The right perspective
The recommendations we have must be looked at from the right perspective. There is room to adjust things. Let’s work together to find a consensual solution.
[The best for me would be to have a face-to-face meeting on all this. I personally believe digital media not to be so good at solving the discussion we are entering. Why not put that at the agenda in June and make it an item to be discussed by the steering committe meeting. If June is too far away, let’s make it a closed, official, mandatory meeting with steering committee members.]
I encourage everyone to appreciate the efforts made to come up with these recommendations. That being said, Alberto is absolutely right: part of it is a political compromise. I personally would use the term “institutional”.
IDENTITY. On the identity side, the recommendations are right: for now, the use of different spelling is confusing. I agree with Zoe with the fact that the “3” is geek habit and can hinder our will to engage with “ordinary” people. The use by others of similar names, in similar context, has to be taken into account. This must be clarified and I am confident we will find a viable solution.
NOT ONE, BUT TWO COHABITING PROJECTS. The situation also partly holds to the fact that there are two projects running in parallel and mixing together. The institutional, funded, partly academic one partners engaged into; and the one promised to live long after the EU initiative and run by EdgeRyders – I admit it took me some time to realize this. And in fact, the EU initiative was triggered by EdgeRyders’ fantastic capability to have people and ideas come together and great project emerge.
LANDING PAGE. I am ready to comply with the experts and designers advice on the use/design of single/multiple landing page(s), etc. I guess one main issue is that the EU project and partners of this EU initiative are simply non visible on the actual websites (the pages hosted on the edgeryders porta). And this is a problem that must not be too easily discarded/ignored. I hear this sounds dramatically narcissic, but hey, academia lives on recognition and visibility – that’s what fuels the funds we will be able to get the next time we run a tender. That’s what fuels the whole of academia, from the baseline researchers to the top institutionals in the organizational chart. I believe it might just be the same with non-academic partners that nevertheless mostly live on public funds.
A distinct landing page looked like a good compromise to satisfy all these (narcissic) expectations. This distinct landing page is not about moving or having people meet, it has other “intitutional” aims, that are not addressed by the actual setting.
SOCIAL MEDIA. What I hear from Alberto is that trafic anyway takes place on EdgeRyders accounts. That bringing trafic to these other “opencare” accounts is a lot of work – I hear he asks whether we (and who?) are ready to put the efforts to keep these accounts alive. So the question is (asked to the steering committee?): do we want/need these “institutional” channels, and if so are we ready to invest the necessary resources?
A question is asked about the relevancy of having a G+ channel (devoted to videos, from what I understood). Again, to be accepted, the answer must take the dual nature of opencare into account.
Ok, that comment is far too long already. I hope its content makes sense.
I’m looking forward to read all your constructive propositions.
