Once you release information to the press, you want people who read/view the resulting stories to be able to get further information if they want it, right?
I mean, isn't the point, say, of telling the newspaper about Alive at Five's first concert of the year that you want people to go? To all of them? Rather than having the website listed in the article still showing 2006's schedule (in *June* 2007)?
Also, if a story is running about your special Recapitalize Albany committee's final report, wouldn't it make you uncomfortable that your very new premiered-in-the-Palace-Theatre website still describes the committee as getting underway, and anyone who wants to read the report for themselves has to show up in person downtown (because it's "too big to e-mail")?
For that matter, why would you announce that the website was done in the first place, when six out of eight links on the zoning page (a key place of interest for relocating businesses) aren't live yet? The events page is filled in through a week and a half from now . . . not behind yet, but not exactly giving us a lot of planning time either.
If I were on the Recapitalize Albany committee, or something like it, I would have lobbied for a recommendation about how the city needs someone in charge of its Internet presence who is actually web savvy, someone who understands how it used and what is expected of it, and makes sure that keeping it up-to-date and useful is not an afterthought. Hiring a consultant who can make something that looks pretty and then forgetting it about it is a waste of money. Your website is not a brochure, folks.
Nor is it unimportant. From The Rebirth of Older Industrial Cities, put out by the Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Northeastern University: "Businesses seeking new locations for their operations – and the location specialists those businesses employ – often initially explore various location possibilities from afar by checking websites to gather relevant data on local communities. It is difficult for local officials to even get a chance to 'show their wares' to prospective businesses unless they have attractive, compelling, and information-rich websites that provide the precise information that firms normally seek when making location decisions." (emphasis mine) I'm guessing they felt that "not seriously out of date" was a given.
This is relevant to Albany's planning process, because it is these very kinds of things: going from idea to practical implementation, shifting old habits, learning to make new and improved systems work, that we are going to need to both get a great plan and then make something happen with it.
The guy in charge at city hall knows next to nothing about the internet, in particular, and personal computer technology in general...
Ergo, if one's job survival depends upon giving "the boss" what he wants....rather than giving "the city" what it needs..we end up with our "laughable" Albany city web site...
Posted by: hawkny | June 11, 2007 at 09:31 PM