4S Web Committee Report, August 2019

Steve Jackson (chair), Daniel Breslau, Steve Coffee, Noortje Marres, Ana Viseu

The principal task of the 4S Web Committee this year has been to work towards a redesign of the 4S website – the first such overhaul in many years and identified as an important priority in information gathering and discussion with 4S council in 2017-2018 (see 2018 Web Committee report for more details of this process). At its January 2019 meeting, 4S Council agreed to commit up to 20K to engage a professional web development firm. After exploring possible vendors for the work, in March 2019 4S entered into a 15K contract with Ithaca NY-based web development firm Ancient Wisdom Productions to conduct discovery, needs assessment, and delivery of a new WordPress-based site, with a target goal of soft or full launch at the 4S meeting in New Orleans in September 2019. (The additional 5K earmarked by council but not contracted with AWP was held in reserve in case of additional functionalities identified during discovery OR to support content migration from the old to the new site). For the separate activities of backchannels over the past year, please see the separate report supplied by council members Gloria Baigorrotegui and Amanda Windle.

Since March 2019, members of the web committee have met several times, with each other and with AWP co-owner / lead designer Bryan Bates, to conduct more detailed review of content, functionality, and ‘look-and-feel’ of the current site; identification of 4S mission, audiences, and core needs; preferences drawn from review of other sites; and review of the current content organization (including elimination or reorganization of currently duplicative, unnecessary, or ‘stale’ content).

The Web Committee and AWP have made substantial progress in the ensuing months, including delivery and feedback to the developers on a first prototype of the revised design in June 2019. Owing to challenges of coordination and personal circumstances of our web developer at AWP plus the non-trivial volume of work involved here, the re-implemented prototype will not be ready for launch in New Orleans, though screenshots of the revised design should be available for Council viewing. In addition, members of the web committee have worked out the revised content structure, reflecting both its ‘organizational’ (the need to represent and capture 4S as an organization, including in its core operations and functions) and ‘field-representing’ needs and dimensions (the ambition to make the site a resource for the wider STS research and teaching community, including beyond 4S per se). At our July 2019 meeting, these 5 high-level content areas were assigned to each of the members of the web committee, who for the past several weeks have been conducting content and text review/revision in each of the associated sub-areas (beginning in most cases from content on the current website). Members of the Web Committee will be meeting Friday morning in New Orleans to compare and continue this work.

Our revised goal is to have a full draft version of the revised website available for council review in October-November 2019; implement content migration and any last design changes by end of 2019; and have the site ready for public launch sometime in January 2020.

Appendix: Proposed content structure:

About 4S	Meeting	4S Publications	STS News	STS Resources
Main About (SoP?)	Current Meeting Home	Landing Page- 4S pubs	Landing Page	Landing Page
4S News	Key Dates	Backchannels	Coummunity Announcements	Lists and Groups
Membership	Registration	Journals	Publishing Calls	Journals etc
4S Declarations	Travel Grants		Positions	Professional Assocation
History/Archive	Venue		Fellowships & Postdocs	Making & Doing Archive
4S Prizes	Accomodations
Students	Travel Info
	Blog
	People
	Making & Doing Session
	Innovating STS
	Undergraduate Program
	Exhibitors and Sponsors
	Mentorship Program
	Call for Submissions
	Accepted Open Panels
	Contact
	Future Meetings
	Past Meetings

Published: 09/03/2019