Website Inputs (Follow-Up)
A few weeks ago, we were given the opportunity to contribute our thoughts towards the RFP for the new NASA website. A number of you contributed some really great thoughts that we then took back to the folks working on the project at HQs. Just this Friday, I received word back from Brian Dunbar, who was heading these efforts up on the HQs front, that the RFP is finally ready to go. He’s posted a reply to everyone in the initial post, which I’m copying and pasting below, so that everyone can see it. In addition, there’re some files he’s forwarded, which include:
- Brian’s reply to the suggestions that were gathered via OpenNASA: Click Here
- An overview by Senior Producer of NASA.gov, Jim Wilson: Click Here
- Brian’s presentation on the new website contract from Industry Day: Click Here
Post your comments, questions, and thoughts – Brian’s looking forward to reading them!
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Brian’s reply:
Hey, I’m sorry to be so long in responding, but I’ve had to maintain radio silence while working on the draft RFP for the next web contract. (It’s online at http://i3p.nasa.gov in the Technical Library. Look for the WEST contract PWS to see the statement of work.)
Because so much thought went into OpenNASA’s web inputs, I wanted to offer a detailed response, which Madi is graciously going to post for me. Briefly, I agree with many of the points, and I’ve outlined how I think we’re already doing a lot of them. Others we’re just starting on, and still others go beyond the scope of what we’re doing, or what we in Public Affairs should be doing. I only took issue mildly with a couple of technology suggestions.
Madi is also going to post two other documents that may interest you: a terrific overview of the site by Jim Wilson, our senior producer, that also explains some of the background of how we got here; and my pitch on the new contract from Industry Day. The latter contains a section on metrics near the end that may surprise you.
We are soliciting input on the new contract from NASA and industry. NASA employees should get in touch with their center CIO office, which is charged with collecting all such feedback from within NASA and getting it to the teams. Contractors and other industry reps should submit questions and comments through the I3P web site above.
Thanks again for all the thought you put into these suggestions. They were very helpful both in validating what we’re already doing and pointing out directions we should explore.
I look forward to hearing more in the days to come.
3 Responses to “Website Inputs (Follow-Up)”
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InfiniteFrontier on April 27th, 2009
Brian,
First of all, thank you for your detailed response to many of our suggestions.
In the Website Inputs document you said: “I don’t necessarily agree that an embed link is necessary to get the word out about a video; good content will do that itself. Others may disagree.” and so I’d like to clarify why I think embed links are important. I ask myself the question, are we interested in (1) the general public coming to the official website or are we more interested in (2) the general public learning about NASA? I think the answer is (2), which I think means we need to bring the content to them (and not necessarily bring them to us). I think the NASA website has done a great job of that through YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. I also think that allowing official NASA content to be embeddable would help spread NASA content better than just a simple link would do. A link requires the user to leave the site they are currently at (which they may not be interested in doing). Whenever I think of content that has spread virally I usually think of YouTube videos. In my opinion the reason they are so viral is because they are literally everywhere on the internet (not just on YouTube).
Here’s an extra suggestion I didn’t see answered on the Website inputs document: Allow website users to vote up or down an article just like the websites Digg.com and Reddit.com do (or alternatively continue using the existing rating system) and then have a NASA “top stories” page that has the highest ranked stories.
KC on May 21st, 2009
I’m not sure what has been suggested prior to this – just started reading this blog…
One additional reason why NASA needs to embed videos and such: many schools, libraries and workplaces are blocking Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and other video & social networking websites.
One of worst aspects of the NASA website is the awful search features. The NASA websites are very balkanized and I often have to wander around the site(s) for long periods of time looking for the information I need. Often I get lost in the multiple layers of sites.
And please, please get rid of the launch countdown timers for missions! Although dramatic & cool, they don’t provide the info we need (ie we would like to know when a launch is occurring not how long we have to wait until it does).
George on June 18th, 2009
Very interesting… thanks.