People are getting used to Web sites where they provide content, feedback and ratings with little moderation from "above." With seemingly little centralized control, these Web sites — YouTube being a good example — gather large numbers of regular users who interact daily or weekly. Membership organizations like INFORMS have members who would want to interact in the same way or at least want the option of doing so. As such, expectations can only grow whether it is by way of "discussion forums," blogs or being able to give feedback or even ratings.

Complexity


In any membership organization, but particularly in INFORMS, there are lots of stakeholders, vocal or non-vocal, with different interests. The current site design is a compromise between these stakeholders (at least the vocal ones). It is not easy to change that because of fears of disequilibrium between different interests. The "Science of Better" Web site may have been created separate from IoL in order to provide flexibility in content and structure. This may also be why many subdivisions or interest groups create their own Web sites and then put an INFORMS logo on them. However, this can result in nightmare scenarios.

A number of technologies have come up as the Web has grown and a few are in use at IoL. The days someone could create a Web page in HTML and then create a link to it from an existing page were over a long time ago, at least for IoL proper. IoL has a content management system (a database that serves the Web pages on the fly), servers, a database (mySQL), php and video-streaming technology.

We currently use video-streaming for Edelman award presentations off the "Science of Better" Web site, and the technology is a nightmare to maintain. The vendors frequently come up with new versions that are incompatible with the video files meant for the older versions. This means we have to pay someone for reformatting the video files besides paying for the software. One could ask why we don't simply put MP3 files to allow people to play the files on their computers or MP3 players including iPods, but I gather that is a "Science of Better" issue, not an IoL one.

Complexity — organizational or technology-related — creates opportunity cost in terms of what should be done to benefit users but cannot be done at all or is delayed. This can lead to user disinterest. Updating information can be a challenge because of "ownership" issues. It is also possible that some individual in some interest group can create content with the INFORMS logo intact that exposes INFORMS to lawsuits or at least to friction within INFORMS.

What INFORMS Needs to Do


INFORMS is an organization of mostly academics who seek to publish articles in the highly respected INFORMS journals and other journals. However, these journals do not meet the needs of most members because the very nature of academic research is that it seeks and serves very narrow audiences. What can INFORMS, and consequently IoL, do to help the career aspirations of its members? The same question applies for practitioner members.

I am not against pious statements but there is work to be done. This requires making difficult choices on what to do and what not to do and involves budgets. Any "corporate" Web site needs a critical mass of professionals just to keep it running (let alone maintain content), and this critical mass increases with complexity and requirements. So far IoL has depended on volunteers for maintaining and running the various technologies, but we need to consider having professionals do so, leaving volunteers to focus on content.

What IoL is Currently Doing


Users come to IoL for specific information. One service INFORMS offers is the annual conferences, and IoL is the source of information for these conferences — not just for the final schedule and logistics but also for planning and coordination. Another source of particular interest to academic members is being able to search databases of O.R. articles and abstracts of conference presentations.

The databases on IoL were developed over time and information is currently fragmented. Our focus since January 2007 has been on porting our search technology and databases from the older WAIS technology to the newer mySQL/php to consolidate searches across journals, conference presentation abstracts and other types of content including presentations.

Shirley Mohr is developing a template Web site in our content management system for those subdivisions, colleges, etc. that want to use it. By using the template, they do not have to worry about being consistent with INFORMS guidelines and can focus on content, which would be searchable with all the other pages on IoL. Those who prefer their own sites as extensions of IoL could still choose to have their "home page" in the content management system using Mohr's template.

Thanks to Mike Trick, we also offer blog technology to those who want to run an INFORMS-approved blog. But there are also things we are not doing, for instance, on updating content. We want associate editors, but we also need processes for updating content, and this can sometimes entail a tricky balance between different interests.



ManMohan S. Sodhi (M.Sodhi@city.ac.uk), who heads the operations research group at Cass Business School in London, is the editor of INFORMS Online.

Table of Contents

OR/MS Today Home Page


OR/MS Today copyright © 2007 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.


Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA
Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969
E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com
URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com


Web Site © Copyright 2007 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.