CASID / ACÉDI

As you have probably noticed, CASID's website has changed. While the style remains similar, the new website is built on an entirely different infrastructure that offers many more opporunities and possibilities for us to continue working towards our goal of promoting and supporting the Canadian International Development Studies (IDS) community. We hope that our new website will facilitate greater communication and openness, both between CASID and its members and between CASID and the IDS community in Canada and abroad. Below is a short list of some of the changes as well as some of the plans we hope to realize in the coming months. Read on to find out more...

A New Site Infrastructure

The old website was an html-based collection of static web pages that was relatively tedious to update and difficult to maintain. The new site was developed using Drupal, an open-source, php-based content-management system. While the front-end of the website remains similar to the old site, the back-end - the hidden system of code that powers the site - is dramatically different and offers a considerably wider range of services and opportunities.

The software used to develop the new site is open-source, which basically means that the underlying code is freely distributed and available for anyone who is interested and capable to use, change, and improve upon. Because we chose to use a very well-known and popular open-source content-management system (ie., Drupal), we will be able to significantly increase our web capabilities and our services to members at a fraction of the cost of developing a web-based content-management system using private software. In effect, the new website was free (except for development costs, of course).

While the site you see in front of you may not appear to be very different than the old one, this is because we have for the time being kept it quite simple and basic - a platform that we can build upon as needs require. Drupal, like other content-management systems, is modular - meaning that beyond the core components of the site (like a better blogging system) can be enhanced at little to no cost by installing 'modules' developed by the extensive Drupal community. This means that we will in time be able to offer many more services to our members than we were able to previously. But enough of the boring technical details - what do we plan to do?

More Transparent Governance

CASID is a memberhsip-based organization that is democratically governed by an executive committee elected from the membership body. Every year, at the Annual General Membership meeting, the Executive hears proposals from members for changes and improvements that CASID could undertake, and takes important policy proposals to the members for voting. Election of the the Executive and policy votes have in the past been done online, but through the (paid) services of an external company; a process which has had some difficulties. In addition, CASID operates a listserv to facilitate communications among members and the IDS community that has in the past been used as a forum to discuss the direction of the organization, to the sometimes consternation of non-member listserv subscribers.

The new website will allow us to bring many of these governance-related activities into a central, internal location. A key feature of the new site will be a membership portal, through which members in good standing will be able to post content, deliberate on important IDS and CASID-related issues, and receive CASID publications such as the Development Forum and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies (CJDS). Members will be able to maintain profile pages that can be kept private or, in the interest of networking and potential collaborative opportunities, public to the other members.

While the member portal is not yet operational, we hope to roll this out shortly once we work some of the kinks of the transition. Members will in time be able to access the discussion forum, post topics and reply to others regarding any issue of their choosing. We also plan to conduct internal polling through the website, which will allow CASID to save money by not having to hire external companies to run our online elections.

Focus on the Community

The first generation of websites were communicationally very unidirectional - an organization maintained a site basically just as a channel through which to issue decree-like news releases to anybody that would see them. The user - the person that visited the website - had very little opportunities to contribute to the content of the website or voice their opinions on the content made available by the organization. The so-called second generation of websites aim to be much more user-driven, open, and network based. It is in this spirit that CASID choose to overhaul its website.

As touched on above, CASID members will be able to post content such as notifications of Upcoming Conferences or Featured Publications. The new site will more easily enable us to offer this news in content-specific syndication streams (RSS newsfeeds), to which anybody will be able to subscribe. That way, users can restrict the amount of messages they receive from CASID to only those items that they are most interested in, instead of receiving every notice that comes through the listserv. All of these posts will be contained in the general CASID Blog, but member-contributed content will also be available in member-specific blogs.

In addition, CASID plans to develop a policy paper program that will offer modest financial compensation for accepted, user-submitted papers, greater integration with social networking and user-generated websites like Facebook and Myspace, Flickr and Youtube. Types of content we hope to make available include audio and video 'podcasts' of CASID-sponsored Regional Events and Development Forums, user-submitted academic papers and interesting news articles on IDS-related issues, and (to members) digital copies of CASID publications like the Development Forum pamphlet and the CJDS.

Moving Forward...

International Development Studies (IDS) is a rapidly growing field that confronts the most important and pressing issues facing global society now and for the foreseeable future. CASID was formed to promote and support the Canadian IDS community, by facilitating communication, networking, and the sharing of ideas, materials, and resources among academics and practitioners working in Canada and abroad. We hope that our new website will enable us to contintue to do this at a reasonable cost and with ever-increasing effectiveness as international development becomes ever more important to achieving political, economic, and social justices for people worldwide.