Online Strategic Planning

Presentation by Fiona MacCool, CLEONet Project Managerwww.cleonet.ca

Phase 1 – Visioning

VISIONING –

Have a visioning or brainstorming session with all staff and board where you talk about a online project vision - what do you want your online strategy to do for your organization? Your board? Your community?

Start by asking these tough questions as an entire

organization:

• What are we trying to accomplish as a group?• How could working online help achieve these goals?• Who will be involved in the day to day work of

maintaining the site and how can this be shared?• What makes your project different? What web sites

are already out there that you can link to or work with?

• Is this a web site that should have a long or short shelf life?

• What would “success” look like for this project?

Project Definition

VISIONING –

Start by thinking of the three main things an online project can do:

Provide informationWhat information do you want to provide and how can you translate it best online?

Gather informationWhat information could your organization get from users of your web site that would help you in your work?

Allow people to work together onlineFor what purpose? With whom? How would we best facilitate this work? What will NOT translate well online?

Project Definition Definition

CommunityGroups

ClientsLocal

Agencies

Broader Community

www.abcorganization.org

Who will participate?

Media & Politicians

Project Definition

AUDIENCE

Your ‘audience’ will be viewing the web site for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit the site. Keep asking yourself why would they bother to visit your site?

Keep in mind: Audience Characteristics Information Preferences Computer Specifications Web Experience

Content Development Questions

Does the content you envision for the site already exist or do you need to create it from scratch?

Will outreach be a key factor in creating and maintaining content?

Will the site allow for group editing and collaboration?

How will you create a division of labour, to allow for various people to be responsible for maintaining sections of the site?

What common editorial standards or “Style Guide” will be used so that everyone agrees on what content should be there and how it should be written?

What will your policy be around e-mail based requests for advice?

How will you evaluate and review the site/online project?

Design QuestionsDesign Questions

What do you want your web site to be?

searchable be easily maintained by non-

technical people have password protected areas require “membership” have a clear domain name or be

part of an existing network/directory of sites

Accessible to persons with disabilities (screen readers)

Have a unique logo and design or be based on standardized “templates”

Taxonomy – How to classify your contentTaxonomy – How to classify your content

How many content “types” will your site include?

Does your audience think about your content strictly by what it is “about” (health topics)?

Do they define their information needs instead by audience or who it is for (intended audience)?

Do they search instead by what they are doing (research, advocacy)?

Do they organize information according to client life events (looking for an apartment, applying for social assistance, having a baby)?

Is organizing information by author, language or format important?

Taxonomy – How to classify your informationTaxonomy – How to classify your information

Public Legal Education Materials

Legal Topic Language Format

Family Law

Family LawChild protectionCustody and accessChild supportDivorce and separation

Year of Publication Producing Organization

Abuse and Family Violence

Child abuse and neglectElder abusePartner abuseAbuse of people with disabilitiesProtection orders.

Organizing your content by topic and type – Example of a legal information taxonomy

Taxonomy vs. “Folks-onomy”

Taxonomy – Controlled Vocabulary

CLEONet Example:

Employment and Work Dismissals and lay-offs Employment Insurance Employment standards Injured workers compensation Parental, pregnancy, and other lea

ves Workplace safety Tip: Don’t forget to include “Scope

Notes” for internal, editorial guidance and public “See Also:” pointers to help handle synonyms used commonly by your audience to search for information

Folksonomy – Collaborative Tagging

Collaborative tagging (also know as folksonomy, social classification, social indexing and other names) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is not only generated by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.[1]

Websites that support tagging and the principle of folksonomy are referred to in the context of Web 2.0 because participation is very easy and new tagging data is used in new ways to find information.

An example is Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/

Information ArchitectureInformation Architecture

BrainStorm

ConceptMap

FlowChart

StoryBoards

Do a brainstorming sessionforpossiblecontent with audience in mind

Develop a‘concept’map’ to get anidea of roughstructure

Put togethera ‘flowchart’ -all the elementsin a logical flow

Create story boards of the webpages toput all theelementstogether

Home Page “Wire Frame”

JavaScript graphic of logo and tagline with photos

A project of Law Foundation logo & CLEO logo

Search | Help

Legal Resources | News | Events | About CLEONet | Contact Us

Welcome to CLEONet A web site for community workers and advocates. Information to help you help your clients understand and exercise their legal rights. CLEONet brings you:

legal resources from community organizations across Ontario news and events about legal issues and law reform campaigns

A project of CLEO. Funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario. CLEONet staff cannot give legal advice. If that’s what you need, please contact a lawyer or community legal clinic or visit our Need legal help? section.

Browse legal resources by topic Legal Topics A-Z

Aboriginal Law

Abuse and Family Violence

Consumer Law and Debt

Criminal Law

Education Law

Employment and Work

Family Law

Health Law and Patient’s rights

Housing

Human Rights

Immigration and Refugee

Legal System and the Courts

Social Assistance, Pensions, and Benefits

Wills and Estates

© Copyright 2005-2007 Community Legal Education Ontario Terms and Conditions | Privacy Statement

What’s New? Box where we can highlight one thing we want to mention – very brief text with link to more. Get Involved *Sign up for the e-mail bulletin *Get CLEONet headlines on your site *Add a link to CLEONet Featured Legal Resource What Every Tenant Needs to Know Produced by: ACME Org Produced in: 2007 Latest News Community guide for non-status immigrants now available online - Campaign calls for help to keep South Asian Legal Clinic open Upcoming Events Community events to focus on $10 minimum wage campaign June 11, 2007 to June 25, 2007 (cities across Ontario) Press conference on moratorium on deportations of non-status peoples June 5, 2007 (Toronto)

Things to consider in choosing the right tool

Does your site need to be maintained collaboratively or by a single person or organization?

Does your site need to be maintained by non-technical people? Do you want your site to have “members” or password protected

areas? Do you want people to be able to post “comments” to the site? Do you want to create a blog for various staff to maintain? Will your site produce news and information of interest to others?

Should RSS feeds be part of the planning? Do you need to “create” your own unique web tool/site or can you

use an existing tool or site to tap into existing social networking site?

Samples of Online Tools: Content Management Systems (CMS)

A content management system (CMS) is a system used to manage the content of a Web site. Content management systems are deployed primarily for interactive use by a potentially large number of contributors. For example, the software for the website Wikipedia is based on a wiki, which is a particular type of content management system. The SAGE site uses Sharepoint.

For a list of content management systems see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

Samples of Online Tools: DRUPAL

Drupal is an open source content management system that allows an individual or a community to publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content. Drupal can support a diverse range of Web projects, including content management systems or blogs. It has its own search engine, is accessible, and has customizable “themes”. It also has many “modules” to choose from depending on what you want your site to do, include RSS publishing.

Here is a site I built in Drupal for OPICCOwww.opicco.org

Samples of Online Tools: Blogs

Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. Generally they make it very easy to add content quickly and encourage comments and responses by readers.A number of terrific free blog tools are available and can be used to produce an entire web site that is easy to use and update.

An example of a social justice web site that uses a WordPress CMS is 25-in-5: Network for Poverty Reduction a multi-sectoral network comprised of more than 100 provincial and Toronto-based organizations and individuals working on eliminating poverty at: http://25in5.ca

A research blog with a focus on public legal education is http://consult.cleonet.ca - created to support CLEO’s research into the development of a centralized legal information web site for Ontario. This blog is created using a free tool called “WordPress”.

An example of a blog that deals with injured worker issues is the New York State Workers' Compensation Alliance at: http://www.nyworkerscompensationalliance.org/ This tool uses a blog CMS called Movable Type

Samples of Online Tools: Wikis

Wiki - online collaboration model and tool that allows any user to edit some content of web pages through a simple browser.

An example of the ultimate wiki is Wikipedia. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aid to see the Wikipedia entry for “Legal Aid”. Click “edit” to try it out.

While Wikipedia is edited by millions of people you can create a wiki for a select group to collaboratively work on a document.

Evaluation - Analytics

A great way to evaluate how your site is being used is to install Google Analytics – A free tool that has you insert a small piece of code on your site and then it produces reports on how your site is being used.

Samples of Online Tools – Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Sites - A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.

Most social network services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook being the mostly widely used in North America. For more professional networking LinkedIn is also very popular. Twitter is also being used increasingly and is a way for people to provide very short updates on their activities and interests.

For a list of social networking sites see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Samples of Online Tools – Community of Practice Sites

Communities of Practice - The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.

Google Groups is a free and easy way to set up a CoP. I recently set up one called Technology and Legal Services Network Ontario

Samples of Online Tools - RSS Feeds

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary and it is a quick and easy way to keep track of new information on web sites that you visit frequently or are interested in.

For example, you can subscribe to CLEONet’s latest resources or news RSS feeds and add them to your personalized browser, mobile device, or blog. You can also sign up to receive our latest resources and news headlines by e-mail.

If your site supports RSS, there are great free tools to help with RSS to Email such as Feedburner or Zookoda.

The new OPICCO site, built in Drupal is set up with an RSS to Email subscription so that people can get notified of new postings weekly.

What is CLEONet?

More than just a web site, CLEONet is an online clearinghouse for community legal education in Ontario.

CLEONet is for community workers and advocates who work with low-income and disadvantaged communities.

CLEONet offers you one place to go to find hundreds of resources, news, and events on a wide range of legal topics.

CLEONet also provides feeds of our headlines to your web site. Keep your site up to date with the latest PLE resources, news, and events on legal issues facing low-income and disadvantaged communities in Ontario.

CLEONet Home Page at www.cleonet.ca

Add CLEONet Feeds to Your Site

CLEONet Content Feeds - Examples

Community Advocacy & Legal Centre – Legal Information Pages

www.communitylegalcentre.ca/

Under their own information, they offer the CLEONet feeds by subject

Other examples of CLEONet Feeds

Injured Workers Online includes a feed to CLEONet’s Latest

resources - Employment and Work > Injured

workers compensation -

Justice for Children and Youth under “Online Resources – Feed to

CLEONet’s Latest Resource on Legal

Issues for Children and Youth

Other examples - OPICCO

What’s Next? - Webinars

CLEO is currently in the planning phase to develop, in collaboration with community and legal partners, legal information webinars.

These would be presented by community organizations and legal clinics for community advocates and/or the general public

Available as recordings or Podcasts for the general public on CLEONet

We are using a tool called ReadyTalk which combines a phone-based conference call with an integrated web meeting.

Webinars

Some On Line Resources

TechSoup.org - The Technology Place for Nonprofits provides nonprofit organizations with technology information, products and community.

American Bar Ass’n – Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Info Web Site Providers – http://www.abanet.org/elawyering/tool/practices.shtml

Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems - WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plonehttp://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/page11752.cfm

Ask for Help and Keep in touch!

Fiona MacCool

Community Legal Education Ontario

T: 416-408-4420

E-mail: fionamaccool@cleonet.ca

Web site: http://www.cleonet.ca