Some thoughts

Now that I've had a day to let things settle, got a few things to say.

Information Centralization,
Right now, info is a circle jerk of epic proportions. Lots of it (information), however it is a mess and almost impossible to keep track of. I hate facebook, again, free stuff, hate it. It is awful at archiving information, with the new feeds, it makes it even harder to track down posts and information. The blog at http://occupyjacksonville.us/, is heavy handed and for a photo blog, it's nice, but as far as informational, it doesn't do the job. I am partial to bulletin boards, although new users have a time getting used to them. They are the best at sharing and archiving information. Right now, the twitter feed is merely updating from the tumbler feed, not really providing solid info, more infotainment. Twitter is a very important tool for organizing, it shouldn't be trivialized with useless or redundant info. (Boy who cried wolf syndrome) I think the forums should be really pimped as the organization tool. A third of registered users have not been back in a week, and many have about 1/4 have never come back. That is a problem. More people will read facebook, but, really the message is jumbled there, perhaps you should restrict wall posts to just moderators, and only relevant Jacksonville posts, so it doesn't become such a mess. Maybe a recording secretary who can summarize and write up topics and ideas from the general meetings and teams?

Messaging,
Ok, I'm old and have hearing loss. Mob shouting doesn't work for me. Also, having people shout back at a speaker laughs in the face of acoustics. Sound is directional, shouting forward to get the message to the people in the rear is counter productive. The tonka bullhorn actually made it harder to hear, may I suggest going old school? Believe me they work and likely get around noise ordinances? I know people that work in give away swag, maybe get a deal on printed ones? Don't know, just tossing things at the wall.

User experience,
Theme of the board, is awful, as others have stated. I don't know how much you can do with probably a community install of phpbb, but you can allow users to override the current theme. You have to have other themes installed of course. That said, I really hate free internet stuff, perhaps it's the control freak in me. I have hosting and can host a domain if you like. You can put up anything and everything if you wish. I have plenty of bandwidth and storage. I know that some domains have been secured, pretty sure you can do a redirect in the go daddy control panel, not sure, as I don't use them. I have a mom and pop host out of england. If you are new to hosting, here is the list of software they come with. I have a medium plan, cost me $100 a year, includes a domain name. I have 4 phpbb's running and 4 blogs.
http://www.softaculous.com/softwares This is all open source, freeware, you may try any of it out there.
Phpbb's aren't the most user friendly, but easy enough once you learn. There should probably a section how to use the boards, posting guidelines and such.

Visibility,
Downtown has always sucked, it has never been viable in the 32 year I've been here, and I spent a lot of time downtown at the theaters. I hate the idea of messing with the riverside arts fest, it seems rude and intrusive. It is also tucked far away from where most people are. It's no secret that the main roads have an insane amount of vehicular traffic daily. May I suggest putting an operative (volunteer) near these busy intersections to build awareness. Business do this with slaves now, (I know they are paid, but to stand on the highway in well over 110° days is pretty brutal) Also, you see this during election time and you know you notice them. Simply a sign with the web address? I can't think of a permanent place to occupy where it will have any influence. I'd say the best place would be the federal reserve, but that may get us killed. I don't even know what it looks like over there now.

That's all I got for this morning, I'll add more if I think of something!
Cheers!

Ok, got more. Been reading a while. I don't see any list of who is heading up teams. And little to no chance of remembering names. I think there should be a sticky in each team forum with the leaders contact info? Maybe?

We need to talk. Contact me, Debbie Rhoden on facebook.

This is exciting. I also thought of the old school megaphone. The one pictured would have been much better!

I can see people who want to put boots on the ground are feeling rejected. We need to over come this perception. Please help the Art Team (see that thread on this forum). We are meeting in Memorial Park at the end of Riverside Ave. Friday, 10/22 at 5 pm. All ages, all talents. Children are welcome to our meetings. Look through the Teams. Your great ideas need to be at meetings this week. Join the teams that will be dealing with your issues. I promise your help will be most appreciated at the Team level. Organization takes time. Occupy Jacksonville has only had two meetings and the net as been invaluable to us in getting as far as we have. We are trying to emulate the most successful (peaceful and well covered) established Occupiers.

These are all pretty solid points, Dinah. As I said yesterday, there really needs to be a one-stop place where someone can get all information about upcoming GAs and workgroup meetings and relevant contact info without having to scroll around for five minutes.

I see a need, probably in the immediate future for this board. You need to make a separate politics forum. I can tell you from experience, nothing ruins a group faster than political threads.

It decimated Fark in 2004 when W stole the 2nd election. That was Drew's own doing, but he is a millionaire now, so who am I to say it was wrong. It also ruined our outcast site and split membership, it is a shambles of its once great self. Our leader is just despondent over the whole thing, it stays up, only for about a handful of us.

So, let me warn you what the internet and political threads become so you can take action before it gets to a breaking point. Remember, there are 20% that will never, ever, see the greater good for humanity. They will come, and it will get ugly.

Yeah, I'm already concerned about my workgroup getting trolled and we don't even have a forum yet.

I'm working on creating a solution to solve our information problems. I plan on making it an open source project that hopefully, other occupy cities can benefit from as well. It sounds like you're pretty well versed in technology. Maybe I can run some of my ideas past you?

I just got administrator privileges so I'll work on making the theme for this board better as time goes by. I'm still getting acclimated to working with this particular board software. Once I figure out how to allow users to pick their own theme, I will certainly enable it.

I like the idea of the old skool megaphone. We need to find a cheap source.

As far as political threads go, we've got one and hopefully we can keep it moderated to direct action groups to keep the heat down. We'll have to watch it pretty closely.

melittophily - Which group do you need created? I just added a bunch so if it's not listed, definitely let me know.

I intend on making our web presense a one stop shop but there is a lot of planning and coding to do before that really takes effect. I'm open to any ideas or suggestions on how to streamline things to be more efficient.

I'm not really very keen on the art market either. I hope everyone stays respectful and we don't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth.

It's there now, thanks Geno. I really like the Community Building superheading as well.

I've had 4 phpbb's running for quite a few years so I know my way around them. No one uses them anymore thanks to facebook. Yea, shoot me a pm if you have any questions. I don't know what you can and can't do with these free installs.
http://www.ray.bt76.com/pics/phpbbsettings.gif
It's not hard to move the board either if you can snatch the database, again, no clue with free stuff. I have thousands of smilies and the pac file as well. This board has lots of avatars included, most people ain't using them! Generally user info is on the right so you see, oh "X" posted. Now you have to read, then look at whom posted. Kinda bizarre!

Dinahmoe needs to join the tech team

I'm not a joiner, I'm more the sand in the vaseline!

I defiently agree with a lot from the start of this post. Facebook itself has like 3 different occupy jax's. They are always upgrading and changing too, so IMO not the best to use for this type of orgainization. So far I'm kind of digging this site. Although it would be nice to have a way to see the newest threads no matter what area its in. Maybe it is there, and I'm just not forum experienced enough to know how to do it. Totally agree that Downtown is so not a place to demonstrate for the most part. Other then possibly the 5 points area, or the park near the Publix/starbucks/quiznos in the riverside area. Jacksonville is just way to spread out to have a decent place to occupy for long periods of time. The Town Center would probably be a good place to demonstrate, but its probably all private owned and might run into some legal issues. As far as contact information, I would be careful posting that in forums unless its somehow locked out from the web crawling bots out there that look for emails and phone numbers. Good to see some particpation though, and awesome work getting this site going!

The organizational aspects are starting to fall into place. What we have is a bunch of people each with thier own resources trying to help. So, it's slowly coming, was really hoping to get that done by today, but it's just too much work without a full on team. (that we have, just not directed as of yet)

This may help as far as navigating a phpbb, I really want to get away from this free one and over to one on our hosting.
http://www.ray.bt76.com/pics/oj1.gif
There are many Icons that indicate the status of posts, new and read etc. We really should have a user instruction page with rules and hints. But again, this all was cobbled together hastily. Hope this helps, and it will get better!