CareerNetworkMinistry.org

CareerNetworkMinistry.org (hereinafter, the Site) is the official website of the Career Network Ministry (hereinafter, the Ministry) located at https://careernetworkministry.org

History

Earliest attempt

Gary Ihar installed the first instance of WordPress in early 2016. This instance featured a WP-Meetup plugin developed by Ryan Flannagan. This plugin fetched event information from the meetup group of the Ministry and created posts for each event. The plugin provided an event calendar for displaying upcoming events on an event page. 3-5 upcoming events were also featured on the Site pages as a widget.

The Site visitors could RSVP for the upcoming events while just clicking on the buttons published on the Site. If someone was not a user of Meetup.com, or not a member of the group, the plugin directed this user to the registration pages.

The plugin crashed the Site several times. Gary Ihar and Ryan Flannagan exchanged several emails, but when it became clear the plugin developers abandoned its development projects, leaders of CNM Digital Services at that time, Gary Ihar and Sergei S. decided to move on to other options.

First enterprise-level site

While being inspired by Dr. Mallard Owen's vision to equip the Ministry with enterprise-level technology, the team launched a new version of the Site. The version was built on a Liferay instance and featured the video introduction of the Ministry on its front screen. To ease the video upload, later just a short snippet of attendees walking in the Ministry's hallway was left; the complete video was available on the "Watch" click.

The version didn't survive the major crash of the technology in 2016.

Second enterprise-level site

In late 2016, Alex installed an instance of Odoo and the team configured email service using the Yandex.Mail product. The security was partially backed by a Let's Encrypt certificate.

Natly drafted a new layout based on recommendations of several attendees of the Ministry and requirements collected by Gary Ihar from Bob Korzeniewski. The landing screen featured a quote of an executive of the U.S. Department of Labor,

the Rolls-Royce of faith-based job clubs in the United States.

Natly also installed an additional component to manage files in order to allow for publishing and downloading presentations. Gary Ihar and Romanof worked on a project to integrate meetup event announcements into the Site until the project was abandoned in mid-2017. By that time, Dr. Mallard Owen left the Ministry and the need in enterprise-level technology had faded.

Benchmarking

The Team will consider the following resources for the best practices to be incorporated:

1. Career Connectors - A Phoenix based group that runs their Jobs Club as a separate non-profit (501(c)3). They are active in multiple Churches - different model - some training but more of a Job Fair structure. https://careerconnectors.org
2. Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC) - They have fully embraced their Jobs Ministry as a core part of the Church for the last 25+ years. Lots of media and print have covered their success story. They do no have a separate website that I know of - this link is part of the Church's website but worth reviewing. https://www.rumc.com/jobnetworking/
3. Neighbors helping Neighbors - Website is very busy - but these guys have been a very active Jobs Group and expanded their model to other locations. Might be something of value. https://www.nhnusa.org/index.html
4. Career Confidence - The local group run by Robert Brandeau. They keep it simple but communicate pretty regularly. https://www.career-confidence.org
5. 40 Plus DC - A Job's Group in the city - offers some free services - but then upsells paid services. Has been around for a long time! http://www.40plus-dc.org

Drafts

The goal is to identify the needs and goals of the Web Site. I will bring 3 templates for Bob & Debbie to choose from.

Web Site: Welcome Page - Generally information on CNM - A registration link leading into the members section - Did a sample layout of this page - Featured workshop and services summery format static picture or 1 min video intro to hook the user

Members Page - Will have a video of the Orientation Workshop - we just record it - CNM Manual PDF download - Evaluation Spreadsheet download given out in the workshop - User friendly picture links layout of the other workshop and resources at CNM.

This is just an initial draft of the Web Site. Once we have a better understanding of the needs and goals we can modify it as needed.

Thanks for the initiative, Esperanza. I will think on the questions like whether we need any test and/or certificate for those who choose to be oriented remotely. Also -- are we meeting in the Community Room A?

Based on our discussion on Tuesday, I've been thinking about the messaging that should be on the landing page for the website (not so much the layout). The goal is for a viewer of the page to be convinced that it is worth coming to the Tuesday night session and get engaged.

With that in mind, I drafted following page: http://cnm2.michaelsimpson.xyz/ My aim is to see if we agree on what we need to say and how to say it.

Your thoughts/comments? Esperanza Rey <esperanza.s.rey@gmail.com>

Thu, May 30, 10:28 AM (5 days ago)

to Michael, debbie, gary@careernetworkministry.org, bobkorzo@gmail.com Hello Michael:

You are correct content is very important. That is where Content Writing/Marketimg comes in as well as identifying and incorporating Keywords phrases to generate visibility to the site and ranking with the search engines. To be found.

That is what I do and there is a process for that. Once the content is on the site the goal is to review it and make changes to improve it.

Design (layout) is equally important. That’s why there is Design and Development.

The layout is also key to create a User Friendly experience (UX) as well as making the info easy to find and featuring key services . There are many other factors involved. Debbie has content so we will start there.

Michael - I like the idea and think it is close. I have a quote that stays in my mind - “People don’t care what you know till they know that you care”. So not sure how to balance our expertise with our caring. Will go back and look at it again - but my gut is the initial take away is that CNM is a warm - comfortable - caring place - then hit them with meetup and other info. Definitely open for debate/discussion - thanks for starting the ball as the initial impression is important

Debbie -- thanks for the room; it contributed to the meeting productivity.

Michael -- I like your simplicity approach; we are on the same page here. May you help to research the best available plugin for file management in order to handle presentation files? We can also move the handbook to there.

Esperanza -- we need to adjust the main menu and landing page items to Bob's requirements. I also need to clarify the difference between CNM and Friends Of CNM. Bob K. is the "product owner" of CNM services. Friends Of CNM is currently my personal project; this project is independent. I and two other people there are building the CNM Cloud as an experiment, but only those parts of the technology that would be approved by Bob K. would become CNM services. For now, the website is the only project of our team at CNM since Bob K. approved the website only.

Also -- I personally purchased the subscription for https://wordpress.org/plugins/elementor/ -- the best page builder for WordPress available on the market. Of course, we can use it for CNM; however, I feel like that we can draft something simple for now and later use this tool for some sophistication.

Bob -- Completely agreed, the website needs to demonstrate our both power and care. In my experience, the care can only be projected by something that Esperanza mentioned -- caring user experience or UX. And this UX, like a good resume or interviewing skills, needs some time and tons of efforts. I would suggest regular iterations, and I can see that we can find volunteer contributors, but the team would need some product owner's involvement -- if not you, there should be someone else who can make decisions.

Also -- I feel like we need to clarify the project. I would suggest to chunk it in several phases -- let say, to start with something better than we have now. Later, to benchmark and incorporate best practices from similar services. And so on.

Team -- Based on my experience, documenting is a key to success in volunteer tech projects. I started this page -- https://wiki.friendsofcnm.org/en/CareerNetworkMinistry.org -- and plan to incorporate our findings there. Are we meeting on Tuesday? We can discuss that there. If not, what is the next step? Thanks a bunch!

I could have finished the website by now. However, I am trying to give everyone one options and getting things in place. Identify videos, content.

Worked on last week: - I researched the CNM websites. - Also as Bob requested I found some website of organizations similar to CNM. They have some simple but great stuff. It’s www.hiretexas.org. The website is not good, their info is.

Need: - I need pictures of CNM events preferably current ones. I can use place holders to get started - Meet with Debbie have not heard from you yet. Let me know when you are available?