Some of you might have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much of late (Whether that’s a source of joy or sorrow, I’d rather not know!) and although this is ‘jumping the gun a tad, I would like to offer something of an explanation.
One of the tasks I’ve been given in my ‘new’ job (7 months is no time in Methodism — many people still talk about the new hymn book, even though it came out in 1983!) is to develop some new web resources for the church. I’ve been beavering away at that for the last little while and, much as I enjoy my computer, I can’t be all day at a keyboard. I’ve been working at two sites.
First, there’s a site for the Wales Training Network. I haven’t finished creating all the content yet, so there’s a fair bit of that ‘ipsum lorem’ placeholder text that you sometimes see around and there are a few rough edges design-wise but broadly-speaking I’m happy with the way it looks and behaves, and my colleagues seemed to like it when I showed them the other day.
Second, there’s a Ning-based social networking site for the Methodist EDEV* process. I took a very circuitous route to arrive at Ning. I tried lots of different content management sytems, but in the end I felt that Ning offered the most features for the least effort. Again, it isn’t finished. For a start, I’m the only member, which makes it a pretty poor network as yet. And I’ll be getting rid of the adverts in the next day or two. But again, I’m pretty happy with the way it looks, and it does seem to perform pretty well.
As I say, strictly-speaking I’m telling you about this a bit ahead of time. However, Saturday is nearly always a slow day here, so it’s only my friends who are likely to be reading this. I’d be glad of your feedback, and if any of you felt like helping me get the ball rolling with the EDEV site*, I’d be grateful.
*EDEV stands for ‘Extending Discipleship, Exploring Vocation’, a new process that was introduced into the Methodist Church in Britain last September. Getting it going in Wales is a biggish part of my job. Although the new site is being run by the Wales Training Network, we’ll be offering it as our contribution to the EDEV process in the whole connexion.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Micky 05.10.09 at 11:24 pm
I’ve visited the EDEV site and I think it’s a great idea - will you be enabling other District Training type people to do something similar? I could really do with a short outline of what people need to do to become Local Preachers and to Candidate - the shortest I’ve found for the latter is 6 pages of dense type including complex Methodist words and I am trying to encourage someone for whom English is not his first language! Any ideas?
Bene D 05.11.09 at 4:22 am
Really liked your video there Richard, you may have missed your calling. The use of old/new felt seamless. Good use of music, pics and few words.
Words I’ll remember because they were not overdone.
Calling and inviting, but not overwhelming.
The sites, good load time, clean, lots of white space.:^)
Looks and feels like there is room for all generations, that it isn’t just geared to one age group.
I hope all your collegues are happy with both sites, think it’ll be a cool place for trainees to hang out at.
Richard 05.11.09 at 7:15 am
Thanks for the kind words BD.
Micky - once I have the approval from my oversight people in a couple of weeks, I’m going to offer the EDEV site to the other Regional Training Forums for their EDEV students. A little contribution to the connexional process from Wales. I’ll put writing those guides to candidating and becoming a Local Preacher on my list of things to do. The new guidance for candidating comes out in July, so maybe the language will be simpler this time.
Well, we can hope…