Where Do We Go Next

[Mark Greenfield]

UWEBD continues to grow at a steady pace.  This week we passed 3,300 members, and our growth continues at around 100 new members per month.  We have a global reach with members from over 50 countries.  Here are some additional stats:

• 3,315 members
  
• 1,234 discussions in the forums
• 74 groups
• Approximately 60,000 page views per month
• Approximately 13,000 unique visitors per month

The goal of the uwebd site is to build a community of practice for everyone involved with higher education websites. It is intended to be a place where we can share experiences, ask questions, create community, and leverage the collective intelligence of our members to continually improve our skills.

I am always looking for ways to improve the site. Some current goals include:

• Improving the search function. As the site has grown, the current search does a very poor job.  Improving the search will require getting into the source code and I will be looking for members with PHP experience to help with this task.  Please let me know if you are interested.
• Continue to explore the relationship between forum discussions and group discussions.  It can be confusing on the proper location for a post (main forum or group), and searching for this information is a challenge. Feel free to share your thoughts on the forum
  posts vs group posts discussion.
• Improved integration with other tools and sites where conversation about the issues facing higher ed web development are taking place, particularly Twitter and individual blogs. One
  of my goals has been to use the uwebd site to aggregate relevant conversations
  and content from across the web.  That being said, I think there is much more we could do.

So where do we go next? What can we do to add value to this community?  I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

.

[Chris Wiegman]

These all sounds like great ideas however for whatever reason people just seemed to have lost interest. Discussions on blog posts or some other guided discussion might be a good way to bring attention back.