Conference Call Notes 10 22 08

Call Details

Call recording link: http://sra.sharedrecords.org/records/8b7b0c9a9d20b7f54701580583298b0b1bf5cf29.data

These notes also posted at: http://www.projects.unamesa.org/2008-10-22 & http://blog.unamesa.org/

NOTE: British Summer Time ends this Sat., Oct. 26th. This means that next week’s call will be one hour earlier for those in regions that observe BST. (I’ll update that info when I send the call reminder and make I’ve figured it correctly.) Daylight Savings Time will be ending in the states the following Sat., Nov. 2nd so there will be further time adjustments regarding the conference call at that time.

Agenda

Academy update - Heather
Wikispaces messages work - Martin
EC2, mediawiki migration and Trac problems update - Andreas
Hesperian – Greg
Other updates from associates

Participants

Marianne
Eric
Heather
Jon
Cory
Martin
Paul
Barak

UM Academy

Heather

the UM Academy has been split into what is essentially one 8hr session for when working with one organization
- the first half of training – the technology overview – was done with the AICRC on Monday by Eric, Paul and myself
  - Eric did an overview of TW and how it works – the AICRC staff were very interested, had good ideas and questions
  - notes from day one are here http://private.projects.unamesa.org/AICRC+Academy+Notes
  - their questions and comments can be read at http://private.projects.unamesa.org/Staff+Q%27s+%26+Comments
  - they had two main questions
    - can each student TW be hosted from the server? – Eric said it’s possible but requires access to their server
    - where to start? – the youth advocate wanted to start with their primary data collection form as opposed to the form we did start with (the student information/enrollment form)
- the second half of the training will be the hands on session that will take place this Friday
  - we’ll do a recap of TW
  - they’ll each be at a computer and Eric will walk the through the enrollment form
  - we’ll have an overhead projection so they can see what Eric does
  - the enrollment form is usually filled out by parents so Paul had a great idea of doing role playing with it – one group can be the parents and the other group can be the staff – two different user groups using the same form. This will give us an idea of what structural changes need to take place so that it will make sense to parents
  - we’ll also be showing them the wikispace we’ll be using for tech support – http://aicrc.projects.unamesa.org/Tech+Support
- (Greg) – on Friday first make sure that they are using a network file sharing system now that they know how to use – if they are, then do some experiments to be sure the TWs will work for them – 2nd, see if they currently have a protocol for not interfering with each others edits
- (Heather) – they seem to not have a problem with interfering with each others editing of a document and I believe they don’t care if it’s on their server or on the web
  - (Paul) – exactly – they just need for it to be secure and accessible
- (Greg) – as far as the forms themselves – what is the form the youth advisor wants to work on an what are the current problems with it
  - (Heather) – it’s http://private.projects.unamesa.org/New+Narrative – and it was suggested because it’s something they can use immediately because it’s something that’s used daily. The enrollment form, on the other hand, is used only once/year. The case mgmt form is also used alot
- (Greg) – we need a wiki for AICRC so they’ll have information and a place for requesting technical support – let’s set up http://aicrc.projects.unamesa.org for that – the main page should have the results of the training and all the resources and for the tech support page, make contact info available and specific instructions on how to post to the wiki – Heather and/or Eric should monitor it and respond to questions
  - (Heather) – during the training we could have blank wiki with whatever navigation Marianne plugs in – we can show them the page and type in the instructions at the same time and we can set up the logins then too
    - (Greg) – it would be great to have them add their questions directly on the wiki on Friday – and when setting up the logins, usually an email invitation is sent to each person but it can also be set up manually
  - (Heather) – the other option we discussed would be to set up their own wiki that is not associated with UM so that we wouldn’t need to give them UM logins
  - (Greg) – for them it would be transparent – we could change the domain of the wiki we set up to be wiki.aicrc.org or any domain name they want without any problem – doing it under our system means they won’t have to deal with any admin issues
    - for example spot.us – http://wiki.spot.us/ – is a project I’ve been working on and they have a wiki on UM wikispaces that they’ve been able to start a couple of fundraising campaigns on and people don’t recognize that it’s hosted on the UM site
- (Paul) – coming through this first round of academy training, behind the scenes we’re looking at different business models for the training as well as the tools and the packaging of them within the training context, so as we come out of this, we’re putting forth some ideas on business modeling and we’re looking forward to getting some feedback from the whole team on that

Wikispaces messages

Martin

no progress on this to report
(Greg) – as I understand it, it’s functional with some issues still re: API requests
- is the discussion component take care of now
- (Martin) – there’s still some outstanding work there – the comments component is still not working
  - the wikispaces APIs are currently quite difficult to use for doing relatively straightforward things but the wikispaces people do not view this as a priority for them so we’re waiting for them to have time to fix these – this however is not a blocking issue for us
(Greg) – the trac and subversion site seems to be working okay for you and osmosoft now? (Martin) – that’s back up
(Greg) – is work continuing on the ripplerap server and especially the integration with confab, do you know if Phil is still actively working on that? (Martin) – he hasn’t been working on that for some time now, They got to a stage of basic functionality about 4 months ago and there’s been no active work since then
- (Greg) – I ask because I was talking with Zelie (?) Ishmael yesterday of Confab about some of the ways that UM could support some of that work – one of the pieces that’s still an issue is, for example, the Mobile Active Conference which just took place in S. Africa last week used some of the note taking facilities but there were a few issues on the server side or synchronization side – so he’s going to give me a list of the issues so I wanted to know the status of the development an who’s responsible for the server side (Martin) – I think we’ve handed off the server side stuff to Confab however if there’s specific issues, I’m sure we can look into those – and Phil is an excellent person to contact (Greg) – I alo want to see if there can be more integration with the TiddlyWeb work & TiddlyHome stuff
(Greg) – did you have a chance to look at the JavaRosa and OpenRosa stuff (Martin) – I started to look at that just before this call

JavaRosa/OpenRosa

Cory/Jon (minutes 27 – 33 – there was some breaking up so the notes below are not comprehensive)

the Mobile Active conference was good for JavaRosa & OpenRosa – a lot of people knew about it
- there’s still a lot of work to get to a JavaRosa 1.0 that can download and install on a phone and download an xform
- alot of developers there have been working on it on projects of their own
- two of our programmers have funding to work on it throught the end of the year
- it was clear that one of the main areas of movement but not with alot of coordination is on the server side – there’s a call on Monday for which I can send the details to anyone interested
- another consortium has been started called OpenMobile – I don’t understand technically what they’re doing that’s different
  - (Greg) – should I ask Katrin about OpenMobile (Jon) – Neil might be better

EC2

Greg

we’ve made a complete transition to EC2
SRs and TW sites are close to functioning correctly again – if that’s not the case, please let us know
we want establish some rules for managing our infrastructure – if you want to be a part of that conversation, go to the UM technology infrastructure wiki which is private
I’ve been speaking with a person who has some assistant administrator experience who may be able to help us out when we need additional support on hosting and such
- if anyone knows things that should be done or that you’d like to be done, please let me know so we can put together a statement of work so we can get some of it done shortly and it’d be a way to introduce this other person to the hosting architecture so he could help out when Andreas is unavailable – the suggestions might have to do with TiddlyForms, SRs or media wiki hosting

Hesperian

Greg

I met with them last week and they’re very excied about movng forward
we’re putting together a site for project http://hesperian.projects.unamesa.org which includes my notes from that meeting
key notes
- this is a multi year project
- about 3 years from now they plan to release a minimum of five new chapters of content for the book Where There Is No Doctor
  - these chapters will be accessible digitally and viewed or accessed on mobile phones as well as repackaged by workers in different regions either in diff languages or in conjunction with local information
  - what it means to develop this material with their many partners around the globe is still to be decided over the next few months by figuring out the technology approach and running a couple of pilot projects
  - the first project will be related to the table of contents where they’ll be asking their partners to use some online tools to edit and collaboratively create it
  - after that there will be some pilot projects to test out the delivery of the initial content through online platform and through mobile phones – the planning for this will take place over the next 6 months
  - this is a great project for us and it will be fun to work with them

Additional Items

Greg

I was at the Social Capital Conference last week
- they had planned for about 200 people but 650 showed up
- I met a few people who are interested in following up on the mobile technologies with the MORE project but no direct feedback yet
Workshop for the technology infrastructure for emerging regions (TIER) group at UCBerkeley
- a group run by Eric Brewer that’s been going on for 5 years
- one of the 1st projects we did was the Origins project with Tier just when UM was getting started
- I found out that Schwartzman has taken that work to a creative prototype that she has tested in Oahaca, Mexico where they’re doing registration and certification of local farms for organic or fair trade certification and doing that certification using mobile phones – now Yale is looking for funding and a business partner for that work and some of the people in the fair trade community are interested
  - just an example of how some of this stuff does eventually take off
- Neil’s site I think is http://digitalicslatino.org/
UM Board meeting to take place in Nov.

UnaMesa WikiSpaces Sites

The list of all sites can be found at http://www.projects.unamesa.org/Wikis
Please add any pages/spaces that are missing from this list or let me know what they are and I’ll add them.

UM Calendars

Action Items for 10/22 – 10/29

JavaRosa/OpenRosa call on Mon., Oct. 27th – if you want to join, contact Jon for details

Agenda for call on 10/29

Academy update – 1st full session of academy pilot – Heather
Wikispaces update
JavaRosa/OpenRosa SMS based work update
EC2 migration – let Andreas or Greg know if you’re experiencing problems - all
UM technology infrastructure discussion – let Greg or Marianne know if you’d like access to the private site for participating in it - all
UM technology infrastructure – let Greg know if there are things you’d like to see done so he can compile a work statement – all
Hesperian – check out notes at **http://hesperian.projects.unamesa.org** – all
Mobile Active space discussion

TableTalk