Hello everyone! I'm currently bashing this out on one of the two massively popular open-access laptops provided at the NUSSL convention to allow delegates to check their Facebook catch up on important work ;o) As a result, this is going to be a bit hurried...

A quick bit of background: NUSSL is, to all intents and purposes, the trading side of the NUS, providing large-scale buying power to students' unions across the country for a wide variety of services. Each year, the NUSSL convention is held in some plush location, and is basically a big networking-and-freebie-grabbing opportunity - the antithesis of the NUS Conference, if you like.

While sitting in NUSSL's AGM this morning (notable for being possibly the shortest AGM in the history of mankind), I decided to start scratching out some thoughts on the strategy I'd like to see the Union's online media employing in the coming years. Much of it is already in operation in some form or other, and much of it is common sense, but we don't - as far as I know! - have a "ten commandments" listing of the key underpinnings which can and do make the Union's online media presence great.

So, here's my first, very rough draft of the things that I think might be vitally important to the Union if it is to make sure that what it is doing online continues to be relevant and effective for its students in the coming few years. If you can be bothered to read on (and, I'll be honest, these ramblings are usually enough to make even the most committed person stifle a yawn or two), then please bear in mind a) that this is a VERY rough draft, that b) there are more people involved in setting the overall direction of the Union that just myself, by a very long shot, and c) that nothing below is presented in any order of priority. At this stage this is just a simple listing of ideas.

As a result, the bullet points below will no doubt be reworded and rejigged, and may completely change, in the coming couple of months. That said, I hope some of the common-sense aspects will stay in some form or other!

Hokay, let's go: in the next couple of years, I would like the Union to focus on...

• Content digitisation: get *everything* online, delete nothing, and make it as easy and logical as possible for people to discover this information,
• Instilling a cultural shift in the Union's staff and student volunteers: it is important to seek to foster a sense of ownership and a desire to invest time, effort and - where appropriate - money into the development of the Union's web presence,
• Ensuring training is a cornerstone of everything we do online: it is important that any new aspect to the website, any new tools, and any new functionality, is both as easy to use as possible, and as well-documented as possible, so that it is as easy as possible for anyone to quickly pick up and use a new system,
• Investing in developing and documenting the current Content Management System (a Frankenstein-like version of Mambo): the only way to get the most out of UPSU.net is to make it as easy as possible for developers and owners alike to develop it*,
• Committing and maintaining its focus on the importance of accessible and usable design**,
• Avoiding the temptation to allow invasive advertising practises: too many good websites are let down by an overwhelming abundance of adverts which only serve to annoy visitors with very little effective gain. Sorry for the mini-rant!
• Investing in staff: I really do think that we can justify employing a member of staff to work full-time on the website. With the right commitment from the Union's myriad staff and student volunteers, the job of maintaining, updating, and developing the website is much more than a full-time job. Employing a full-time member of staff to provide this online support will be the first step to everything the Union can do online in years to come,
• Making its retail operations available online as far as reasonably possible: this is no doubt a difficult and scary proposition to consider, given the horror stories almost anyone involved in retail will have heard about bad investments, security breaches and downturns in sales and customer footflow, but done properly, online sales can and will massively boost the Union's offerings in some areas, for example our ever-popular University-branded hoodies. I know that a number of staff are greatly in favour of getting this project going!
• Committing to ensuring student- and Union-generated news content is consistently and completely made available online in browsable form (i.e. PDFs are not acceptable here!): the wider the spectrum of up-to-date, accurate and engaging information the Union makes available online, the wider the appeal of the Union as a whole and the greater the return-pull of the Union. In other words, keep it interesting online and students will doubtless sit up and take note of the Union's complete operation,
• Finally, the Union should make sure it keeps an eye on developments in (relevant!) open-source and community-led web services: making extensive use of open-source technologies, for example the Mambo CMS which this website is built upon, and the use of community-driven websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, will massively extend the Union's ability to engage its audiences without having to invest in the "reinvention of the wheel", so to speak. Of course, how effective this is relies entirely on the vision and abilities of those driving the projects, so it makes sense to ensure that any investment in people is done with long-term gain in mind.

Of course, this is all just my two-penneth, as I said before, and I suspect it will need a LOT of work to make it into a working set of guidelines which the Union can easily incorporate into its overall strategy at every level.

... My head hurts now!! :o)

* Steve Baker recently referred to the UPSU.net website as an "iceberg" - there is now *so much* going on inside the site that it would take years, if it were even achievable, to recreate the intricacies and hard work that's gone into the website to make it work how it does. No, it's not perfect - there are MANY things on my wishlist which need tweaking or even rewriting, but I believe it's really important that we resist any urges to restart UPSU.net from scratch,

** A website doesn't have to be boring, plain, or look like it was designed 15 years ago on a monochrome monitor, but by the same token, UPSU.net must remain as accessible as reasonably possible to the widest range of users. Where this isn't possible of course, it must be possible for the same content to be made available in an accessible, preferably digital, format. Accessibility is an absolut requirement, but too many potentially good websites are effectively hamstrung by project management which dictates that every aspect of a website must be 100% accessible - an unrealistic aim, and a frustrating one when accessible alternatives are perfectly acceptable,

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I'm liking what I read here these are some very promising ideas

Luke Simmonds (Web Editor) - Wed, 19 Mar 2008