[OPLINLIST] Shiny vs. Steady

[SWON Info]

SWON’s new website switches on next week, and from our perspective, it’s 
been a long time coming. It’s bringing calendar/registration, online 
payments, special interest group communications and online collaboration 
to a single platform. Until now, those had been handled by different 
vendors or was work done by hand.

We hope you’ll find that the new site improves everything on that list 
of features. We’re hoping this will reduce the amount and complexity of 
the administrative work SWON does, too.


    Diligence is Due

We’re ready to make this move, in part, because we’ve had a lot of 
conversations about this feature list. We collected lots of user 
feedback, mostly through informal conversations. And we had ongoing 
meetings about our internal needs, which is a little easier with just 
three of us. When it was time to formalize this list, we had already 
done a lot of the prep work.

Even with that preparation, /there’s still competition between what’s 
shiny and what’s steady/. There’s what you like because of its design or 
its marketing or the organizations that use it. And then there’s the due 
diligence of matching your needs and priorities to the capabilities of 
whatever product you’re examining.

/Due diligence doesn’t guarantee that your final choice will be the kind 
of fit you anticipate, either/. When you get to implementation, there 
are bound to be surprises. With the integrated system we’re moving to, 
we’d like to change some of the lingo it uses, but it’s hard-coded into 
the system. Some places, we found work-arounds. Other places, we have to 
adapt.

If you’re anticipating a big project, start documenting what’s on those 
internal and external needs lists now. They’re an opportunity to include 
different perspectives (which also helps people feel they’re heard). 
Prioritize those lists and you’ve created a document you can assess 
together. Objectively, let’s hope.

  * Nathan Swartzendruber

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Connect to SWON online: Website <http://www.swonlibraries.org/> : 
Calendar <http://swon.evanced.info/signup/eventcalendar.aspx> : Facebook 
<https://www.facebook.com/SWONLibraries?sk=wall> : Twitter 
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    The Calendar is Currently Closed

In anticipation of our website switch-over, our calendar is closed for 
registration. Registration will be up and running next week on our new 
website!

SWON Libraries - http://www.swonlibraries.org<http://www.swonlibraries.org>
10250 Alliance Road, Suite 225
Blue Ash, OH 45242
phone (513) 751-4422 - fax (513) 751-0463
To subscribe or be removed from SWON's Events list, click 
here:http://lists.swonlibraries.org/mailman/listinfo/events
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