Outsourcing! Community Tech Support

People in IT and tech support often tell me they solve many problems by "knowing how to Google". Often, just typing the problem into a Google search box pulls up dozens of results - people who have had the problem before, who are asking about it and having their questions answered on bulletin boards and community tech support pages of all varieties. (Of course, you also have to understand what they're saying on these bulletin boards - which is where good IT knowledge comes in handy!) CityClub recently tapped into one of these communities for some website assistance - Elliott Bangs, our Membership & IT Coordinator, shares a bit about the adventure:

Drupal, the software that runs our website, is the product of a vast, ongoing, highly collaborative, and largely volunteer effort, made possible by the contributions of thousands of users, designers and programmers around the world. The global Drupal community includes many regional communities, one of which is the Seattle Drupal Users' Group (also known as SEADUG - http://groups.drupal.org/seattle). When CityClub needed a small but technically complex change made to the code of our website, we posted a volunteer request there. Within days, we had the help we needed - from a developer who actually resides in Chicago, but who was nonetheless glad to lend his expertise to our project.

Our massive thanks go out to Sean Fitzpatrick, our long-distance tech-support, for his information and guidance all the way from Chicago. On the homefront, Elliott hopes to get involved in SEADUG himself, once he feels more confident in his Drupal abilities (We know he has them! We've seen it!) in order to give a little something back to an incredibly helpful community!

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