Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

Art's right. Make a flash video if you want, but link to it for view / download somewhere on your site instead of making it a splash page. You'll hold onto a LOT more viewers that way :D

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

im not going to do a flash intro just because its more work, and there always annoying....:)

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

Is it possible to use a splash type of "intro" in a banner? If so how would you do that?

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

you could do like a header type thing but have it animated...........if thats what you mean ill show you code you can use for that

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

Flash intros are great to have when you are a company that is coming out with a new movie, video game or a new electronic device.

But when it comes to the main website they don't usually work that well. But Flash as a whole shouldn't be looked at as something to be avoided. You can do some really neat things with flash besides just creating animation.

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

The problem with flash is not that it is a pain to do, or even that it is tacky or ugly, but that it becomes a obstacle that viewer must over come every time they log on. These sites are for the viewer, thus having them view the same video every time they go to the site is bothersome and a waste of time. No one wants to have to click an extra button to get to a main page. Other than that using flash on the website is not to bad of an idea, as long as it is not for something important as some people do not have flash installed on their machines. I've seen a couple of sites that were 100% flash, and although I am sure it must have taken for ever to code, and the coder must have been very proud of his work, they were just ugly, too much flash makes it ugly and tacky.

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

Is their a generic "flash" maker? Or is their some sort of freeware you can use just so i can play around with something...

Re: what what would you like to see in a team website?
 

All I know of is Macromedia Flash but you have to pay for that. It is relatively cheap, and you can download it for a free 30-day trial. I'm actually going to have the rest of my web team learn the program, since it's installed on to every students user account.
I've seen flash used in Navigational Bars ( Specifically 1345 - The Platinum Dragons ) and I've also seen it used in banners at the top of a page. I agree that a splash page on a website does get annoy after a while, I used to have one on my teams website and when I had to keep editing the code and then viewing the site, it just got on my last nerve and now it's gone. You can embed the flash movie into content on the page, like a short movie about your team. If you host your videos on YouTube, they are actually converting the video to a Flash file, which includes their player interface. If you were to copy the code given to you by YouTube, you would be using flash. Flash is not just for introduction pages, sometimes you have to look outside the box for some of it's many uses.

Re: Alumni content
 

499 mentors have been having some of the same discussion as here. What I've asked the team to do is focus more on interesting content and present it well.

I'd like some help in finding examples of effective and interesting alumni pages. Who has something more than just a listing of names, years, and where are they now?

If one were to conduct audio interviews what kinds of questions would be good to ask to get content that sponsors / community members would like to hear?

thanks,

APS

Re: Alumni content
 

One of the things I like about 1089's website, is they have pictures attached to all their students and mentors. Each picture in our "members" gallery is clickable and opens up an individual profile. The nice part of this, is it allows FIRST, and other non-1089 members to learn a little bit more about us.
Example: Here's our advisor's profile: http://www.mercury1089.com/main/#mem...regory.jpg.txt

The other thing our team did, and I don't have any of these uploaded, but PM me if you'd like some of the footage, is ask EVERY student on the team questions about our own team. What their favorite fundraiser was, why they like being a part of our team, what goals they have, to explain FIRST in their own words... It was pretty good. From there, we have plans to splice film and create a really good Chairman's video presentation.

I don't have the list of questions saved anymore, but the generic things that I found best to ask are the following:
1. What is FIRST?
2. What does FIRST mean to you?
3. What is your favorite part of [insert team number here]?
4. What is/was your role on the team?
5. What is your favorite fundraiser/outreach event and why?
6. What are your goals for the team?