The next Launch Team meeting will be at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 6th 2009 at the West Suburban YMCA. 
Directions can be found
here: http://www.westsuburbanymca.org/main/contact_us/directions_to_our_ymca/

As was the last meeting, this meeting will focus on how best
to spread the word about the site.  At this point we
are still especially in need of outreach to organizations to contribute
their content to the site.  We've had a few active contributors since
the site went live but need to broaden the circle!

If you happen upon this post and haven't yet participated in the
planning process, feel free to join us at the meeting if you're
interested!

RSVP for the meeting by emailing dcrowley@socialcapitalinc.org 

We hope to see you there!

Well, our Dec. 1 "soft launch" date had passed.  The "beta" has been dropped from the site and we are ready to start sharing the site more broadly. 

The next Launch Team meeting will be at 1 p.m. this coming Monday, December 8, at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center.  Directions can be found here: http://www.lsjcc.org/home/leventhal_abo.html

This will be an important meeting as we will discuss plans on how best to spread the word about the site.  In particular, at this phase we are still especially in need of outreach to organizations to contribute their content to the site.  We've had a few active contributors since the site went live but need to broaden the circle!

If you happen upon this post and haven't yet participated in the planning process, feel free to join us at the meeting if you're interested!

RSVP for the meeting by emailing dcrowley@socialcapitalinc.org.

Hi Everyone,

As you can probably tell, I have implemented the theme that was decided upon at our last meeting. At this point we are working to get the site looking as close to the finished version as possible, so I would like everyone to think about what they would like displayed on the front page, and, if we could, get together a logo.

A reminder: Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 3rd, at the JCC at 12:30pm.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Today's meeting was a good opportunity to get re-focused on OurNewton! Two key areas were discussed:

Design Focused on choosing website themes, based on those available via Drupal and the comments we'd received to date. Andrew Gibson, who has replaced Mike Sances as SCI's lead technical contact for OurNewton, will be: 1) sending to group members some information to elicit feedback on colors for the website; and 2) doing a mock-up of the home page based on the themes the group liked.

Outreach Some progress has been made reaching out to groups--LaTonya in particular reported a good deal of progress in September. The general consensus was that once the site has been established with the look & feel we are working on, it will then be a more opportune time for a big outreach campaign. Our target is to prioritize the site design work to have that wrapped up by the Nov. meeting.

Meanwhile, key outreach tasks for everyone:
-collect names/emails of people who would like to receive regular OurNewton updates (these weekly messages are an excellent way to keep the site in front of people and prompt them to add content). SCI will send a few major mass emails to promote the site, especially when we are ready to launch in November...but people will need to "opt in" to receive the regular OurNewton emails.
-group members should begin adding new content relevant for the fall season (especially with an eye to things happening in Nov. & beyond).

Next meeting Mon., Nov. 3, 1 p.m. @ the JCC Details to follow.
Today's agenda is attached for more information.

Many of you may have gotten notice via Mary and Janet about the next Launch team meeting, next Monday, Oct. 6 at 1 p.m. at the YMCA. I wanted to post it here to make sure all members of the Launch team were aware of the meeting, as it will be an important one to help re-focus our efforts on OurNewton.org after the busy end of summer/school start-up season had us all focused on other things.

Hope to see you there! Let us know if you can make it or not by commenting.