pad ready for amsu web ideas

In December I volunteered myself for the Association of Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU) web development team – with a healthy shove in the right direction from Jaki Booth (trustee of AMSU). It’s a voluntary position and there’s three of us altogether who will be meeting to help AMSU develop its web presences and putting our plans into action. It’s a voluntary position.

I travelled down to Birmingham on Thursday 29th January not really sure what to expect. I knew there was a rough agenda ahead of us (discuss how crap AMSU’s old website had been, what was happening with the NUS Extranet and AMSU and potentially discuss some new ideas). Arrived at Birmingham City University Students’ Union to join in the #bcutweetup and then my fellow volunteers arrived on the AMSU web development team.

The first is Andy Parsons, chief executive at Loughborough Students’ Union, and the other is John Wordsworth, representation and democracy manager at Exeter Guild. So north, south and centre were combining to see if our collected minds could figure out the best way for AMSU to progress on the web.

The laptops were flipped open, the wireless eventually connected (I was borrowing Jaki’s laptop) and Andy fired up his ace MindMap sofware (John and I massively impressed by this, no wonder Loughboroguh is consistently rated as one of the top Union’s in the UK!).

We started out by describing what we thought AMSU itself should be – a place for all staff in Students’ Unions, not just general managers/chief executives – to find resources and the opportunity to explore new ideas and share best practice.

We discussed what we were up to at our respective unions with respect to the web, and it was amazing all the stuff that’s going on (from John handcoding an elections voting system at Exeter, to me starting work on an elections interactive facebook application and Andy enjoying the benefits of Warwick Union’s MSL system).

andy parsons fires up the mindmap

Down to the nitty gritty and it was decided that we needed to go open source with a lot of AMSU stuff. There are some AMSU gems that we needed to keep from the old web presences, such as the resource library, jobs sections and agenda magazine. But we needed to expand the content around these – for example getting the resource library tagged up to allow easy searching, moving agenda magazine to more of a blog format and making the jobs section easily searchable.

The topic of digital literacy came up again, and we discussed how AMSU could have a role to play in helping Students’ Unions to understand how web 2.0 tools can be used to improve the organisation and how it operates.

We came away buzzing with loads of great ideas to really push AMSU forward and allow it to re-connect with a lot of its members. We’ll be working up our ideas ready for an online meeting (we’re going to try meeting via Skype) in February and then a further meeting in March to investigate the MSL system that now powers the content management system of the new AMSU site.

It was a great experience to bounce ideas around with John and Andy and I’m looking forward to working on the project over the coming months.

“ONE WEEK TO GO…!

The Big Challenge competition is closing to applications on January 12th 2009!!

The Big Challenge competition is only open for one more week to any 16-25 year old who has a big idea for a project or campaign that helps other young people lead more positive and healthy lives. There is £60 000 to be won for a number of inspiring project ideas that will make a real difference to young people’s lives. Winners will have their project costs paid for along with support and mentoring to carry out their ideas.

Applications must focus on one of these 4 areas:

· Drugs, sex and alcohol

· Sustainable living

· Gang culture

· Healthy living

Visit – www.bigchallenge.org.uk where you can apply, find out about volunteer opportunities, vote for your favourite project idea (between Feb 2nd and 9th) and read the applications that have been submitted so far!

Your Life, Your Decision, Your Challenge.

What are you waiting for?”

So if you’re between 16 and 25, reading this, have an idea in one of those four areas. What are you waiting for? Go pitch!