As I am in a place where I don't have any broadband access, I will give here some details about the Portal project for the meeting of the RA of today.
1. This project is very important for our community. Our contents are disseminated on different platforms and it is hard to know where are the information. We need a place where we can find easely the information or a link to the place where the information is.
2. The current team has worked very professionaly and has taken different advices from skilled people. We have worked on following subprojects:
- hosting: look for a neutral hosting provider in order to be independant from a person who can leave CDS once.
- design: create a design that is also a kind of corporate identity for CDS. It is important for internal and external communication
- structuration of information: a portal must be usable. It is important to make a proper structuration of content, to help people to find information.
All the conceptual work has been done. It is time now to implement. We need to have a contract with a professionnal webhosting provider. Alexicon Kurka, our Chancellor, has found a provider with a cheap price: 10$ per month. We ask the RA to accept this budget, in order to give us the opportunity to build the portal and to make it accessible in a reasonnable period of time.
Alexicon Kurka has also make an interesting evaluation: if the work would have been done by a firm, it would have cost around 1500 $. This is a virtual amount that CDS will not have to pay, because the work will by done on a volunteer basis. We are now working on a list of tasks. The members of the team will share these tasks. We are four know and we will also ask for volunteers to help us, especially in the domain of content preparation. This amount just show that our work has a value, despite the fact we will do it for free or as member of the executive branch for some of us.
Arria Perreault, PIO
