GWSIG Monthly Meeting Minutes/Meeting35
International Game Developers Association
wendy[12:08:28 PM]: I guess I'll bang the gavel
wendy: welcome everyone!
wendy: thanks for coming to our monthly meeting
wendy: which hasn't been as monthly as it should be lately, but now that austin is over hopefully we can do better :-)
wendy: looking up the agenda now...
Rob: it's on the wiki page
TimL: we have a wiki page? jk
Rob: Heh. Yes: http://www.igda.org/wiki/Game_Writers_SIG/Agenda
wendy: ok, first item of business
TimL: jk=just kidding :-P
wendy: website developments
Chris: We have a website? ;-)
Joe_Chan Has entered the room
wendy: I haven't seemed to do a very good job of getting the message out about this one
wendy: exactly, Chris!
S_Chen: How about a monthly info e-mail to the SIG?
wendy: we have a website we have kind of outgrown
wendy: it needs new design, new logo, new organization, updated information
Chris: Can I ask a question?
wendy: and Corvus here is kind of our "Web Guy" - Yay Corvus!
Chris: What happened to the giant hosting improvements touted by the IGDA that we were waiting for to update the site?
Rob: and you said IDGA itself was about to move its web stuff to a Drupal implementation in the indefinite future
wendy: we're trying to coordinate this initiative with the overall overhaul the whole IGDA site is getting
Corvus: Hello, world.
wordsmith Has entered the room
wendy: yeah, they've been working on it for quite a while
wendy: they went with one company who promised big things but then completely failed after working on it for more than a year
wordsmith Has exited the room
Rob: oh. oops.
wendy: so they have switched to a different company who is using Drupal and who everyone has more faith in
wendy: we're all hoping the dev cycle won't take another year to get nowhere
wendy: being optimistic etc.
Chris: Excellent!
wendy: and there has been real progress - the new guys are now where the old guys were after 8 months
wendy: and they've been on the job about 8 weeks
wendy: so hope springs eternal
Rob: hm yeah. they should have hired a couple of freelance drupal programmers and a design guy ... oh, sounds like they did.
wendy: Sande, a monthly informational email to the mailing list sounds great. want to be in charge of that? :-)
Chris: Not to rush into another topic, but will we be able to incorporate the new "advanced" hiring hall concept on the new platform / site?
wendy: well, we can if we want to
S_Chen: I mean an automated thing, is that possible?
S_Chen: just list links and stuff
wendy: I think we need to have a discussion about whether it would be better for the new "get us jobs" site to have its own url
Chris: That's a good idea Sande, it would help new members get a sense of what's out there
wendy: maybe that will be possible after we move to the new web tech, Sande, but I can't think how to do it right now. can you?
S_Chen: maybe 1 month is too much... every 2 months?
Chris: Not to have it affiliated with the SIG and IGDA directly?
S_Chen: i'll look into it
wendy: i think it's more of a matter of how hard it is to remember www.igda.org for those people who aren't members
Rob: I dunno, maybe it could just be a memorable domain name that points over to the SIG site
wendy: then add on anything after a slash and people's eyes glaze over
wendy: thanks Sande, that would be great
Rob: that is a problem.
JoeOsborn Has entered the room
wendy: I think it's something we can work out :-)
Chris: Right Wendy - so affiliated but separate?
wendy: does it feel that separate to you if it's on its own URL?
wendy: I guess I'm used to having multiple URLs and websites for the same thing
wendy: the hazards of working in ARGs :-)
Mykas0: wendy,I think it's ok
Beth_Dillon: Heh
Chris: I think it would depend on how it's positioned, for example, with broad use of the IGDA logo and links to the site and SIG site would be enough to show it's "official" (or quasi anyway)
wendy: it's official
wendy: i don't want to give the impression it's not official
wendy: or quasi official
Chris: Using a separate domain as a pointer would be fine I think
wendy: but we've wandered off the agenda, let's try to get back on
wendy: about the forums/email disconnect
wendy: is everyone ok with letting this problem wait until igda.org upgrades their tech?
wendy: or do we need to do something about that now?
Blake Has entered the room
TimL: i own writerssig.com/org and gamewriterssig.com/org in case that helps .. easy to just do a redirect to any existing site
TobiasH: it's fine with me
wendy: oh wow, Tim
Chris: Good thinking!
wendy: could we get those to point to our website?
TimL: easily
wendy: I mean, our website as it is now
RDansky Has entered the room
Rob: I just grabbed gamewriters.org because I noticed it was open
TimL: exactly - they would go to the existing website as it is now (if you want )
wendy: that would be great, Tim!
wendy: yeah
wendy: [www.igda.org/writing/]
Rob: I think the forums/email thing waits until the new igda site is online
TimL: which should be the focal url? writers or gamewriters? and .com or .org?
TimL: I can alias all of them to the same idga site just to be sure
wendy: the focal url for what? sorry, i think i missed something
Chris: Yes, I think pointing all of them to the IGDA site would be the most efficient
Rob: yeah
wendy: yeah
TimL: of the possibilities, should the main url be gamewriterssig.com, or gamewriterssig.org or writerssig.com or writerssig.org .. or?
Rob: main?
wendy: well, the official name of our group is igdagamewriterssig.org
Chris: They should all be equal pointers IMO
wendy: but that looks like alphabet soup
wendy: so i think in most things we'll continue to use www.igda.org/writing
wendy: because that parses better, I think
Mykas0: hum.... isn't igdagamewriterssig.org way too long?
wendy: but there may be times when those other urls are better solutions, so if they all point to the same thing we can use whatever works best at the time
Chris: If we avoid using the domain name in the site (i.e., as the name of the site) we should be able to use any domain as a pointer
TimL: oh, I thought you just said you wanted an easier name to give people they could mnore easily remember?
Rob: I don't think igdagamewriterssig.org is registered
TimL: the simplest might be writerssig.org
Mykas0: Tim, the igdagamewriterssig.org one is awful, in my opinion
TimL: that would be waaaay too long to recall
Mykas0: exactly...
wendy: I meant for the site we're building to list game writers for hire
Mykas0: what about igdagwsig.org ?
TimL: imho writerssig.org would be best
Tracy_Seamster Has entered the room
Chris: I like Rob's gamewriters.org myself, but we can use them all - they'll all point to the same place, and people can enter the site through whichever pointer is most easily remembered by them
Mykas0: TimL, yep, I agree
TimL: as hard to recall as www.idga/writers .. blah
jeffc: why not gwsig.org
wendy: and i don't think gamewriterssig or whatnot is clear enough that this is about hiring people
S_Chen: oh that's about hiring ppl?
Rob: yeah, the hiring people thing could have a domain name with more pizzazz
S_Chen: I thought it was for a general website abt sig
Rob: this originally started when wendy brought up the hire-one-of-us topic
Rob[11:33:37 AM]: she segued from the initial "what's up with the website"
[At this point, the Chat software suddenly crashed and/or threw people out, saying the room had expired.]
