I’ve had a little feedback about my first video.
Amy
Amy responded with one word, “Ouch!” She went on to say she wouldn’t let me review her website. (I’m not convinced she has a website but that’s not terribly relevant.)
Ouch is actually a good point. Most of my reviews come across as negative. Whilst I’m sure there are some excellent sites around the problem is finding them! The voluntary sector often has poor sites because they can’t afford good advice. The designers who work in the sector tend to be amateurs and few people seem prepared to research the basics.
Last night I attended a talk about poetry. The speaker talked about criticism and said he always started with positive comments because however poor a poem is, it has soul. It means something to the person who wrote it. I think the problem with many websites is they lack soul. When I look at them my impression is their owners don’t care.
Maybe many owners are overawed by the technology. Whilst it can be daunting, so much is a lot easier than it was a few years ago. There’s no excuse any more for an unloved website. In the end it is disrespectful to those who visit it. Whether or not they are people with a long term interest in what a site offers, they deserve to at least have a clear explanation of what the site offers.
This is why spirituality is relevant. The online world is not the preserve of geeks. It is a marketplace where all sorts of people search for help and for relationships. A careless website is worst than no website. If you can’t be bothered to maintain it, then take it down. But before you do that it is always worth considering whether you can find a way to look after it. With the right technology it is easier than you think.
I’d like to be write or record reviews of a good third sector websites. There are plenty of good commercial sites. So far, I haven’t found anything suitable in the third sector.
So, my question for readers is, can you recommend a good third sector website for me to review. I promise I’ll try to be positive but I want to see improvement and so I do feel obliged to point out weaknesses!
Penuel
Penuel made the following comments:
Observation. You need to make a link for videos now that you have one. Probably would be good to have it linked up to the navigation bar. Also it cuts off you saying bye at the end. If you can extend the video by a second or so that would be good. Other than that it seems very informative and it is clear and gets your point across which is the main thing. But for your next video you might want to change the PowerPoint design. It feels a bit dated. The simpler the better. The colour fade really isn’t great.
I had some issues with YouTube to begin with and they are now resolved. If you go back to the original post, you’ll find it is now a YouTube video. I have a lot of work to do optimising my videos for search engines and it will take me a while to work through this. They will need more prominence on my site once I’ve worked out all the details.
I hadn’t noticed the problem at the end. I had a lot of empty space at the end because I couldn’t work out how to stop the recording! I removed a couple of minutes from the end and perhaps was a bit sharp with the scalpel. I’ll watch that in future.
The colour fade or gradient may be an issue. I’ve recorded the
Mark
Mark wrote:
I have watched and listened to your video – or at least some of it.
It is only some way into the video that it becomes clear that these ‘intermediate bodies’ you are talking about are church bodies – rather than other things that might be called intermediate bodies such as CVSs.
You claim that you prefer laughing to crying. Really?
Your phrases about learning from mistakes – a good and valid and perhaps important point, but I think Robert Chambers, in his work on participatory appraisal/participatory learning and action, puts it more pithily and memorably – it goes something like this – ‘we’ve made a mistake. Good. What can we learn from it?’
What fun
Mark’s comments are more concerned with the content. The term ‘intermediate bodies’ is a pain. It says nothing about what they are and very few church people have heard of them. If the CVSs want to lay claim to the term it is fine by me.
If you refer to the cartoon at the top of my website, you will see I prefer a quizzical look to either laughter or tears. My tears will flow in the next, 5 best websites, video. When you see how poor the best sites the intermediate bodies can produce are, most people would weep profusely.
I may use Robert Chambers’ quote in my next video.
That’s all the comments I’ve had so far. What do you think?
