The current state of the website was discussed. The principal function of the website beyond the “About Us” page is education. This section of the site is being effectively populated by the Education Committee. A major advance has been the addition of Facebook and Twitter by Walter Struhal, which are being used by more than 800 young neurologists to keep up with activities of WFN and to share neurological news and views. Two articles on the use of the website for social networking will appear in World Neurology, one in the current issue and one in the next.
Including World Neurology as a seamless section of the website has added greatly to its attractiveness, and will help to keep it fresh. Exactly how World Neurology and the website will allocate and share content still needs to be determined, because it is possible to update World Neurology on an ongoing basis just as is done with the website.
Several suggestions for future development were also discussed. There is an interest in exploring the possibility of advertising on the website. There are several ways to do this, but we would first need to obtain metrics about the use of the website: How often is it visited, how long do visitors stay, and what do they look at?
Potential advertisers will pay for “eyeballs.” These data should be readily available. It was suggested that we be more proactive about linking to regional sites and member organizations. It would be good to have more geographical diversity in content as well. We had no takers when we offered to establish websites for member organizations that don’t have them, but we can make this offer again. Finally, password protected pages can be made available for committee work, but so far this service has only been used by the Education Committee. As committees are reformed for the new term, the chairs should be informed of this service and perhaps more will be interested in taking advantage of it.
We would welcome comments and suggestions from the new executives and committee chairs as they are appointed.
Present at the Meeting: Bill Carroll, Pete Engel, Chris Kennard, Keith Newton, Raad Shakir and Water Struhal. Donna Bergen, Wolfgang Grisold, Chiu Man and Don Silberberg had conflicting commitments.
