2004
vermont municipal e-government conference
tuesday may 18, 2004
 
 
Presentations and Materials
Morning Session

Our opening session was broadcast over interactive television, bringing together our three conference sites. The discussion focused on the experiences of four Vermont municipal officials, who are the creators and/or managers of their town websites: TIPS AND RESOURCES

The speakers and the Q & A session afterward certainly raised some important points, including:

Every municipal website comes with a different administrative experience i.e. cost, officials involved, and the degree of buy-in from fellow officials and departments.

It helps to start small, be inclusive of those who would like to be involved, have a good overall goal and plan for the site, identify who has the authority to make changes to the site, and be sure to publicize your site.

Your website should have a standard document format. The Adobe .pdf format is highly recommended.

A municipal website should consider Website Accessibility [16 kb .pdf].

There is certainly an audience for municipal e-government! CRS has found that 79% of Vermont households have computers and that 92% of those households are on the Internet. Check out more of the computer and Internet results from the 2003 Vermonter Poll.

Finally, there are many websites out there with advice for website creation and management. A basic Internet search for this sort of thing will return many options. Some you might want to check out are:

TechSoup - for nonprofits
The W3C - standards for HTML
Web Monkey - for website development
Builder.com - website solutions
HTML Goodies - HTML tips
HTML Gear - more HTML tips
..and on and on

Afternoon Presentations

There were two computer lab presentations:

Website Basics*
Tips for getting started with your website
Darren Spafford
Internet Art Director
Vermont Country Store

Website Templates*
How to make the most of your website: what to include, how to organize it, and information on the GovOffice website tool.
Mary-Margaret Zindren
CSI Director
League of Minnesota Cities

Also check out the GovOffice Best Practices Manual [64 kb .pdf]

*Note: These are Powerpoint web presentations that will open in a new browser window on your desktop. Please be patient with them. If the window appears small, you can maximize it. Once open, you can browse a presentation by clicking on the slide titles on the left. Browsers other than Internet Explorer may have difficulty with them.

Questions? Contact Will Sawyer at the UVM Center for Rural Studies:
william.sawyer@uvm.edu
(802) 656-0892

For the FREE .pdf Adobe Acrobat Reader...


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