SWEB122: Advocate Portal Roundtable

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SWEB122 Advocate Portal Roundtable

• November 7, 2008

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Panelists and Participants

• David Bonebrake, LSNTAP
• Liz Keith, Pro Bono Net
• Jeffrey Fortkamp, Ohio Legal Assistance
  Foundation
• Tory Messina, PBN New York Program Coordinator
• Chris Moulton, Program Associate at Legal Aid
  Association of California

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Topics for Today

• OST Drupal Upgrade and Advocate Sites
• Ohios Advocate Portal
• Pro Bono Net Platform Highlights
• Roundtable Section

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What is the biggest challenge you face with your
advocate portal?

• Questions for the Group

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What is your advocate portals greatest strength?

• Questions for the Group

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OST drupal upgrade
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Improving the Advocate Portal

• Reducing Participation Inequality
• Creating a Robust Search Option

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Improving Participation Inequality

• Addressing Participation Inequality
• http//www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequa
  lity.html
• User participation follows a 90-9-1 Rule
• 90 Lurkers
• 9 Intermittent Contributors
• 1 Heavy Contributors

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Participation Inequality

• Nielsons Conclusion You cant.
• Ways to Improve participation inequality
• Make it easier to contribute
• Edit, dont create
• Promote quality contributions

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Tools to Increase Participation

• Ratings Widget

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Tools to Increase Participation

• WYSIWYG Editor (pronounced Whiz-ee-wig)
• Allows site administrators to be content editors

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Creating a Robust Search Functionality

• Growing Popularity of Search
• Users can now expect to find a high-performing,
  site-specific search engine on just about every
  content-rich website that is worth its salt. With
  a growing mass of web content from blogs, news
  sites, image and video archives, personal
  websites and more, internet users have an option
  to turn not only to the major search engines, but
  also to search engines on individual sites.
• -Pew Internet and American Life Project

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Creating Robust Search Functionality

• Search will now index both PDFs and Word
  documents
• More sophisticated for weighing relevancy of
  search results
• Search filtering

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Quick Pitch for Open Source
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Ohio Legal Services
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Topics for Today

• OST Drupal Upgrade and Advocate Sites
• Ohios Advocate Portal
• Pro Bono Net Platform Highlights
• Roundtable Section

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Pro Bono Net resdesign

• What have we learned from users and admins about
  what makes a strong advocate portal?
• All about the content
• Interface design and copy
• Data portability
• Cross-media content delivery
• Web services vs. web sites

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Interface Design Copy

• Users are fickle! Need to get your message across
  quickly.
• Help users scan the text column format more
  easily.
• Clearly communicate the purpose. Less text and a
  visual hierarchy help.
• Make it easy for users to problem solve.
• Use action-oriented navigation labels
• Copy-writing is interface design - 37 Signals

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Data portability

• Idea that content is not locked inside an HTML
  page can be exposed through different channels
• Allows you to create multiple points of access to
  internal content on your site
• Supports syndication of external content to your
  site.

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Data portability

• Data widgets create multiple points of entry
  content and tools

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Data portability

• Data widgets create multiple points of entry
  content and tools

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http//www.law.com/jsp/nylj/probono.jsp
Links to skinned versions of the probono.net/NY
Opportunities Guide and Training Calendar
RSS feed of upcoming trainings posted to the
probono.net/NY Calendar
Featured organization from the probono.net/NY
Opportunities Guide. Changes dynamically when
page is refreshed.
Direct links to probono.net/NY Practice Areas
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Cross-media content delivery

• Develop a hybrid e-communications strategy for
  delivering resources to advocates
• E-Newsletter
• NYC Pro Bono Center (HTML)
• PlainText works well too
• http//www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/ has
  both HTML and PlainText templates
• Tip of the Month short summary of new area of
  law your advocate will find useful.

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Cross-media content delivery

• Webinars
• NYC Pro Bono Center
• Pro Bono In New York series
• Podcasts
• IAN
• Pepper Hamilton http//www.pepperpodcasts.com/
• Social media
• Twitter, Facebook

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Topics for Today

• OST Drupal Upgrade and Advocate Sites
• Ohios Advocate Portal
• Pro Bono Net Platform Highlights
• Roundtable Section

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How are you getting user feedback? What are you
learning?

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What strategies/ sources are you using for
document creation?

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What are possible approaches for advocate
engagement?
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How are/can advocate portals be incorporated into
service delivery, especially as programs expand
use of case management systems and project
management applications like Sharepoint and
Central Desktop?

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Thank You!

• Contacts
• David Bonebrake David_at_lsntap.org
• Liz Keith lkeith_at_probono.net
• Please take a few minutes to fill out the
  training survey