The Future of IC Ultimate
Now that the club season is over, its time to turn my attention more fully to the college season. However, this year I am faced with some serious dilemmas about how to proceed with IC Ultimate. It's quite obvious that the website hasn't been updated recently, and in general I have only been able to keep up with it in bits and spurts. Thus, I've come to the (perhaps unsurprising to most) conclusion that I simply don't have time to coordinate information from various sources, generate practically all the written content, and update the website code to keep the site as up-to-date and informative as I would like.
Nonetheless, I still feel it's really important to have a source of information for the women's college division, and I'm still willing to invest time and energy into it. I just can't do it all by myself. Especially since I won't be coaching Stanford this year and won't be at nearly as many tournaments. So at this point, I'm open to suggestions...
Some possible directions IC Ultimate could take:
What do people think?
Nonetheless, I still feel it's really important to have a source of information for the women's college division, and I'm still willing to invest time and energy into it. I just can't do it all by myself. Especially since I won't be coaching Stanford this year and won't be at nearly as many tournaments. So at this point, I'm open to suggestions...
Some possible directions IC Ultimate could take:
- Turn the focus on the blog. Get more people signed up with posting priviledges who would be interested in writing about teams, tournaments, players etc. Would offer an area for opinions and discussion about women's college ultimate.
- Focus exclusively on tournament updates. Get more people to commit to being IC Ultimate reporters who submit content to me to upload on the site. Have some way that others can add input on games played or watched. This would hopefully allow people to follow along with the season's ups and downs more indepth than on the Score Reporter and rsd.
- Focus exclusively on team and player profiles. Get captains/coaches to submit assessments of their rivals/opponents. Get more nominations for players to feature. Assuming that tournament scores are on the Score Reporter, this would allow people to follow the more personal side of the season and leave tournament recaps to rsd.
- Retool the website to make submissions easier to obtain and manage and allow the website to be updated more efficiently. This will definitely have to happen if IC Ultimate is going to stay up as an entity outside of the blog.
What do people think?
posted by Gambler at 10:25 AM
13 Comments:
Gwen-
I have been wondering where you have been........
Surely, the women's ultimate community missed having a CCC update. From the emails I have received concerning the event, maybe I can come up with a short update.
I think I can handle the AC and get updates on all tournaments/players/profiles, including even a bit of information on bigger tournaments like the cultimate ones. (as an aside, if you are in the AC and want to help me, please shoot me an email) If there is a way representatives from each region can post information/reports/profiles independently, that would be ideal.
Basically, I think a few individuals need to step up from each region to keep this thing going. I like the blog immensely, but I am not entirely in favor of opening it up a great deal. I definitely approve of those Miranda mentioned in her post though. I guess I just dont want it become another RSD.
Who is gonna step up for each region?
And gwen, how are we going to easily post things on ICUltimate so you dont have to do it all?
Lindsey
The one nice thing about the blog is that for those who have access, posting is instantaneous and doesn't require me (or another web manager) to update the site. It also allows the general public to engage through the comments. Ideally the website itself would be easier to update too, but I'm not quite sure how to do that.
Actually, this summer I started teaching myself how to use some real webpage-building software so that the site was easier to manage. It also looks a lot cooler, but I haven't figured out to how to upload the pages I created in the software to my webhost. I wish I was a little more tech-savvy. Sigh.
It's great to hear that Lindsey and Miranda are so eager to help out and get started. I know there must be more people interested out there...
I think this blog is a very cool thing. I have a casual interest in college ultimate, but I'm always looking for insight into the game from other players and coaches. More content here could only be a good thing.
Oh, and if it were me, I'd use the blog. Simpler to update, manage, and control.
Keep up the good work!
j
Hey Gwen!
I would hate to see this resource disappear, so I have a suggestion that may sound like more work, but here it is anyway. Can you expand it to include high school girls ultimate too? I would certainly be able to help out in this area, from the girls teams in the NE to players I have met from camp. Also, currently there really is NO place to go for hs girls, sometimes literally. The youth blog-playultimate-sounds more and more like a wannabe rsd. I have tried to encourage girls for the last year or so to contribute there, and have had no success. Also, these girls will be shortly joining the college scene, so it seems a pretty natural crossover.
I would be willing to help find contacts in other areas, as well as contribute until my spring season starts.
And I also think the blog format is probably the way to go.
Thanks for all you do and have done!
I don't think anyone has to worry about IC Ultimate completely disappearing altogether. The current debacle on rsd about a catch in the women's final is exactly the reason why I think its so important to have a forum to talk about women's ultimate other than rsd.
Not only does this serve as a place to read about the women's game, but it hopefully provides a place where people can go and not have to worry about defending themselves or their teammates.
So, its definitely here to stay. The more people want to help and contribute the better.
Hi Gwen,
I think ICUltimate is great site. One that I owuld visit frequently.
I think the published rankings were a great resource.
I agree with the other comments about the importance of a place for women's Ultimate. I am willing to help if you need NE perspective.
-G
If you haven't done so recently, check out the new website. I redesigned it using software that will make it MUCH easier for me to update it. Hopefully that will help streamline the process on my end significantly.
So now, all I need is some more content to put online...
We've got Miriam reporting on Sean Ryan and Miranda reporting on Sundodger this weekend. The next step is to get some profiles of teams, regions, and players. To help get us started, Alex Snyder has agreed to be interviewed for a short feature on winning the callahan and club nationals, so I'm taking care of that. Miranda suggested featuring emory and wisconsin (I'd add UCLA to that list too). Any volunteers for those specific projects?
I'm feeling some momentum building! Thanks for everyone who's interested in getting involved.
Gwen
I think this websight needs better advertisement, somehow get the word out more at tournaments and such. Then, hopefully people will step up, in particular all those people who talk constantly about the lack of media regarding women's ultimate. this should be a sort of melting pot for people to contribute their write ups, etc. I think that's the direction you're hoping to go in, seeing as you've taken on quite a large project here. (and a sweet one, and an important one.)
Feel free to ask me for write ups, etc, which I have done in the past, But i can't promise you they won't be washington and myself biased!
Love
lina
Oooh. I like the new look of the web site. Nice!
gwen-
i will try and email those emory girls and get a profile for you (but, they may have emailed you already...i wouldnt be surprised).
i will send you a little piece on CCC and try to get more information on AC teams and spring tournaments.
nevermind...see you got a CCC update. i must have missed that one a while ago.
Gwen,
One suggestion for easy contributing is a wiki. It's open source, and you can set it up so anyone, or a restricted set, can update content. It might be intimidating to post to, though (I am not sure how comfortable people are with wikis in general).
The blog is great and easy to maintain so should be kept.
I am tech-savvy (it's my Ph.D. area, after all), so if you have a specific question, send me an email. Perhaps we can set something up to make it easier to update the website.
The answer to your dilemma is a Content Management System, which would allow a small group of users to easily post news items and stories through a web interface without having to edit HTML directly.
Unfortunately, despite the plethora of CMS (Plone, Mambo/Joomla, PHPNuke and more), I doubt there is a choice that fits Ultimate reporting particularly well. Any choice would require some customization of templates, modules, etc.
I have done the web/CMS work for leiout.com and chicagosandblast.com in the last few years. I would be willing to work with you and others on the ICUltimate site. The next few months are fairly busy but drop me a line if you're interested.
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