Time to use that education

Okay people. Here’s a proposal for you. Let’s change this school of ours. For my Senior project at UMW I’m creating an “Events” calendar for the school and fredericksburg community, if you’re interested in that, read below.

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This website has a couple of different goals that I would like to tell you about.

The first and biggest goal of this website is for people to use it. I want people to enjoy using this website, and find it useful. Without that none of the other goals could possibly be accomplished.

The second goal is to provide a central repository for events that are happening in this area. When someone asks ‘What is going on tonight?’, I want my site to be the first thing that comes to mind. If someone asks you, it should be obvious to say to check this website. That function in our community is currently not being served, and I hope that this site becomes that very tool.

The third goal of this website is to connect the Mary Washington and Fredericksburg communities. Currently, there is very little interaction, at least on an institutional level between our great school and great local communities. I wish to foster this relationship, and allow Mary Washington students to be immersed in the great culture that surrounds them here in this great town.

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Sound good? Okay, that’s where you come in…

We’re going to college, and I hope for the right reason. We love what we do! I know that’s true for me, and for others of you as well. We all have our own special talents and skills, and I have a lot of faith in my friends. I want to extend this offering to all of you to hopefully be a part of something awesome. I know this sounds cheesy, but have faith. I will make a badass website, and you can help me.

I need help in some of the following areas, but that is nothing compared to what could be accomplished. Give me your ideas, feedback, and other things. The site isn’t public quite yet, but if you ask nicely I’ll throw you a link. It should be launching in 3-4 weeks, at least for a some-what private beta. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Marketing: People need to know about the site…Else nobody will use it. The more people that use the site, the more useful it becomes. It is already useful in it’s vanilla state (as an events aggregater for the local community), but with people using it, adding events, and all the other planned interactions then it will become so much better…I can provide generic events for big venues, but people are required for the local knowledge of the Dixie Jims playing the Hot Dog Opera downtown, or Junk Science playing the loft last Thursday.

Design: I’m a technical person, I can’t design my way out of a box. I need critiques and other stuff from people who know their shit. From color schemes to spacing of text on a page, I know some people live for that stuff. Any help is greatly appreciated. The current look is fredericksburg themed, and that is here to stay, but any cool photographs or idea for integrating the city more into the design is muchly appreciated.

Writing: Lots of you fools are great writers (yea liberal arts!). The best way to get people to remember cool things (this site) is a story. You can tell them, and people want to hear them. I want to talk about some cool ways of expressing all the shit I said above better, and in more memorable ways.

Awesomeness in general: IDEAS!!!

The point of this post is multiple. One is that once this is public, I have to do it or I look like a fool. Two is to get people talking about it. Have a conversation about it, come up with ideas. Yell at me or buy me a beer, any thought on this problem is progress.

Thanks for your time…



Hey there! I'm Eric and I work on communities in the world of software documentation. Feel free to email me if you have comments on this post!