Revising About Pages

[maggiechurchville]

Hi Everyone, I saw a billboard today advertising a college course that said, “It’s not just a paper, it’s an argument.” That’s how I envision the Dreamfish About Page. We want to show what Dreamfish is and why you should join. It may have been Tiffany who wrote that the website should accomplish 3 main things: Show What I’m Working On See What Others Are Working On Connect With Members

Since the website is primarily a portal for workers, those three “big ideas” should be on the Home page to get users in to the site and busy working. The About Page is to be an informative advertisement for exploring the website and joining the community. I see it as containing these elements: 1.) Describe what Dreamfish is: Welcome to Dreamfish, a global person-to-person cooperative network and team building platform for micro enterprise, small business and NGO development. Thousands of member-owners and supporters in over 26 countries throughout Africa, Europe, Americas and Asia use the Dreamfish platform to pool our skills and resources for professional and enterprise development. In many cultures the words “dream” and “fish” reference a life-affirming sense of something larger than ourselves. Some of us are more dreamers, some of us are more fishers; working together we dreamfish, engaging our diversity and making us more effective.

Our entire Humanifesto is published here. (Link to Humanifesto/Code of Conduct/Diversity page, which could be distilled on one page, I think.) 2.) Show the Dreamfish infographic from the How Dreamfish Works page, but revise it to include any of the elements below. I like this infographic because it is fun to look at and shows how interrelated and beneficial are all the collaboration pieces that the Dreamfish platform brings together. It needs a new title, such as What Can I Do, or something to involve the reader. These are some possible nodes for the infographic, taken from the How Dreamfish Works page and from other old pages scattered throughout the About section. Revise all subordinate paragraphs following each node. ? Share Include explanation about Cooperative Network? Sounds interesting, where is that page? ? Connect Include fact that we use open source platforms Wordpress, GitHub, etc ? Act Include info about Micro Enterprise Development? Sounds interesting, where is that page? ? Evaluate Impact ? Respect ? Marketplace and Project Hub ? Hiring and volunteering ? Earning income and building value into projects As you gain income from projects with other Dreamfishers you, as a member-owner, keep 90% and put 10% back into the Dreamfish cooperative. ->Learn more about how it works (link to Membership>Getting Paid section) ? Professional development events and coaching ? Personal support network What videos to use?- look at Indiegogo.com and Meet Dreamfishers vid. 3.) Below the infographic will be some text (to be written) with links for pages listed below. Each linked page should be reviewed for text and keeping on message: a.) Link to Partners (although this page does not look like it has anything on it- is it a Membership page?) b.) Link to Press c.) Link to History d.) Link to Leadership & Governance e.) Link to Cooperative Economy page? Is it really needed or just add interesting parts to About Page? f.) Where can I find the Micro Enterprise Development page? It sounds like it s/b in the About section. What to do with the rest of pages currently in the About section: Dreamfish Jobs page s/b over in the See What Others Are Working On section Dreamfish Contributors page and Terms Of Membership s/b over in the Connect With Members section Copyright and Privacy pages are linked through footer navigation. Delete the Learning To Impact page (after cannibalizing it)

[grantbow]

Maggie, thank you for sharing your thoughts here. It was good talking with you. I am looking forward to what evolves from this.

[maggiechurchville]

As you think about the elements of the infographic, think about them as explaining the nuts and bolts of how Dreamfish actually works. Keep the "ideals" to a short paragraph in the section above the infographic, or make them labels for each point, but I encourage you to populate the graphic with concrete explanations of how to get your hands dirty! Visitors to the site want to know what the site can do for them and how they can fit in.

All the points that I listed as could go into the graphic were just points that I found throughout the old About pages, but they don't necessarily need to go into the new About pages. I just wanted to bring them up so that you could decide to keep or delete those ideas. I wanted to give you a chance to transfer the important stuff over to the new page and toss the dross. I really think that what was missing from the old About was an explanation of how Dreamfish actually works!

[tiffanyvonemmel]

hi Maggie - hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving!

I've updated the About Pages copy. You can see it here: http://dpn.dnsalias.net/wp/?page_id=10

The html/css still needs to be done, particularly the infographic. I'll make a separate task for it.

waving :: tiff