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elcome to the Web WorkGroups Section of the Rotary Club of Dubuque Web site. The concept of Web WorkGroups is simple. It's an online briefcase of materials that pertain to the progress of a particular team of club members working on a project. It relieves everyone of taking extensive notes or lugging around valuable materials for later reference. Plus, it leverages what the Web does best. You can compile large amounts of data, provide instant communication with participants, you're on the Web which makes it easy to consult the world's largest library of information, the Internet, and you can warehouse and distribute forms, documents, images, photographs, spread sheets, etc. After a little technical orientation with the Web Master, Gary Olsen, you're off to the races.
Some Examples of Web WorkGroups:
Library Centennial Committee Web WorkGroup: If you want to see a terrific Web WorkGroup, check out the Carnegie Stout Public Library Centennial Celebration Committee WorkGroup. It's a good example of how to manage a really large and diverse group, in this case educators from throughout the district who collaborated on one of the largest community art projects involving student art from the Tri-State Area schools both private and public.
The Dubuque Community Schools Crisis Response Team WorkGroup: This is from the award winning Dubuque Community School website. Rotary member, Gary Olsen, is also in charge of this one which helped the entire school district, teachers, students, and parents, weather the crisis of September 11th.
How to Get Started
Nominate
a project leader. The project leader will assemble the team, schedule
a first meeting to brainstorm ideas, themes, etc., collect communication
data on team members, and begin the tasks of setting a project timeline,
determine deliverables, intermediate dates, etc.
For example, the first thing your WorkGroup wants to do is capture every team member's commdata (fax, phones, e-mail addresses, etc., and have them right on the page so you minimize navigation steps to communicate. Here are some steps on setting up a Web WorkGroup.
You don't need to have direct access to the Web. All you need is a simple word processing document (Microsoft Word is ideal). You can create lists, tables, even spread sheet elements right in Word.
1. Create a table of participants in Microsoft Word (or comparable word processing program), complete with phones, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses, also what their responsibilities are on the Team. See other WorkGroup pages for how this is formatted.
2. List your project milestones, important dates, intermediate deadlines, what's deliverable when.
3. Create a list of deliverables and and who is responsible for each deliverable.
4. Threaded chat:is especially valuable while brainstorming ideas or when you don't have everything nailed down. You just copy and paste your e-mail correspondence right into Word, one message after the other (don't forget to include the name of the sender).
Virtual Meetings
One of the best things about having a Web WorkGroup is it reduces the number and length of face-to-face meetings. You can accomplish so much via e-mail through your distribution lists and sharing data and ideas and reduce the logistics and time dedicated to scheduling and driving to meetings. If you have the technical know-how to create an instant messaging list on your computer, that would be helpful, too.
How to Post your Project to The Web
From week to week, just send your Microsoft Word document with all pertinent information up to that point to the Web Master as an attachment to e-mail. It will promptly be posted in your exclusive Web address URL. It's that simple.