Production of the NOAC Live! web site is very similar to the production of a daily newspaper. Our staff of 23 people was led by Brian Love, a section chief from Horseheads, NY. Brian worked for months before the conference began to recruit staff and plan the NOAC Live! operation. With the help of his adviser, he decided which stories we would cover, determined the web site competition criteria, and set out the staff organization.

During NOAC 2002, the site was updated twice a day by two different teams. The first update was made during the afternoon, made by Team A. The second was made by Team B late at night, to set up the following morning's page. Each time the site was updated, we followed the same process. We worked in our computer lab, shown at the right.

Each team began their shift by deciding what stories they would be doing. The story ideas were then placed on our whiteboard, where they stayed until they were actually posted to the site. We called this our storyboard because it detailed all the stories that we would run. At the left, Sam is checking to see whether other Web Site staff members have completed their articles.

Once the stories were assigned to our staff members, we went about doing the work. Because we were part of the communications committee, we were able to pool our resources. We used a pool of reporters and photographers shared between the web site and newspaper. We also did some reporting and photography ourselves.

Once the staff members completed their in-the-field work, they came back to our lab to finish their stories. Since we used digital cameras and a video camera, we were able to quickly import the pictures into the stories that the members were writing. The storyboard was checked frequently to see how the pages were coming along.

Meanwhile, any graphics that we needed were being produced. From scanning logos to making composite banners, we spent a lot of our time editing photos. To keep the load time of the pages fast, we needed to make sure that our graphics loaded quickly.

The new stories were then proofread for spelling and grammar. During this stage of the editing process, we also checked technical items, such as correct HTML code, proper thumbnails and image sizes, and valid links. When the stories passed these checks, they were put in a local directory for upload to the national server during one of our two daily updates.

The Web Site staff is composed of all volunteer members. It is headed by a youth chair of the committee, Brian Love, and an adviser. Much of the advice on the direction that the Web Site takes is given to us by the adviser, Mr. Joe Glenski (shown in the picture, second from the right, helping Curtis). Many thanks to him for his dedication to the Web Site.