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04/19/2005 Archived Entry: "NYPO Developers Meeting Report"

NYPO Developers Meeting Report

The NYPO Developers Meeting held at Shipman Centre on Saturday 16th was attended by: Gavin, Rizwan, Sulthana, Veronia, Edwin, Henriette, Bola, Sheila and Narges. This was great as not all our meetings are so well attended.

Apologies were received from David, Ridwan, Reenal, Prital and Spike. This was great also since it tells us that these group members are still with us. Comments about the bulletin board have been received from Sabeur and Jamal.

The main point of the meeting was to get people talking to each other so that we feel like a team and I think it was quite successful in achieving this. There was no agenda but a number of points emerged:

1. We spoke about improving NYPO and getting more people actively involved. Sulthana said that it was difficult to say what NYPO is. Maybe the term 'online community' doesn't mean much to most people; all we are saying is that it is a bunch of people who speak to each other on the Internet. We need to define it as a project which does something. Examples of doing 'something' included organising regular games, challenges and competitions and also producing a magazine or new updates.

2. Edwin thought that NYPO needs a base and he gave the example of a tech bus project which had a range of equipment including interactive dance mats, Playstations, TVs and other stuff to attract and involve people. Gavin said that he would like to see a team that had equipment that could be taken to various places to run workshops.

3. Sulthana and others said that the website needed to give people more things to do. At the moment people could contribute to bulletin board discussions, or submit stuff to the writing circle or create simple webpages but there could be games, challenges and competitions on a regular basis. Someone suggested something like 'Runscape'.

4. There was discussion about activities the developers group could do to bring us together as a team. Paintball and Laser Quest were suggested as options for a date during the June break. Rizwan said that he would check costs and other details for Paintball and Laser Quest.

5. Sheila said that she was interested in writing and Edwin said that he was interested in updating an online calendar about events for young people in Newham. Gavin said that a number of groups were planning yout club magazines and would be putting out information on activities as part of that. NYPO can have a role in bring these magazines together in a kind of 'hyper-magazine'. But it was important for NYPO members to get involved in activities happening at a local level. Also we need to become more involved with Newham Youth Parliament. Sheila was asked to be our liasion person with the Youth Parliament but the whole developers group keep on top of this.

6. Gavin asked for volunteers to do a short presentation to a Youth Workers conference that will be held on Saturday 7th May at Kingsford School in Beckton. Some people said that they would do this but we don't have all the names. This will be discussed more later. As part of this Gavin said that he would put together a leaflet on NYPO which could be distributed at various places and he took photos of group members that could go on the leaflet together with a positive quote about NYPO from each person.

7. Gavin and Rizwan will be going on a course this weekend to find out about the Duke of Edinburgh Award and how NYPO can offer DofE Awards as well as Youth Achievement Awards to members. Rizwan suggested that it would be a good idea to develop our own NYPO Award also.

8. There was a commitment to delegate more responsibility for developing NYPO to the developers group. As a consequence this list will become more active with members receiving several messages a week. Gavin has taken several people off the list so it is down to people who are or wish to be genuinely involved in the development of this project. If anyone receiving this feels that they should not be on the list plese let Gavin know.

9. This report and other important information posted to this list will also appear on the NYPO blog at http://www.nypo.org/blog

10. If anyone wishes to join the developers team please contact Gavin.