Web Committee Welcome Email

This is a copy of the most recent email sent to a new committee member. It should always be updated to reflect the current upcoming and ongoing projects.

Letter Content

Hi Ala!

My name is Dan and I am the Web Committee co-chair for the ISCB Student Council.  
I am so happy to hear that you would like to volunteer to help us with our ongoing projects. 
Most of the committee's communication is through the BaseCamp project management system.  
Alex (head of the volunteer committee) should get you an account there soon, once on you will 
be able to see what the web committee is talking about and join the discussion.  Right now it 
is somewhat quiet, but it will pick back up soon as we get closer to the symposia over the summer.

As you may already know, the web committee’s primary task is upkeep of the web presence of 
the student council, this includes not only the student council website (iscbsc.org) and all 
of the related things (email addresses, etc) but also the websites for the student council 
symposia (there are 4 of them now, SCS, ESCS, LA-SCS and SCS-Africa) as well as some other projects. 

Just to help you get up to speed below is a list of our current projects at the end of this email.

I would like to invite you to our next Skype meeting if you are able to make it, (we normally hold 
one every month or two) where we will check in with all of the volunteers on the committee, keep 
your eyes out on basecamp, we will send out a doodle pole about a week before to find a good time 
(there are people in quite a few timezones, so scheduling is not a trivial task)

We are also in the midst of having an organization-wide meeting where all of the members are encouraged 
to join in and ask questions.  That is set for January 25th, keep an eye on basecamp and the website 
for details about times and links to join.

I would love to hear about you. Where do you attend university? How long have you been in your program? 
Have you attended any ISCB meetings in the past? Have you done web development before? Do you like 
design work or like back end programming type stuff?

Please try not feel overwhelmed, I felt the same way when I started but we are all very laid back. Take your 
time getting used to basecamp and just looking around the website.  Let me know if you have any questions, 
were still looking for feedback on the new website so thats always welcome.  Welcome to the team! I hope 
you enjoy it as much as we all do.

Look forward to hearing from you.

~Dan

Current Projects:

• New ISCB-SC Website. We released a new version of the student council website last year, it was about 2 years in the making, we are currently still working to get it perfect.
• Regional Student Group Websites. Right now each RSG has a page on the old website, we are working on getting each RSG a subdomain, and either a page on the new site, or link to their current website or give them a self contained website for them to post communications. We have almost completed this transition, but there are couple groups left to convert.
• Symposium Submission System. We are trying to unify the submission systems for all the SC symposia, there is a prototype submission system in place that was built by Mehedi @ RSG-UK and we are working to get it fully functional. We are constantly upgrading this system to make it work better for our needs
• Internship Posting System. We would like to have a place to post internships run by the student council in one central location. Right now the application process is all via email. The hope is to adapt the symposium submission system to work as a internship system as well.
• Community Discussion Board. The goal of this is to provide a place for all members of ISCBSC to discuss current trends, upcoming events and keep in touch with others that they may have met at various council events. This is separate from Basecamp, as basecamp is for organizational communication and is not open to the public.