E-TIC/Web Sites
From ICVWiki
There are two long-term sites that make up E-TIC, and one "internal" site used during project implementation.
How will the Marketing and Drupal sites be "merged"? How will it look to the user when changing from one site to the other? I doubt that it can be "invisible." They will probably have a similar design but different menu items, reflecting the different tasks on each site. That is, each site may just have a link to the other; this is probably enough since those visiting one site won't normally be interested in the other site.
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E-TIC Info Portal Site
The site exists, it's called http://www.e-tic.net, and it's built using Randy's CMS (RCMS).
Functions
Communication with the general public, including:
- Static pages such as: about, contact, partners
- Blog-style project updates aimed at the public
Users
- Responsible for updates: ICV
- Target audience: possible donors, friends of ICV, the general public
Multi-user Site (Drupal)
Audience
Community journalists, cybercafés, young people, trainers, volunteers involved in documentation
Function 1: Receive Market and Weather Information from Manobi Site
The Manobi site collects and manages all market and weather information. However (the assumption is that) the Manobi site has controlled access. Therefore the Manobi site publishes an API such that the Drupal site can query it at regular intervals and can receive summary information suitable for showing on the site and being read by radio announcers.
Function 2: Provide Market and Weather Information
Community radio announcers have access to the Drupal site and therefore have full-time access to the collected market and weather information.
Exactly what information is useful to the three sets of users (farmers, herders, fishermen)?At regular intervals, the announcers read the data over the air.
- Daily weather forecast
- Warnings about crickets
- Warnings about diseases
This market and weather information is used by farmers, herders and fishermen.
Development Instructions and Examples
- xx
- xx
Function 3: Publish Audio Programs
For community radios, there are two points:
1) the fact that they are preparing programs every day and need good information to updated their programs, they will go to the web, and if we manage to handled our web resources well, our website, to get this information.
2) the fact that community radios and individual journalists are happy to get more visibility. The web and the uploading functions to the web can help journalists to achieve this goal. This would be the same, but at a more macro-level, with UNRAK and other similar structures.
Radio journalists can create audio programs for publishing on the site.
Who is the target audience?
- On the air, local populations;
- On the Internet, people who might not be in the given location and want to hear the radio (e.g. people living in Dakar or abroad but being from a local community somewhere in the country);
- Potential donors who might wish to support the work of the commune where the radio is based;
- Local politicians, e.g. for Guédé Chantier the Maire who is going back and forth between Dakar, which has ADSL, and Guédé, which does not;
- Local cybercafés and Internet hubs and their users.
The process of publishing an audio program goes something like this:
- Journalist creates an MP3 audio file. Do they know how? That's the point of the training.
- Journalist logs in to the Drupal site, uploads MP3 file, adds a title and a paragraph of descriptive text (in the same language as the audio program), and submits it for publication.
- Someone else probably reviews the entry before approving it and publishing it. Who is this authorized person? (It is probably a new user group.) What exactly is the workflow between journalist and authorized person? The authorized person is the reviewer of the information before it goes on the air. This person still needs to be identified and could be someone in Dakar, Bamako or Geneva. In terms of info flow, 1) the journalist uploads the document and the relevant description that goes with it, 2) the administrator comes in and reviews the text and possibly also the audio, though I think that from the moment on where we know the specific journalists, this will be relatively easy in terms of review, and may not require to listen to everything every time, 3) the administrator may choose to show a particular item on the frontage or not.
Once published, the general public can access the published audio programs and download them (or hear them immediately, depending on browser configuration). Who is actually going to be using this feature? All the people identified above. I think that the diaspora might be an important user of the information. In fact, the diaspora contributes more in terms of development money than does any governmental donor.
Development Instructions and Examples
- xx
- xx
Function 4: Publish Articles
Journalists will write articles of interest to the site's users. They log in to the system, then create, edit and submit content. Who approves/publishes this content?
Same administrator as above. This person may change over time. For example, if we have project coordinators and editors in Geneva who master French well, they may take it on for a while. It may also be someone in Dakar of Bamako.
Types of content include:
- blog entries, more like "news," typically shorter in length and of a timely nature
- longer and more in-depth articles
- links to recommended reference or "best practice" material
Do the same users enter and publish all kinds of content? Who are the target audiences?
No, I don't think so. A community radio journalist will just come in to publish his / her program and get info from the site. A journalist / reporter who is writing articles has different skills and a different set of objectives (writing not audio). Some journalists may have multiple hats and roles. But we cannot assume that is will also be the case. From my experience, it is not so common. Generally, there tend to be more links between radio and television, e.g. ORTM in Mali has a national radio station and also broadcasts TV programs.
Development Instructions and Examples
Function 5: Integrate Maps
Integration of maps -- if in the longer run they could be interactive, that could be interesting What information do the maps contain? Who uses them and how? How would the maps be interactive?
The vision I have about this point is the following:
- Zoomable country maps
- Dots that show where the communtiy radios are (you could have the name of the location, a thumbnail)
- You can then click on the dot or thumbnail and you get to a page for the communtiy radio, where you get all the files that have been uploaded by this given radio station
Development Instructions and Examples
- Instructions on how to work with Googlemaps APIs. See also http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/
- Example of Googlemap connected to a database: Crimes in SF
Source d'eau à Guédé-Chantier
Function 6: RSS Feed
- RSS feed applications in case it is useful to vacuum info that exists on other sites about our topics (in this case source must be given of course, it's like what we have on the ICV national sites at the bottom)
Manobi Site
Everything about the Manobi site is a guess and all info needs to be verified.
Yes, indeed. We have to finalize the agreement and then continue discussions with Manobi.
Functions
All of this is much too vague and needs to be expanded.
- Receives SMS messages from farmers/herders containing crop/livestock price information
- Regularly collects weather information
- Provides interface to Drupal site to regularly read weather & price information
Inputs/Outputs
- Farmers, herders, fishermen provide market data as input via SMS
- Senegalese weather service (?) provides weather data
- Farmers, herders, fishermen receive market and weather info via SMS and (possibly) community radio
Users
- Responsible for updates: ICV/cybervolunteer(s)
- Target audience: farmers, herders, fishermen in Mali and Senegal, the general public
Wiki
You're lookin' at it! The link is http://www.icvnews.org/wiki/.
Functions
Basically meant as an internal coordination/communication/documentation tool. It may be that we'll copy/paste large pieces for further publication, but initially it's for collecting and organizing information for use during project implementation.
Audience
The E-TIC team.
Descriptions of the task workflows and how the different stakeholders interact to accomplish a task
- Local stakeholders collect information. Often times this information is available / typed up in a Word document format. It is then edited and ultimately posted, either as a news item or as a more technical type of document.
- SMS are sent to farmers (a given list of phone numbers); these farmers should have the possibility to also send their info back, e.g. prices, etc. There is the question of coding the info in a way that it can be integrated into and understood by a database. Some experiences have been made by partners working with markets in Mali. It will be interesting and essential to see for this part how to best use experience out there.
- RSS feeds feed into specific sections of the website: for example under animal health, we would have all the latest news about this topic. This would work with key words that help suck up relevant info.
- Lists of prices are updated by editor (whether this is someone in Senegal / Mali or Switzerland doesn't matter, as this is info that is collected and sent in World docs, unless it can somehow be connected to the database.
- Images would mostly be uploaded from one location.
- Interactive map could show zones and types of crops (this I would see only at a later stage)
- The blog needs to be monitored, but can help distill info. The same is the case of the Wiki, which again would not be part of e-tic.net but rather used as an info tool to collect and distill info, like we are doing it already for events and articles.
- We have already integrated audio and video functionalities (video posted on youtube). This will be further developed and has to be, we might include some training materials there for example, but also build on the interviews taken already and more to come.
- Monitoring and evaluation, Private tutorials, Higher level people --- training on a personal basis, Partially volunteer training
