a Fitzroy History Society website
Over a year ago I made repeated offers to help the Fitzroy History Society build a website. They could use a site to publish historical information, promote their events and encourage community engagement. My offers and enthusiasm to volunteer my time were ignored. Calls and emails were never returned. Face to face discussions came to nothing. Now I have just found what appears to be a new site for the Fitzroy History Society [note this link is now dead].
It’s built on an obscure content management system called LightNEasy. This is a bad start. Why use something no one has ever heard of (or knows how to use) when many potential contributors would be familiar with Blogger or Wordpress and can easily transfer their skills? It makes no sense. It’s light on content (in fact there’s none) and easy to dismiss. I’m disappointed. I hope this is only a work in progress but with a date of 1 June on it I think it’s gone straight from site shell to deadpool without going live in between.
The Fitzroy History Society used to publish their newsletters on the City of Yarra website but the last issue is May 2008. Is the Fitzroy History Society itself now a historical relic? I suppose that’s what happens when community groups fail to encourage new younger members to join. Succession planning is an important management task for all long term organisations, but it is often poorly done or avoided altogether.
It’s a shame because while history may be the study of the past it is undertaken in the present. I’m sure I’m not the only younger person who would like to be involved in the Fitzroy History Society. Like the Business on Smith St (BOSS) website failure, this is an opportunity lost. If they received money from the council to create this, then we’ve all been conned again. It’s not worth a cent.
Update 3 November 2009: I have received confirmation from the City of Yarra that the Fitzroy History Society Inc received $3,500 in a 2009 Community Grant from the Annual Grants Program (Yarra History Stream). The funding is to:
The Fitzroy History Society is developing a user-friendly website to assist members of the public, members of the Society and researchers to access information about events, activities and local historical information to raise awareness of local history and to provide information about past and future meetings and publications.
The project is required to be completed in 2009. This is exactly like the BOSS situation. An organisation receives thousands of dollars of ratepayers’ money to build a rubbish website that does not meet the needs of its target audience.
I made repeated offers to the Fitzroy History Society to help them build a site for free that would have been far better than this. They ignored that offer and have wasted ratepayers’ money building something useless. The council has again made a very poor funding decision. Given their evident ignorance about best practice in web design and online publishing, they should not make such funding decisions without competent guidance.
Update 25 November 2009: the site has gone live at http://www.fitzroyhistorysociety.org.au.
No name or title in the header. No RSS. Past events still advertised in the events page. No news. No information about the committee.
It still lists its email address in the newsletter as ‘fitzroyhistorysociety@yahoo.com’ and in the contact page as ‘fitzroyhistorysociety@yahoo.com.au’.
Lists a committee member’s email in the newsletter as ‘randshaw@bigpond.com’ and in the site as ‘randsbradshaw@bigpond.com’.
They’re not going to get any email…
You might also like
|
|
|
|
Other posts you may find relevant and interesting
- Fitzroy historical society and Residents’ association, 27 May 2008
- a new Fitzroy Residents’ Association website, 31 May 2010
- Fitzroy history – from industrial repairs to the Vegie Bar, 8 December 2008
- Yarra Council wastes $6000 on BOSS website, 4 July 2008
- the City of Yarra website is out of date and out of touch, 13 May 2009
October 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Wow, what a big disappointment.
Too many historical societies have poorly designed and/or out-dated websites which puts off potential members.
The Richmond & Burnley one, for example,
has an out-dated websitehas since updated their website which is great because the calibre of the history walks, info, etc they offer is really fantastic.Moe Historical society has red text on a blue background – painful on tired eyes.
I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to inquire about any events Fitzroy HS might have listed because if they can’t organise to update a website, then how could they organise any kind of event?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
October 15th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Exactly. The Collingwood society has a site but it is rarely updated and equally useless. I find the old school amateurishness of it all so frustrating.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
October 19th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Since it’s hosted on Victnet, there’s a good chance they need something that doesn’t require a database. This may be why they went for LightNEasy.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
October 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
That’s a reasonable assumption, but why not then use free hosting from Wordpress or Blogger?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
October 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
This seems to be one of a set of test sites. If you go to the parent directory (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~michaelp/), you will see other FHS sites.
The most recent seems to be: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~michaelp/FitzroyTest/
If you have a look at it, you will see that there is a lot more content there.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
October 19th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Interesting. This test site has lots of content but it is static, has no RSS and is a mess. No idea about which tool to use to publish content, no idea about shaping the content and not very good content. Fail.
Given that a year ago none of the several committee members I spoke to knew who logged in to Yahoo mail to check their email, I wonder if anyone is doing so now? They used to have two different emails listed in different places and neither worked. In this test site they list fitzroyhistorysociety@yahoo.com but in their April 2009 newsletter (1.3mb PDF) in the test site they list fitzroyhistorysociety@yahoo.com.au. Does it get more amateur?
Even more frustrating for me, the April 2009 newsletter (p2) states:
I volunteered more than a year ago, but presumably as I am not a member I was not welcome. From my point of view, there is no value in joining such a shambolic organisation…
Like or Dislike:
0 
0