Volunteers needed for IVRPA Committees

Hi Patrick,

The web team is self explanatory, we need a group of volunteers taking care of the website, mainly the focus now is to get on board people experienced in Drupal CMS to help porting our install to at least Drupal v5 but also general experience in PHP/MySQL is needed.

The Cooperation with other associations Committee idea is to create bridges from IVRPA to other associations sharing the same interests or complimentary to us, this is a never ending task and the IVRPA is not an island in the photography world, for example, this year this committee is working with the IAPP to co-organize the Albuquerque Photo Fiesta but this is just an example, many more ideas for cooperation should be pursued with other associations.

The IVRPA and Identity Committee is a working group to define the identity of the IVRPA, defining the direction and the goals of the IVRPA and suggest ways to provide value for membership, and improve communication with members.

The basic idea here is that volunteering for tasks to help the association in it's many endeavors is something that should be shared among our membership and not just for the Board of Directors to do, thus the creation of this committees open to all members that want to help, remember, we are volunteers to and we do take care of the IVRPA affairs on our spare time so, the many contributing the better.

Carlos Chegado

IVRPA Director

www.carloschegado.com

Thanks for your interest, Patrick.

I will try to shine some light on a particular detail of what the "IVRPA and Identity" Committee is trying to achieve. And hopefully this will attract a few more people ;)

My starting point (and my main reason to become a member of the IVRPA 2 years ago) is that the IVRPA is an aggregation of people who are related to VR photography through their profession (as a photographer or whatever), who have built this association to represent their interests and support their businesses.

This means: Because we are self organised all possible value and content has to be generated by ourselves.

But from our own observations (and I bet any random member would say the same) actually there is plenty of room for improvement. To put it mildly.

First we need to know the "real" values from which our members would get the most benefit.
Second we would need a concept how to establish these values.

While in the past there were some ideas for possible values to add, the only concept was to wait for enthusiastic people who would do it on their own and for free. (That's just my observing, please correct me if I'm wrong). The problem with that is that only very few people are able or willing to spend their time, knowledge, and skills for others and expect nothing in return but friendly words (if they are lucky).

(BTW: I don't know what others think about it but I am pretty sure that we will not be able to add significant values without "paying" for it).

While we already had some ideas on membership values on the BOD I would like all members to share their ideas and wishes for a lively and helpful organisation.

As a start here is some input:

- Tutorials and Howtos
I don't think that we do need common manuals for shooting VRs because our
main group of interest are professionals who already (should) know what
they are doing. Nonetheless there are so many interesting resources on the
web concerning these issues that I would appreciate to have a well
maintained, up-to-date and somehow commented linklist.

- Exception: Coding
One special thing about VR-photography is that in these days you are
almost trapped if you are not used to fiddle with code. Even to present a
single cubic image from a given starting point or with a special
navigation can cost you valuable time. Not to mention tourcreation,
interface-design or other more elaborated stuff. Even people who have
basic knowledge in HTML can easily get lost as soon as it comes to
scripting. In this field many members would benefit from step by step
instructions and (more important: explanations) of typical viewer coding.

- News
VR photography gets more and more complex (especially with related issues
like interface programming, viewers, etc.) and scanning all web resources
can quickly become really time consuming. So as similar to the Tutorials I
would appreciate to have someone monitoring known sources (dedicated
webforums, panoramic sites, blogs etc.) and gather informations (read
Links with short comments) that might possibly be of interest to our
members.

- Calculations
In order to know what to charge it sometimes is helpful to see how others
approach their proposals and estimate their cost. Also it might be good to
know what different kind of projects there are and how one can handle
these.

The idea could be to have an anonymous list with different kinds of
typical jobs in different places of the world and what the customers had
to pay for it.

- Sample contracts
This might be a bit complicated due to different local laws. But in most
cases one would get at least some help in finding the right words.
There could also be some kind of a checklist so one can make sure not to
forget important issues and may adopt them to local habits.

- Putting pictures to the market
We could find arrangements e.g. with 360cities or WPS that IVRPA members
"automatically" will get an account to upload their pictures there.
Also the space for members presentations on the IVRPA site should be
extended.

Cheers
Jürgen Schrader