PROGRESS UPDATE:
It is not quite two months since I launched the Dorset Halls Network and now the site is getting somewhere near finished! In the last month I have restructured the menus to make them more logical and added the last two main features, the 'Event Finder' and the 'Halls Gallery'. There will be no more major changes for a while now to let things settle down and while I get some feed back from users. You can use the 'Contact Us' option (it has been fixed now!) to let me know what you think and to give me ideas for future improvements.
There have been some technical problems in the early weeks but that was to be expected; I think all of those reported have been fixed now. There are some issues with our Internet Service Provider remaining around performance and service availability and we may move to another service provider shortly in an attempt to overcome these difficulties.
The new Event Finder is part of the promotional side of the site and enables halls to advertise upcoming events in their hall; a fund raising event, or the village panto, for example. This is for any event that is not one of your regular user group's meetings. You can track events by day, by type or by hall.
The Halls Gallery is the start of something that I hope will be much bigger in the long term. At the moment it contains photographs of as many halls as I have. I will be taking more on my travels but you are welcome to load up your own photo if you wish (don't forget to click on 'Location' if you do load one yourself and put a pin in the map). You can also email me one and I will upload it for you. I would like to see people start to write a history of their hall with a description of any interesting features and plans for the future. This would make a really interesting and definitive guide to the Village & Community Halls of Dorset and help bring halls to life for potential users.
You will also see that 25 halls are now listed in the Venue Finder with a couple more entering soon. As a result, DCA are now going to start marketing this service across the county. Already DCA staff are using it to select locations for events and our admin team are directing people who phone us for venues to this facility. I hope many more of you will decide to register details with the service over the coming weeks.
In the Information Section you will find the Hall Data Summary; you can use this to view all of the data for your hall from the Venue Finder, Activity Finder, Event Finder and Halls Gallery gathered in to one place. This is not available to public users but could be the start of individual websites for halls. This a potential project for later in the year. Interested? Let me know.
Can I also ask as many of you as possible to look out for our survey polls on the home page of the members area. This is aimed at gathering information to support both lobbying and service planning. Please vote so that I can get a meaningful view of whatever is being surveyed at the time. At the moment I am trying to establish funding requirements for 2010/11 in readiness for the Capital Grants Programme that gets under way shortly as well as projects likely to be interested in the new Lottery 'Reaching Communities' programme launching in the autumn.
Also in the networking area, don't forget you can ask questions (or provide answers to other's questions) on the forum.
At our 'Bite Size' events and at the DVHA AGM I will be telling you more about the site and how to get the best use out of it. I would like all halls to consider appointing a Halls Network 'Champion'; someone who will use the site frequently, receive the news items as they are issued (one hall is using RSS feeds for this now) and make sure anything of interest is passed on to the hall committee or a particular officer. The champion should also make sure that your hall is making full use of the four main promotional service areas as well as the information and networking facilities. That champion may well be you but if not, please talk about this at your committee meetings and let me know the name and email address of your chosen champion so that I can divert messages and news items to them in future.
Finally, a big thank you to all of you who already use the service; I hope many more of you will pay a visit soon.
Peter Orchard
Village & Community Halls Adviser
Dorset Community Action