From the Director's Chair

This is the first of an occasional series for the Newsletter. I'm John Davies and I have the rather inflated title "Programme Director of iT4Communities". I'm proud to be running iT4C but that title is a bit over the top for a team of three full-timers and three part timers. I'll be contributing musings on IT and professional volunteering from time to time. Feel free to email me if you disagree with anything I say. iT4C is trying to show more of a human face and that even includes my ugly mug! My main topic this month is an exhortation -

Can you produce simple websites?
We always tell our charities that the hardest projects to match with volunteers are simple websites. By this we mean simple information websites with no interaction; in effect a brochure for the charity. We have looked at using students and even schools to do this and we have some initiatives running to make this happen (We do of course, insist on supervision by IT professionals so that the quality of work done through iT4C is maintained). We have even referred them to the DIY website design tool that BT used to support but it seems to have disappeared (These charities are often very non-technical though so this has limited potential anyway)

But we also need your help. We aware that you are all experienced IT professionals and that if you create websites then they are probably way beyond the simple brochure. This is something that can be done either mostly or entirely without travelling - virtual or remote volunteering as we call it. Its probably a day or so of work even for those of us who's main IT skills are in other areas. Plagiarism is encouraged - both in content (charities will mostly have paper brochures, annual reports etc) and in form (such as the ideas at www.oswd.org which I used to build my own personal site - you may know others?).

So if you are anything from a website guru who can make Flash and Dreamweaver sing grand opera to a humble telecoms techie (like me when I did my own site) and you have a little time to help then we have lots of charities out there looking for very simple websites. Just go to "Search for work packages", once you have logged on, and select "website" from the skills drop-down. You will find lots of simple sites needed in there. Just a little effort and expertise can produce a great result

• If you are that guru then it will only take an hour or two.
• If you are an IT professional who's skills are mainly elsewhere then you will learn on the job and it might occupy a day or two. Always making it clear to the charity that you are an IT professional and you will apply your full professional standards as you do in your mainstream IT work.

Our charities need you - please help if you can.

John Davies, Programme Director