[Lnc-business] website motion

Tue Feb 16 17:13:41 EST 2016

I'll address Mr. Ludlow's open question, in the course of doing so, I think
I will address some of Mr. Riemer's points.

As I said before, I don't know if our website is good or bad, and if it's
bad, I don't know why.  That doesn't matter, though, since I am not in
either of the two groups that would be reliable on this question:  web
developers and the target market.  Mr. Ludlow is in one of those groups, so
I believe him on that.

I don't need to know what, precisely, is wrong with our website.  No one
elected me here because of my capacity for being impressed by websites.  I
do notice a few things - our home page is covered in text, while
Democrats.org is not, for instance.  I also happen to know that companies
don't just come up with websites that say what they want to say.  They
think carefully about who their messaging is targeting, and then pay people
to come up with sites that will speak to those people.  Do we have a solid
sense of our target market?  If not, I am not sure a web developer can
design something to do what we want.  I think we do, though, and I think we
could communicate our needs to a web developer, who knows how to make a
page accomplish the things we want to accomplish.

I have no idea what makes one page appeal to one group and a different page
to another.  I see that the home page of Democrats.org displays very brief
"I'm a Democrat because..." statements, and asks users why they are
Democrats (getting customers to tell you how to sell to them seems useful).

That seems a pretty apt reason why this board shouldn't be asking questions
like "what's wrong with it?  what would you have it do instead?"  If a
programmer comes to Microsoft's board and wants funding to update some
program, the board doesn't try to second-guess that programmer, using
whatever coding skills they picked up at a weekend class at their local
public library.  They believe the programmer, then decide if the
expenditure to do the update fits into their strategic plans.  They
certainly don't say "we're not going to fund that, but I went to a
programming forum and found this bit of code...stick that into your program
instead and see if that works."  Instead, I'd suggest we do what we were
elected to do, and not things we weren't elected to do.

Why do it now and not next budget year?  Well, that depends.  If we believe
that a better website would generate more votes, better candidates, and
more elected officials, what's the point of waiting?  If we have some
reason that more members, more donors, and more elected officials now would
be a bad thing, then yes, I agree, we shouldn't improve our largest
marketing presence now.  If not, then I don't see why we'd agree it needs
to be done, then wait.

Will I support this proposal?  Most likely, but I'll want to know first
what's going on with the IT committee, which took on this project.  I don't
want bids coming in for two different overhauls, and I want to know where
they are in the process.  Certainly, the length of time we've been talking
about this is much longer than Mr. Ludlow tells us the entire project
usually takes, so I'm also curious why it isn't done already (and why we,
the LNC, don't give our committees more power to act on our behalf, rather
than making reports at quarterly meetings on which the LNC may or may not
act).

So that's where I stand on this; pending seeing the actual motion and
hearing the IT committee report.

Joshua Katz

Joshua A. Katz
Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 1:55 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

> All:
>
> As I mentioned last week when adding to the agenda, I intend to pursue
> $20,000 from the budget and the blessing to spend that money on a 3rd party
> website development company for lp.org.  I have several highly qualified
> companies that I work with.  I've no intention of pursuing my own software
> company as a vendor.
>
> I will formalize the motion before Saturday.
>
> I was hoping to get an idea on who would be willing to support this
> motion.  I would note that this has been talked about for 2 years.  The
> website is horrible.  I am professionally qualified to lead this effort.  I
> am highly confident we can have the whole thing done in 6 weeks time (from
> whenever we get going).
>
> If there is a discussion to be had, please start that discussion here so
> we needn't waste time on the floor answering questions that could easily be
> answered on via email.
>
> I really hope this group is interested in pursuing this.  Please consider
> that we spend over twice as much annually sending printed pieces of paper
> as I am requesting for a the one-time development cost of what should be
> our single most valuable tool for marketing, branding, and general outreach.
>
> Thank you.
> Kevin Ludlow
> Region 7 Rep
>
>
> --
> ========================================================
> Kevin Ludlow
> 512-773-3968
> http://www.kevinludlow.com
>
>
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>
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