Akvopedia structure thoughts 2011

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Good material: BMGF Landscaping studies:

Things that need to be considered:

  • new sectors: education, health, economic development
  • Knowledgepoint / WASHpedia.org
  • Commercial products
  • decision support tools
  • water treatment
  • sanitation systems
  • local government stuff Jean
  • Dundee water stuff

ideas

  • video channel
  • trainings
  • current events / news
  • survey

notes Winona

Winona Azure – Notes about Akvopedia.

1. Activities done in the last week: signed up for Akvo account, put on mailing list.

2. Suggestions for main page: - change name of “featured content” to “news” or “current news”. - in top section of “featured content” box, put a photo, showing a current technology or project that is going on. Caption it with the project name, the organization helping with it, the community they are helping (or names of a group of people), and the location. Change photo every: 1 day, 3 days, or 1 week. This photo will help inspire users and give credit to organizations. Plus showcase recent technology successes. A few short words about how many people it helped would be nice too. This photo should be different than the Akvo Solution of the Week photo. The heading for the photo could also be “Spotlight Project”. - move boxes beneath the “featured content” box down lower. - restructure the Navigation menu and the Toolbox menu (#3 below)

3. Navigation Menu

Main Page How-to Portals 

 - Water
 - Sanitation
 - Approaches
 - Finance
 - Organizations

Geographic Resources Articles Blogs

The above categories will include the following: Main Page (welcome, portal boxes, news, contributing to Akvopedia, editor support), How-to Portals (all instructional information for all levels of work – from funders to project managers to field workers), Geographic Resources (where to find local resources and tools i.e Technology Demonstration Centers, the local water & sanitation policies, where the water and sanitation organizations are at (plus contact info), and contact info of trained community members – include interactive maps for all), Articles (filed by topic, title, author – iTunes model. all articles contributed to Akvo.org, filed in 3 ways: Title, Topic, Author), Blogs (filed by date, topic, author – iTunes model. all water and sanitation blogs, may have hotlinks from the How-to Portals that reference these blogs).

(use line to separate, then include the rest of the navigation menu)

Survey – How can we help? Recent Changes Help

4. What is the purpose of “Toolbox” menu? Is it for the current page you are on? If so, change name to make more clear, ex: Current Page Toolbox (with arrow pointing to the right). What are each of the menu items? One menu item could be for related articles.

5. Another suggestion (affecting psychology): don’t separate NGO or organization info from anyone else, this supports the theory that individuals cannot learn or establish themselves as independent, DIY (do it yourself) people. It seems the goal should be, one day, that communities know how to solve their own problems, and NGOs are just helping them temporarily to achieve this. (is this a correct theory? ☺)

6. Establish a link with universities (and students) around the world with water and sanitation majors. They can submit water and sanitation articles and in return, we can send them email updates when their topic of study has new articles or technologies or related-projects added to Akvo.org. I read how Mark thought people rarely add articles to Akvo.org, this idea could help, as well as increase awareness to the website in general. The website could very well become a popular resource that students (and research scientists) everywhere refer to.

7. Marketing idea: with our list of all water and sanitation organizations around the world, contact them and ask if they want us as an icon/link on their website. Can say they may find our How-to guides and information hub useful.

8. Knowledgepoint. I am not all that clear about this idea, only the name. but was thinking it would be great at some point in the future to hire live chat representatives who can help people with their complex questions. A sort of Akvopedia librarian, so to speak, that can look up information for the users and point them in the right direction, according to their needs. The librarian will have access to a search engine that accesses all pages, and then the librarian sends a series of links to the user, as well as advice or tips to help them. Also within Knowledgepoint, there can be a very extensive FAQ, categorized by topic. But only list Q&As that cannot be answered in the portals or ones that the live chat gets often.

9. EMAS videos:

10. Areas to focus on (me or we ☺): developing the survey, discussing the idea of a forum (is this what “discussion” is supposed to be?) to increase Akvopedia’s interactivity, developing a list of organizations all around the world who do water and sanitation work (include permaculture and farming/food organizations since they are very dependent upon water resources), develop a list of universities all around the world who offer water or sanitation-related majors, look into community development resources more (i.e. how socially acceptable are certain technologies? What are the communities’ perceptions on outside organizations helping them? Do they have past experiences with outside organizations helping them that failed? Etc…)

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