The Internet Team assists with the management and administration of the wiki, mail aliases/lists, online surveys, etc. If you need assistance in these areas, please contact the appropriate person from this list of contacts:
If you would like to join the Internet Team, please contact Peter Costantinidis.
Calendar
Overview: Our calendar is maintained using Google Calendar. The Calendar is accessed by the public via the Calendar link in the Sidebar. The Newsletter Editor includes upcoming events from the Calendar in each month's newsletter. Below are examples of the types of things that appear in the Calendar:
- Oakland Public school breaks and the first and last day of school. This helps greatly with planning
- First and last days of Fall and Spring seasons
- First week of practice
- Monthly club meetings
- Coach and Referee Courses
- Clippers tryout dates
Skills: The Google Calendar user interface is fairly simple and there's lots of online help.
Time: This just takes a few minutes a month. The important thing is keeping an ear open for soccer-related events. We often get event announcements in the mail without anyone asking for them to be added to the Calendar. The Calendar volunteer needs the presence of mind to add such things without being prompted. The newsletter editor checks the Calendar for upcoming events and adds them to our newsletter.
Google Spreadsheets
Overview: We use Google Spreadsheets to publish and record a variety of information:
- Practice schedules - setup and publish blank schedules for the Practice Coordinator to update
- Annual volunteer award winners - record the winners each December
- Volunteer data - this data is mostly managed by the Volunteer Coordinator
- Team lists - Data supplied by registrar and used for lots of different purposes
Montclair Soccer has a Google Login (montclairsoccer) that owns these documents. For convenience, they are usually shared with other users so that they can update them using their own Google accounts. When a new document is created, it should be done using the MSC Google login and then shared with who ever needs access.
Skills: Google Spreadsheets are similar to Excel, but not quite as complicated. You create and update them using your web browser.
Time: Short spurts of time throughout the year. For example, once you have the parameters for Fall practices, it should take less than an hour setting up the "blank" schedules. Also involves assisting other volunteers.
Mailing Lists and Aliases
Overview: We use mail aliases (such as practices@montclairsoccer.org) for most of our major volunteer positions. These must be updated when there is turnover. There's also the msc-board and msc-cabinet mailing lists. The msc-board mailing list must be updated once a year when we elect the new board. The msc-cabinet mailing list includes everyone on msc-board and as well as most of the major volunteers listed in the Directory. The volunteer coordinator or register will usually contact you when changes are needed to the msc-cabinet mailing list. Whenever a non-member posts to these lists, the list administrator (listadmin@montclairsoccer.org) must approve the posting. The list can be configured to automatically accept messages from non-members who post frequently. We get a few spam messages per week sent to these mailing lists, we must manually discard these. Its important to filter the spam instead of letting it through. Some ISP's, especially AOL, will block email from our domain if there's too much spam.
Skills: Email and web browser.
Time: Most of the changes to the mailing lists happen during the Spring around registration. You might spend a couple of hours over the course of a couple of months making these changes. The mailing list moderation takes a couple minutes a week. Its a matter of clicking a link from an email message and, after making sure that all of the pending messages are junk, clicking a checkbox and submit button.
Useful links: Manage aliases, support, msc-board administration, msc-cabinet administration
Slideshows
Overview: Slideshows add nice color to some wiki pages. As of March, 2009, we have slideshows on the U6, U8, Clippers, and Front pages. It would be great if we had additional slideshows for other pages. The slideshows are served through Google's Picasa Web Albums. Corresponding to each slideshow is an album. A slideshow is updated by adding or deleting pictures from its corresponding album. All of the Fall 2009 photos were taken by Peter Costantinidis. We need a process for others to submit photos. It would be nice of the slideshow changes every once in a while. This is great for someone interested in Photography who is interested in taking pictures of a variety of Montclair Soccer teams and activities.
Skills: Email, web browser, and maybe a camera.
Time: A couple hours to update albums, more time if you are taking the pictures yourself!
Surveys
Overview: Montclair Soccer has a SurveyMonkey account which is used for online surveys. We use these surveys for collecting practice requests (Fall and Spring), coach evaluations, RSVP's, and for recording volunteer data. Our login is "surveys@montclairsoccer.org". Most new surveys will use a previous survey for its template. Because of this, setting up a survey is usually pretty simple. Someone else will advise you on the survey contents. In addition to creating the survey, the survey coordinator configures the survey to share responses with the appropriate people. For example, the practice coordinator access practice requests submissions using a link to SurveyMonkey found near the bottom of the Practices page. This was made possible because that survey was configured to support this link.
Skills: It is helpful if you are already familiar with SurveyMonkey. However, the first survey coordinator started the job without any prior experience.
Time: The busiest times are late Summer for practice request setup and again towards the end of the season for coach evaluations. Might be as much as 10 hours total for an entire year.
Wiki
Overview: We need someone to keep an eye on what goes on in the wiki and to step in and help where needed. While just about anyone can contribute to and update our wiki pages, there are some people who get into formatting trouble. The wiki coordinator should occasionally review pages and files and make sure they appear in the appropriate folders. Below are additional areas involving the wiki coordinator:
- perform quarterly backups (burn to CD and give to Treasurer)
- approve new wiki users
- review wiki changes, automatically emailed by PBwiki
- help when formatting problems happen
Skills: Familiarity with HTML and CSS
Time: Less than an hour a week.