Friday, November 15, 2013

Various Dunwoody Updates, Monday meeting, website, animals, electronics and park design.


An extraordinary amount of poise and class was exerted by the Chesnut Charter Elementary students who each came to the podium to exalt the benefits of city wide emergency sirens.  Sadly the same can't be said by some others who were in the room and should have been taking lessons from these kids.

In many ways Monday's meeting was like many others, we listened to various presentations, reviewed and voted as needed.  Strong opinions filled the air, some factual, some emotional - all valid to the person expressing the opinion and we listened to what was being said.  The streaming video kept being knocked off line but there are seven segments that were recorded and they can be found here.

One of the items presented to Council was the webpage redesign presentation whereby at the December meeting there will be a contract presented to the winning firm of Jesse James Creative, Inc. and here is a copy of the powerpoint outlining the proposal and our request. If you are in web design please feel free to comment on the proposal and the firm's work.

The firm provided a few examples of their work and I see a few nice touches but also some limitations.  Everyone of the pages has a search bar so I searched "Jesse James" looking for their contract or city council action and only found limited information at best.  The backend of the city will still be tied to SIRE for documents as will the video streaming and it is my hope that the last five years of documents will be indexed and searchable through the new front end being designed by Jesse James.  I am also told that Sire may be upgrading the Video package in January that might be moving away from Silverlight?

http://visitpagosasprings.com

http://edinamn.gov

http://www.cityofcheney.org

http://unicefinnovation.org

Do you remember the discussion on the total number of animals to be allowed in the home?  Here is the proposed replacement ordinance which I believe hits to the heart of the problem attempting to be solved.

As far as animals, I received an email this evening with a photo showing a coyote wandering around on Andover Dr in Dunwoody North so please take appropriate action.

As I will be stepping away from the computer for a few days... On Saturday there will be an electronics recycling event, then on Tuesday there will be a meeting as to what amenities should be included in the park at Shallowford and Pernoshal.  I think a few active basketball courts would work well as we tore down one hoop to build out the 16 acre pipefarm.  The park will be situated on the Brook Run Trail immediately between two playgrounds made for children therefore I would like to see some amenities that are not available at the other two parks.

Also on Saturday, Ms. Bobbi Sedam of the Friends of Brook Run Park Dunwoody will be conducting a work day at 10 am to meet at the entrance to the multiuse trail off the parking lot behind the skate park at Brook Run. Bring your hoe, rake, gloves, water bottles, clippers if you have them and your terrific selves. She will bring hot apple cider, hot chocolate, pumpkin bread and Kleenex......it will be cold.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi John,
Do you have a pointer to the RFP, list of proposals and assessment criteria regarding the City website?

I've seen work by Swagit (http://www.swagit.com) and they have very impressive technology. I like their use of meeting agenda items to index into the video and no, they don't use silverlight. Can't wait for them to integrate Chromecast into their service.

A nearby city (http://www.athensclarkecounty.com) uses Civic Plus (http://civicplus.com/). I spend quite a bit of time on the ACC website and there is not a user value (ease of navigation, search, comprehensive coverage, integration with external tools/sites, etc.) that I would not consider head and shoulders above what we've bought. Their video system is good but not quite on par with Swagit.

Just my $0.02 but I encourage anyone to check 'em out. Hopefully our new system will be as good or better. FWIW I don't build these kinds of systems but I did stay in a Holiday Inn in Plano.

John Heneghan said...

Ken, check the link under "our request". Appreciate the feedback.