SOBA web mockup
Stumbled across http://www.soba.org.nz/node/160 the other day, and had a good discussion with Luke at last nights Epic tasting.
Figured it was time to get my geek on, with a few IMO replies -
Fundamentally, how do we want the SOBA website to function?
... a forum website?
- In my opinion, I don't think that's terribly wise. I think there's definite value in having an announcement mailing list, but it seems to me that critical mass has been generated in some fashion for realbeernz.ning.com and it would probably be healthy for the NZ beer scene to encourage a centralized place. I'll be the first to admit that I have issues with Ning from time to time, but it mostly works ok. I think if forums were desired, I'd forward people over here.
... an application centric site (ie. rating application)?
- Given that critical mass has been generated around ratebeer.com, I don't think that's necessarily wise. Oh if only those guys wised up to providing RSS feeds...
... an information centric website?
- This is where I think SOBA's charter fits in best - advocating about the variety and depth of New Zealand and international beers, and where you can purchase them. Beer styles, how to get into homebrewing, etc etc. SOBA web banners and buttons that can be added to members blogs.
... a diary/events/blog type website?
- I think this is doable too, but I'd probably just leverage some of the RSS feeds generated from Ning (haven't actually looked too closely at the events feeds to see how useful they are).
... an online store?
- Definitely. I think there's value in tshirts, engraved glasses, beer mats, whatever. A good enough design will always get people interested, and a nice way for SOBA to make some extra cash to continue on good work like the newsletter.
... a social networking site?
- Meh - realbeernz.ning.com has done this already.
... a brewing news syndication site?
- Yep, with comments above.
... a nz beer portal?
- I think some general information about SOBA, why it's important, and stuff about how to join, what discounts you can get, etc seems about right IMO - the moment you start getting into forums or otherwise, the harder it is to maintain and the more you fragment the community. I guess the question here is whether you are catering to a different audience or not.
What type of website will make our members (and new members) visit our site daily (or even multiple times a day)?
- Is visiting the site daily important? or getting them involved in general discussion and advocacy?
What are the most important web services to integrate with?
- Flickr, Facebook, Twitter seem like a good list. Would be good to create a few social tags and use the various APIs to syndicate them.
Are we to use the site to obtain revenue (advertising, subscription, online store)?
- I'd be ok with that, and seems reasonable for a non-profit org. More money, means more advocacy (and being able to fight trademarks effectively..). I'd include a donations button too.
Hopefully this will spark some discussion :)
Figured it was time to get my geek on, with a few IMO replies -
Fundamentally, how do we want the SOBA website to function?
... a forum website?
- In my opinion, I don't think that's terribly wise. I think there's definite value in having an announcement mailing list, but it seems to me that critical mass has been generated in some fashion for realbeernz.ning.com and it would probably be healthy for the NZ beer scene to encourage a centralized place. I'll be the first to admit that I have issues with Ning from time to time, but it mostly works ok. I think if forums were desired, I'd forward people over here.
... an application centric site (ie. rating application)?
- Given that critical mass has been generated around ratebeer.com, I don't think that's necessarily wise. Oh if only those guys wised up to providing RSS feeds...
... an information centric website?
- This is where I think SOBA's charter fits in best - advocating about the variety and depth of New Zealand and international beers, and where you can purchase them. Beer styles, how to get into homebrewing, etc etc. SOBA web banners and buttons that can be added to members blogs.
... a diary/events/blog type website?
- I think this is doable too, but I'd probably just leverage some of the RSS feeds generated from Ning (haven't actually looked too closely at the events feeds to see how useful they are).
... an online store?
- Definitely. I think there's value in tshirts, engraved glasses, beer mats, whatever. A good enough design will always get people interested, and a nice way for SOBA to make some extra cash to continue on good work like the newsletter.
... a social networking site?
- Meh - realbeernz.ning.com has done this already.
... a brewing news syndication site?
- Yep, with comments above.
... a nz beer portal?
- I think some general information about SOBA, why it's important, and stuff about how to join, what discounts you can get, etc seems about right IMO - the moment you start getting into forums or otherwise, the harder it is to maintain and the more you fragment the community. I guess the question here is whether you are catering to a different audience or not.
What type of website will make our members (and new members) visit our site daily (or even multiple times a day)?
- Is visiting the site daily important? or getting them involved in general discussion and advocacy?
What are the most important web services to integrate with?
- Flickr, Facebook, Twitter seem like a good list. Would be good to create a few social tags and use the various APIs to syndicate them.
Are we to use the site to obtain revenue (advertising, subscription, online store)?
- I'd be ok with that, and seems reasonable for a non-profit org. More money, means more advocacy (and being able to fight trademarks effectively..). I'd include a donations button too.
Hopefully this will spark some discussion :)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by denimglen on
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Yeah, agree with you bro.
And hell yeah, I'd be keen as on some SOBA pint glasses, that logo would look really nice etched.
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Permalink Reply by James P on
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Realbeer on ning is a great forum for the home brewer / beer geek, alas the Ning application it's self is an arse. I would rather have YABB, or similar as the basis for a forum where the functionality provides better searching (hell even integrating Google site search would be better!).
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Permalink Reply by Glynn Foster on
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I agree with you, but given the numbers here and the discussion generated, I think that ship has probably sailed. However, I do have indirect access to Ning's bug tracker - so if there's stuff you think needs fixing, I can ask my mate to log a bug (or check if there's one already).
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Permalink Reply by Brendon on
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Interesting thoughts Glynn.
Yep, a few of us are looking at the site. Rob Owen is the 'client' (if you like) so any feature requests should go to him. We were hoping to do things on the sly (to keep expectations low/managed) but you found my post on SOBA ;-)
An nice problem to me is the existing levels of web savvy'ness in the SOBA community so it will interesting to see how well we cater to the people at both ends of the spectrum. I reckon we might surpise a few people ;-)
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You can't hide! :)
Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with - I don't consider myself a power user, but I think the key is making sure whatever is produced is maintainable and properly loved in terms of content. You have any ideas of timelines for launch?
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hmmmmm..... no, can't really commit at this stage. Don't want you getting your hopes up.
I'd say we will probably launch before Debian 6.0 though :-)
On a complete tangent do you know if there is Gnome config change I can make to get GtkFileChooser to have a size column??? I see it's going to be set by default in 2.18. Man, it's doing my head in!
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Permalink Reply by Stu McKinlay on
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take down request - this should be on another forum. one that i don't want to stumble across.
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Just on the iPhone right now which isn't so convenient for browsing GTK+ APIs but seems like it's not currently possible unless you can use some internal private API from looking at the source. . There are patches out there but likely GIMP has created a custom widget for this that you could leverage. I'll ask my brethren in GNOME world tonight.
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I did a bit of research on this (sorry Stu), but there doesn't seem to be any easy way of doing this programmatically.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=325095
details the bug in question, and if you have GTK+ 2.16+ you should be able to at least put the following in ~/.config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini
[Filechooser Settings]
ShowSizeColumn=true
GTK+ 2.18 enables this by default. Don't know why they don't have the equivalent of gtk_file_chooser_set_show_file_size_column() though.
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Permalink Reply by Pilgrim on
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Hi Glynn,
I think the most important feature you need is to be able to join and pay subscriptions online. A lot of people just can't be bothered to write out a cheque (if they have a chequebook these days) put it in an envelope, address it, affix a stamp and walk to the nearest post box. Just too hard for some. But have an online registration with secure online subscription and I'm sure SOBA membership numbers would increase dramatically. Online shop sounds good too.
Just my 2c worth.
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