I've been thinking about it awhile now and have the following comments/suggestions to make regarding the Wisconsin .NET Users Group (WI-INETA) website.

The current WI-INETA website is lacking in the following areas:

  • The "Next Meeting" info on the homepage is often outdated to the previous meetings info.
  • The only "usefull" content on the homepage is the next meeting announcement.
  • The discussions forum is framed into the site shows a "The resource cannot be found" error message.
  • The "Presentation Downloads" section doesn't have presentation slides/code from recent meetings. The latest ones are from 9/2005 and 10/2004.
  • The Evangalists section of the site still shows the Blogging Contest, but it hasn't been updated since before the contest was awarded.

The website is the web representation of the .NET developer Community in Wisconsin. You got that? A Community. But in my eyes the website if far from being a Community website. There isn't really much on the site that encourages members to contribute to the community behind it.

Here is a list of features I suggest be added/enhanced on the site to make it more of a Community site:

  • Host a discusson forums directly on the site for all members to use and ask each other questions.
  • Add full Blogging/Photo Gallery functionality to the site so members can start a blog and post articles. This would Really encourage members to contribute to the Community.
  • Write some code to automatically change the "Next Meeting" announcement on the homepage so a person doesn't have to actually login and change it.
  • Keep the "Presentation Downloads" section more up to date by being more proactive to get the presentation slide/code from the presenters and post them up within a couple days each meeting.
    • A really cool addition would be to go as far as recording the presentations and offering them for download from the website. (I know this one isn't as feasible since it would cost $$ but it sure would be cool! And, the videos could be distributed via BitTorrent or a service like YouTube)
  • Just maintain the site regularly and keep things up to date.
  • Also, a graphic redesign would be cool.

I know the members of the users group executive commitee who are resposible for maintaining the website are volunteers (and probably have alot of other important stuff to do), but someone has update the website. I am more than willing to help out with this stuff as much as I can, and I have expressed my interest to the president of the group a couple times.

P.S. Executive Commitee members, don't take this post negatively; I would just like to see the users group be the best it can be. And please let me know if you would be interested in my help.