Did you miss our recent Coffee Break? No worries – we’ve got you covered!
Today I’ll be recapping our most recent Coffee Break held on Feb. 8th, 2023. It has been a while since our last and this was our very first hybrid meeting. We think it went very well and were thrilled with the response from everyone.
Check out the highlights below!
Our Team
Chris kicked things off by introducing the Web Services team. And it has grown… To get to know our new members or to get reacquainted with others, please have a look at our Meet the Team bios.
What We’ve Been Working On
MK was up next to talk about all the things that we are working on. She touched on 3 key areas outlined in our Roadmap for 2022/23: Products and Services, Client Support, and the Way we Work.
Products and Services
We aim to establish relationships with key stakeholders to develop digital products, and to support all developers on campus by creating an engaged network centered around the Raven Design System (RDS).
Key deliverables include:
- Events Calendar
- cuTheme
- Intranet
- Supporting OVPSE on the new Mobile App
Client Support
Our intent is to engage the community and provide amazing support to our clients through training, tutorials, workshops, and events. We will also be leaders in digital accessibility by implementing best practices and educating Carleton content creators.
Key deliverables include:
- Coffee Break
- cuTheme Communications
- New Training and Workshop Offerings
The Way we Work
We are committed to streamlining our work and fostering an environment of continuous improvement through agile methodologies, and learning and development. We will work in a healthy environment where people feel heard, supported, included, and valued. (This is super important and why we love working here!)
Key deliverables include:
- Documentation
- Team get-togethers
- Continue to refine our agile processes
- Web Governance
Web Governance
MK also gave an overview of the new Web Governance Initiative that we are working with OVPSE and DUC. The goal is to provide collaborative, centralized governance for the ongoing development, delivery, and maintenance of Carleton’s digital image. The seven key areas of focus are user experience, accessibility, simplicity, consistency, accuracy, security, and innovation.
Events Calendar
Mike took to the floor to share developments on the new Events Calendar. He overcame some minor technical difficulties (with the help of Ishdeep, our superhero of the moment) to give a demonstration of some of the awesome features.
Mike showed us what the new calendar will look like for visitors and how easy it will be for them to navigate. There will be featured events and upcoming events with plus both list and calendar views. The single events page holds much the same info as the current events calendar but with a gorgeous, sleek, modern design!
When users are logged in they will be able to search, create, edit, and manage their own events through the dashboard. Cool right?! It looks amazing – can’t wait to see this released to the world.
cuTheme
MK started off the cuTheme discussion by thanking those who piloted the first version. We are so grateful for your feedback and have implemented many of the changes and suggestions! She also announced that we are considering a move to top nav only in the new version. Lots of reasons for this (consistency, development considerations, user experience …) More to come in an upcoming drop-in session where we’d love your input.
Next, we let our cuTheme project lead and guru, Troy, take center stage for a sneak peek into the new cuTheme.
If you haven’t heard, cuTheme will be replacing the current cms and Framework. It is feature rich with lots of design options, a flexible block-based building system, a great editor experience, and is of course fully accessible.
Troy discussed some of the new design features such as a larger width content area (yay!) and the ability to have two, three, or four columns to list information. He also shared prototypes for three different blocks (news, people, and video) and options for how they can be displayed in both the card and listing views.
To sum it all up – it will be a thing of beauty and we look forward to sharing it with you!
Training and Workshops
Charlotte followed Troy’s awesome showcase to share our plans for cuTheme support and other training and workshops that we have available.
cuTheme Training and Migration
Our plan is to put your site into the new theme on a staging server. Then we will fully train you, run an accessibility scan and make sure that your site is tested and ready to go before making it live. This will happen while your current site is still up so that there will be virtually no downtime. We’ll provide self-paced, online training and documentation plus virtual drop-in sessions for you to attend.
Wednesday Web Workshops
We are super excited to be offering drop-in sessions where you can come to learn about, discuss and ask your questions about various web topics. Some topics we have in mind include Agile, Evaluating Social Media, Web governance topics, and accessibility. As we start to roll out cuTheme, we’ll hold sessions to talk about specific features and functionality!
Our first session will happen in early March and will be a discussion about top navigation menus. We’ll announce the date soon. Please subscribe to our newsletter for more info and registration information.
Other Training
- Carleton CMS Help Centre and Training
- Web Accessibility Workshop
- Website Review Workshop
- Writing for the Web (coming soon!)
Accessibility
Andrew rounded things off with a great chat about digital accessibility and how we support it here at Carleton. He highlighted the accessibility training that we have available online (please try it out if you have not yet!) He also talked about our commitment to accessibility, which we demonstrate by attending conferences and creating educational posts on our website.
Andrew also mentioned our clients (that’s all of you) keen interest in creating accessible sites and content that can be accessed by everyone.
Accessibility Scans
We will be scanning every new site that goes into cuTheme. We also currently offer accessibility scans as a service. Please find more information and request a scan by visiting this post.
Thank You!
Thanks so much to all of our wonderful clients, our entire team, and our awesome co-ops, Quinn and Nadine, for making this coffee break a great success!