Content Management Community - Meeting at Gilbane LA

    Gilbane, Byrne, Doyle, Trippe, Abel, Welchman, Rockley

Content Management Community - Action Items

• We need a name for the Community of Practice. We also need a domain name to go with it. A little research turned up these possibilities.
  • CoPCM (.com and .org available)
  • CoPCoM (.org available)
  • CMCoP (.com and .net available)
  • CMCommunity (all available)
  • CMPractice (all available)
  • PractiCM (all available)
• We need an improved mission statement.
  • The current draft is... "a community of content management practitioners, both independent CMS consultants and those working within an organization to design, install, and maintain a CMS or those re-architecting content for effective management and delivery through a CMS."
  • We need an educational mission to qualify for organization as a 501c3.
  • Emphasize gathering and promulgation of best practices.
  • Vendor agnostic.
  • Explore a tie in to the academic community. Bob Doyle's and Bob Boiko's CMS Labs initiatives would do that.
  • We should not attempt to define standards or offer certifications to practitioners (at least initially).
  • We would like everyone to draft a revised mission statement. Scott Abel will then reconcile them.
• We need to identify more benefits.
  • Surveys and other feedback available to members only.
  • Discounts on reports. Arguably members would get back more in savings than their charter membership fee. ($100-$150?).
• We need to identify the types of members. Please criticize this draft list...
  • Content Manager
  • Content Author
  • Content Editor
  • Content Publisher
  • Project Manager
  • Metadata Manager
  • Taxonomist
  • Information Architect
  • User Interface Designer
  • User Experience Specialist
  • Interaction Designer
  • Framework Programmer
  • Web Services Programmer
• Bob Doyle and Scott Abel will contact the AIfIA founders and others for more advice on starting up a community.
• We have a mailing list-serv called cms-community@lists.cms-forum.org. But we thought we should deemphasize the "systems," so we will create a new mailing list once a name is decided on.
• By coincidence, the Australian IIM has just created a CoP there. (Step Two)

We plan to create a community of content management practitioners, both independent CMS consultants and those working within an organization to design, install, and maintain a CMS or those re-architecting content for effective management and delivery through a CMS.

We are looking for suggestions as to the kind of benefits such a community could provide its members, and what the costs of membership should be.

We formed an exploratory advisory committee of about two dozen persons, drawn from practitioners and industry experts around the world. We look to them to suggest the next steps, and hope to open the conversation more widely on public CMS mailing lists at the earliest opportunity.

The international character of the founding committee makes simultaneous face-to-face meetings of the whole group highly unlikely. We will meet at major CMS Events, the next being this Thursday at the Gilbane Conference in Los Angeles. We will explore using online meeting technology when we require a quorum.

Some initial ideas for member benefits...

• A Membership Directory
• Consultant Listings - could search by:
  • Skill set
  • Experience
  • Certifications
  • Location
  • Conditions
    • Contract only
    • Employment
    • Willing to relocate
• A Job Board
• Best Practices Advice
• Certification Programs?
• Discounts on co-sponsored meetings (this alone could offset annual membership fee)
• Chapter Organizational Tools (Scott Abel)
  • Micro websites (subsites of national?)
  • RSS Feeds from national on events
  • Percentage of national dues to chapters
• An Online Knowledge Base
• Community Mailing Lists
• An Events Calendar
• Consultant Blogs > Aggregated to Consultant News
• A Community Newsletter
• Virtual meetings