And that's the point. You need a distinct need in order to start the cms academy. Maybe you have a class in the fall that you would like to get blogging. Maybe you need a 'learning landscape' (read: e-portfolio + some stuff) or maybe you need a more tradiitional class management system. Or, potentially, you need a program that can do a little of all of these things.

STEP 1 - Develop a clear, distinct goal for your time at the academy- this is done by taking your initial vision and supplementing it by the experience and ideas of the other members of the academy. You may find that a quick listen to someone in another situation, country or culture might make your head spin with new ideas... this is part of the process. Keep a running journal (blog wiki etc) of your ideas and how your goal has, or has not, changed.

STEP 2 - Find a home for your vision - Once you have settled on a CMS you need to find a home for your project/work. You might find a home in one of the worldbridges communities (we still have several websites that need a manager and are open to pitches that might help improve the worldbridges community) You might need to find a hosting company. You might need to get permission to host this product inside of your school or company. Please document this search in your journal. (the community will learn from failures as well as successes!)

STEP 3 - Decide what kind of development you will be doing on your CMS. We have no interest in telling you what should do on your own website, but we would like to be able to evaluate your success. In this part of the process you will be, in a sense, creating your own grading rubric.

STEP 4 - Find and integrate your initial community. This is a vital part of the process. A read/write website cannot really be developed until the consumers of that website join in on the fun. You don't necessarily need to have your final group together (you may be doing this as a pilot to show a boss/administrator for instance) but you should have some people working and commenting on your website as you go along. One of the key things that we've learned over the years is that no one can do this stuff alone. Build your community during the process of the academy.

STEP 5 - Do a screencast of your website, demonstrating the work you've done, and the work done by others. This will allow the community to quickly run through the work that everyone has done, and, most importantly, will insure that we see the stuff that you really wish to highlight. Sometimes cool stuff can get lost when people are looking at a dozen websites.