective and featureful website going forward.
  • Effective branding: well-recognized, well-used, well-factored re-usable logos to better establish a JA-SIG brand except without the dash and no longer standing for Java anything: JASIG, a brand without literal meaning, associated with and now meaning an organization of institutions and individuals interested in using and collaborating upon open source software in support of higher education.

Scope

Given these values and goals, this is the scope of this project:

Includes

This project includes:

  • Information architecture and website design
  • Creation of a new identity and visual identity
    • Removal of dash in JA-SIG
    • JA-SIG no longer stands for Java Architectures, as we move beyond Java to more general open source and collaboration in higher education IT
  • Design and development of a brand and logos
    • Logo for JA-SIG itself
    • Logo for JA-SIG Member Institution
    • Logo for JA-SIG Commercial Affiliate
  • Migration of existing website content into a new CMS demonstrating the new brand, logos, and especially information architecture
  • ja-sig.org and uPortal.org [See comment -Jonathan]
  • Implementation of a Contact Us page / section including a web form for sending email. This to be initially implemented to email the Board, who will then route the messages where they really need to go.

Does not include

  • Content in the Confluence wiki. While small units of content may tactically be pulled up to the website layer (committer listings, e.g.), vast swaths of Confluence wiki content (e.g., the uPortal manual) are not to be included in this effort
  • the CAS website (http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/). While the CAS website would benefit from additional attention and might welcome migration off of Hypercontent, since it is better architected and designed, the margin of benefit to be gained in revisiting it now is thinner. The idea is to execute on ja-sig.org and uportal.org and then re-assess. [See comment -Jonathan]
  • Extending JA-SIG branding to web applications and sites other than the managed content specifically to be architected here. Creation of graphics and branding that can be used to apply this branding elsewhere is in-scope, but to control scope creep, actual execution of that branding is to either be undertaken on the side as a volunteer effort, or to be subsequently tacked after this scope of work has succeeded.

Ideas for additional scope

  • Jonathan is interested in seeing a mechanism via the website for someone to contribute to JA-SIG. (Clarity on what this means?)
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