Elections 2010: Webmaster

Tom Woodward

Hi medics!

My name is Tom and I’m currently a third year. I’ve been building and maintaining websites to as my main source of income for years and thought it was about time I gave something back to all those excellent medical students in Bristol (mmm cheese anyone?) So I thought I’d run for webmaster.

The work I’ve done so far includes sites for some small businesses and a band, check some out at www.thequails.co.uk or www.backtrackoh.co.uk if you’re interested. I’m also currently webmaster for the expedition society UBES (www.ubes.org) and so I look after their website and know what the job involves.

What I would change:

I think Galenicals’ website needs a forum. I believe that we all need a single place to keep in touch, a place to organise sports events, music rehearsals, socials and all the other things we do. It’d be a place where people could buy and sell old textbooks, raise issues with the committee, post educational bits and pieces and just have a chat and share a joke.

Anyone who knows me will know I’m enthusiastic about issues that affect us medics, I’m organised and I’d be just the man for the job.

Thanks, and good luck to all those with exams soon!

Tom

Nick Harper

Ever since my first few weeks of medical school I have found the Galenicals website an incredibly useful resource. From checking out the antics from the last medics night out to working out what is actually likely to come up in a clinical OSCE .

I have got a fair bit of experience with website design and development. In my intercalated year I teamed up with a few friends to create www.meducation.net, a website enabling the sharing of educational media within the medical community. The site is growing quickly and we now have over 4000 members. I have also worked for the publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins as a reviewer of their online resources and helped with website strategy and development at the Royal Society of Medicine.

I have previously attended focus groups for the universities e-learning team and am keen to help integrate all the resources currently available to Bristol medical students.

I am a very organized person and like keeping up to date with what is going on in the medical school. The current Galenicals website is looking excellent and I would look forward to keeping it up to date as well as giving online support to new projects that are developed within Galenicals.

Best Wishes

Nick Harper

Cían Hughes

Before medical school I worked as a programmer on a number of high traffic websites and I am currently on the Scrubs committee as webmaster. Furthermore I have previously been a year rep and have done technical production for two pre-clinical revues.

The new Galenicals website launched by the current committee represents a huge improvement over the previous website. I would continue to update this new site in the same efficient manner that it has been updated since its launch.

In addition to that I propose the following improvements:

• A mobile site for students accessing Galenicals from their smart phones, with links to mobile medical resources.
• An easy interface for students to submit information on medic events.
• I would post content from the Galenicals newsletter on the website, making sure that medics can easily access news and event information.
• The Black Bag archive is currently being digitised, I would aim to make this archive accessible on the website.
• I would seek to review current content on the site and update it to reflect the recent changes in the curriculum.

The Medical School provides information to students via Blackboard, Hippocrates, Email and the Medical School website. I aim to lobby the medical school to provide a single web presence for key information such as exam dates and assignment submission deadlines, so that students do not have to search through the various websites, emails and physical handbooks amongst which much of this information is currently spread.