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Digital Update: 1st floor updates, podcasts, Canal Wi-Fi, & more

Posted on October 9, 2020


christine in 1st floor office

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working with Public Works to make changes to the first floor of City Hall so Parking Services, the Sustainability / Volunteer program, and Digital can move into our new space.

The move requires several technology related projects to move into the new space—a new network that separates the Parking Division from the City network (DOJ requires it because of their access to the criminal justice systems), security cameras in the money counting room and lobby area, and moving the Skidata and license plate reader systems.

Facilities is hard at work knocking down walls and making improvements while Sean and Christine have been tasked with choosing wall colors to help bring new life into this office.

Image of first floor lobby with potential paint color on walls

We’ve decided to stick with the theme from our space in Room 207—blues, grays, and whites for the paint. We don’t want something that’s too white, but it can’t have any yellow in it, and we want it to be a little greyer, sort of, less stark and more warm, you know? Which white do you like more?

 

Image of three Benjamin Moore white paint samples


One Size Fits None

The Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) is a national research and advocacy organization. They host a podcast every two weeks called Building Local Power, which offers thought-provoking conversations and new ideas to fight corporate control and expand the power of communities.

One of the things that’s been wonderful about this project is we’ve been living with deep inequities in the Canal for a very long time. And I think what’s interesting about COVID is, they’re giving us an opportunity to build something new and build something different.

Air Gallegos

Their most recent episode, One Size Fits None: Why Connecting California’s Least Connected Requires a Tailored Solution, featured Rebecca and Air Gallegos, Director of Education and Career for Canal Alliance to share their experience, efforts, and challenges they faced setting up a mesh Wi-Fi network in the Canal neighborhood to support San Rafael students. It’s a good listen!


Canal Wi-Fi

Over the last week, DC Electric worked with Digital to install 13 new mesh access points (MAPs) in the heart of the Canal neighborhood. The project technical team have their hands full in the next few days as they turn nobs and dials, working to get every bit of performance out of the network. Thank you, Steve Mason, and Habad Ahmad for preparing the Al Boro Center gymnasium to serve as our project deployment hub! Once we get the performance optimized, we will do another push with signs on the sidewalks, social media, and text messages to get the word out to the community. We will also be pushing out videos in Spanish that tell people how to connect to the network.


Another Scary Documentary

It’s October, so it’s time for scary movies. Last year, we told you about a documentary on Netflix called The Great Hack, which dissected the collection of data harvested by the internet. Well, we’ve got another good one for ya! Netflix recently released The Social Dilemna, exploring how media addiction and privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of social media platforms. Wait, what?

If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.

The film explores concepts like technology addiction, social engineering, and surveillance capitalism and helps us understand how these platforms impact us psychologically. These companies know more about us than we think.


Uploading and managing documents on the website

Sounds boring, but you know what? When you don’t do this right it really messes things up. A document will have a title, category label, download button and embed file, it will also have a unique URL path, so writing a clear and accurate title to help site search is important.

Creating a document
  1. Go to the dashboard and click on the ‘Documents’ icon or the ‘Documents’ label on the left navigation bar
  1. Click ‘Add new’
  2. Add document title
  3. Select category/type, on the right side, under the ‘Document Types’ section.
  4. Skip text area
  5. Click ‘Add Document’ on the ‘File’ section, located below the visual editor.
    1. If you select to upload files, click ‘Select Files’ and upload the document
    2. If you select the media library, select the document in your media and click insert.
  6. Click ‘Publish’

Step by step on how to add a document to the website

Learn more about document types and best practices for displaying a document on webpage or utilizing the document permalink.

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