The 'update' newsletter summarises work described in more detail here on the blog.
There is also a general purpose publicity/recruitment flyer.
Every copy that reaches new people makes a difference. You can get reasonable quality downloadable versions of these by clicking the images. If you can print a copy for a shop window, waiting room, noticeboard, cafe, etc, or get them into school mailings or similar ... well, it all helps.
If you would like some of the printed copies, get in touch.Unfortunately we can't afford a professional designer, so we have to be content with a layout that is, let's say, clean but clunky. If any of our 300 supporters has the skills and can spare some time, it would be quite a step forward for us.
(I also have a feeling our pdf files are bigger than they need be, so if anyone can suggest a solution which'll work on a 10-year old laptop running Windows 2000...)
What happened to the funding you had last year for a new website?
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking, Anon (may I call you Anon until you reveal your secret identity?). In brief, we made progress earlier in the year, then we hit the summer and concentrated our time & energy on MUG's non-virtual presence in the park, as well as having some time away, looking after kids, etc. In addition, the lead committee member (Jon) stepped down. With the longer nights coming we'll turn our attention again to MUG's virtual presence. Since Jon bowed out, Harry and I have continued working on it.
ReplyDeleteMore detail for the technically minded. Iain MacIntyre of hackneyhome.co.uk was commissioned. He recommended moving to a Wordpress-based site, and we agreed, with the proviso that we need the full version of Wordpress in order to integrate the mailing list, have an online forum, etc. Therefore the question of hosting arises, see below. Iain's done a visual design and basic technical layout and is still contracted to bring the site to a useable state, add more facilities and give initial support. We've tested Wordpress's facility for batching over Blogger material and it seems to work fine, which means we can transfer the existing site material, though we'll have to change internal links, which we can do in one pass on an offline editor.
On hosting, free hosting doesn't offer what we want, as far as we know, and we weren't certain that the group could afford hosting fees, so Harry has offered free space on a virtual host he rents. We were troubleshooting that when the summer holidays hit. In the longer term I'd like to explore sharing hosting & its costs with other park user groups, but that's just a twinkle in the eye at the moment.
Tim
How much of MUG's funding was spent on this?
ReplyDeleteBy 'this' do you mean the web commission, or the newsletter and flyer? If the latter, then £175 for newsletter, £45 for flyer, from the Grassroots Grants 'summer surge' grant, as posted here on 11 June:
ReplyDeletehttp://millfieldsusers.blogspot.com/p/funds.html
Are you the same Anon as in comment 1, or a different Anon?
Tim
and the amount spent on the commission for a website we don't yet have is?
ReplyDelete£500. MUG has got a website now, of course. We're using it to have this conversation. Which is great, and I hope some other people will join in (preferably saying who they are, though).
ReplyDeleteYes MUG has a blog that was free to set up and will have taken half an hour (at most) to do, so it is not clear why you spent £500 on the web commission. Can the outputs from the commission be shared with MUG members?
ReplyDeleteWell, it is clear, if you read the 2nd para of my reply to your first comment. Perhaps you skipped it because I labelled it as technical. As I said, Iain's done a visual design and basic technical layout and is still contracted to bring the site to a useable state, add more facilities and give initial support.
ReplyDeleteYes, the blogger site is a simple stop-gap. It was quick to set up and it would be a waste of time developing the format and facilities, sicne they are not transferable to the permanent site. The content has taken rather more than 30 minutes to produce, and this was worth doing because it can be imported to the wordpress site.
It's not clear what you are trying to say in your final line, but Harry, Iain and I have resumed work and you should see some results fairly soon.
You can choose to present these printed mugs for all occasions for employees. You might also consider giving them to prospective clients or current. But the best way to advance is to be distributed at a trade show. At an exhibition, you will have people who would be interested in your products and services and would appreciate your cup.
ReplyDeletePersonalised mugs