ORIGINAL: Hossfly
RCUMAN, I thank you for your analysis. Really, it is most interesting and informative as I have no experience in such. In the military, many years ago, I had some management jobs, but then they never involved computers. Again as an airline Captain, there were the times when the younger folks had to be reminded just who was Captain, fortunately they were few and far between. Mostly, crews were very eager to perform well for the objectives of Safety and Passenger Service. OOPS, OFF TOPIC!
Unfortunately, IMO, AMA is far too far into Publications. Too much time is spent on things that do not further the mission.
Now above, you stated, ''I have worked on big websites and it can be very overwhelming because everyone wants to do their own thing with it and usually at the same time.''
That is a definite fault of management. If I were the boss, either all work together to accomplish the assigned task, or seek employ somewhere else. I don't need to be a computer whiz to see or tolerate such crap among personal egos and/or empire builders. [sm=devious.gif]
Usually it is not a matter of bad management rather it is a victim of over enthusiasm. The employees found out that they can do so much with the website. For instance when we had gotten our website up we immediately received a lot of questions or requests like "can we do this?" or "WOW I did not know we could do that, please add this feature to our site". It really never ends since technology changes every day. Everyone finds new ways to do things online which is why I am surprised no one has mentioned opening up a twitter acount for the AMA. As far as publications go I think there could be some improvement, but one thing to remember is as long as you have your name out there and keep advertising, people will be aware of your business. Even though the AMA is non-profit it is still ran like business. You mentioned that you have no experience in such matters as how technology and the web work and you would be surprised just how many people do not know. Of course it is technical but there are easy ways to explain it. kinda getting off on a tangent here....
It actually looks like a spider's web but if you were to plot it out on a world wide map it would not look like a symetrical one. At each web crossing there is what they call a router which routes traffic. At each endpoint there is a computer or server/website all of which have a specific number address. If you go to the AMA's website from your computer you will probably have to go through several crossings/routes to ge to the website. Each one of those routers know where to direct you because of a worldwide database of addresses. Kinda sort of like the operators back in the day when they had the wall of plug-in connections. You would ring the operator and let them know what number you wanted to call and usually they knew you by name. They would then plug your line into another plug which was the person you wanted to contact. The internet works the same way except it is all automated and works at the speed of light.