Call Details

Call recording link: http://sra.sharedrecords.org/records/c07fd49e37f72f6c9e2dcf8dfd9440130dcf1c52.data
These notes also posted at: http://www.projects.unamesa.org/2008-12-10

Agenda

Wikispaces discussions work update – Saq, Martin
Forms work - Saq
JavaRosa X forms in TiddlyWiki feedback – Martin, Eric
Discussions with Wikispaces/Tangient - Greg
Hesperian update if any (MOU) – Greg
End of year UM report/newsletter – Greg, Saq
Academy update - Heather
UnaMesa Goals 2009 feedback - all
Other updates from associates

Participants

  • Marianne
  • Greg
  • Heather
  • Cory
  • Barak
  • Saq

Apologies

  • Paul
  • Martin (Osmosoft offices being moved)

Wikispaces Discussions

Greg

  • I’ve been talking with Adam at Tangient (the company behind wikispaces) and they’re very open to having a more formal business relationship so that we can more fully support our partner projects (i.e. Hesperian and Student Notebook)
  • there have been some API requests from Saq and Martin outstanding – they are now responding to those requests which should be done in a short time

Saq (this section of the call recording is missing due to Marianne having been dropped from the call – the following notes on the API work was received via email from Saq and should cover the missing part of the call)

  • API
    • Greg has initiated discussions with Adam at Wikispaces with an aim to formalizing our agreement with them.
    • As a result of this they seem more open to considering our API requests.
    • However, one thing to keep in mind is that Wikispaces does some things very differently from the TiddlyWiki model. Eg: tags are not part of the metadata associated with a page but rather with the user as different users can have different tags for the same page. So I am keeping this in mind when discussing API requests with Adam and am not asking for things that would contradict their current model and am focusing on the enhancements that we most need.
  • Discussions work
    • finished UI and put it on the mixins wiki – http://mixins.projects.unamesa.org/User+Interface – the recipe is posted there as well as a cooked file – it allows you to import messages from wikispaces, they get displayed in the UI that is tagged based on the page that the messages correspond to
    • I’ve made sure that it’s not wikispaces specific at all – I’ve also detailed in the discussions items some thoughts on how the uploads will work
    • the part that’s missing is uploading those messages back to the server – Martin is working on this now

Forms Work

Saq

  • Chris Dent had some questions with regards to the different plugins and templates that comprise the UM Academy forms work and sent an email to Eric
  • (Eric) – he was asking if he had the gist of it correct, which he did – I’d like to have a direct chat channel to him
  • (Saq) – Chris is usually on the tiddlywiki.org IRC channel
  • (Greg) – Chris is working on the backend – right now the data part is being sent to a service that’s just sending email – we need to determine if we want to enable the back end to accept the entire TW or just the form component
  • (Cory) – Andreas is currently reworking on a piece of routing API that we built for a project to do X form routing – it maybe be appropriate to know more about the use cases that you’re trying to support and see if these can be used for that as well

JavaRosa X forms in TiddlyWiki

Greg

  • (Eric) – I set up the AICRC test form using the standard TW custom templates for viewing and editing – the other part of that doc is a script that reads the fields from tiddler and merges them with a text format that’s also stored in another tiddler ( a ‘fill in the blank’ approach) – the text is then transmitted to a server side URL – in this particular instance, the blanks being filled in was an email template and then it was being sent to an email dispatcher – this same mechanism could be handed a tidder template which would be an xml doc (instead of email)
  • (Greg) – some background for everyone – the way that X forms handles forms is two parts
    • one an xml template which is the result of filling out the form, this template has the appropriate blanks in it
    • the other piece is the display logic which is the “view” template, which is another xml doc that is used to generate and drive the display to put up the buttons and things like that – that’s a bit more complicated and one area where I need to talk with Eric more to see if and how it would make sense to have a formatter which could look at that xml doc and generate the appropriate layout
  • (Jon) – the JavaRosa community is moving nice along – Cory has been working on a project to take images for a cervical cancer screening project we’re working on in Zambia – we’re really worried that a lot of the work we’re doing is going to be thrown out by either switching to a proprietary platform like Cybian or going with Android for future development because the limitations of J2ME we found at the mobile end are incredibly constraining with other use cases that will be coming up – from a strategic standpoint, we’re not sure what that will mean for the JavaRosa community and whether we’ll have to make a shift in terms of what language we’ll support moving forward – there’s been an increase in the numbers of the JavaRosa community who have received funding to do Android projects, which is also in danger of fracturing the existing collaborative environment we have because everyone will need to rush to get those projects done and not use common code base
    • this will get sorted out in the next couple of months – it’s exciting but problematic because alot of the good work that has gone into JavaRosa might not be applicable
    • along with the cervical cancer screening project, we’re rethinking how to do the web side for viewing images and annotating comments on them – Cory pointed out that this was the original use case we thought of for the TW SharedRecords integration – the solution we might end up going with is to use dropbox as the sync protocal because it’s very good and also free right now – sync the binary images and then annotate them using Jengo or TW as the front end – this is the exact use case that we proposed early on and then thought it would be neat to deploy this on a USB key so that it could work out of the box – so we have a real live use case for that hypothetical scenario we came up with back then
    • the major concerns Cory and I have is solving the conflicting comment problem – we’d like feedback regarding whether it makes sense to drive the TW/SRs use case
      • (Greg) – I’d like to spend some time looking at the problem statement, understanding what’s needed and how we might be able to facilitate – this is the kind of think I’d like to understand how to support even if we don’t actively support it
  • (Jon) – one more thing on X forms – one of the engineers on the JavaRosa team built a jar that can run the X form engine that can be run on a mobile device, so it will break whenever an X form would break on the mobile device so it’s a good tool for anyone looking at the X form rendering – you can use it to test that the rendering forms will run on a mobile – I’ll send a link out for this

Discussions with Wikispaces/Tangient

Greg

Hesperian

Greg

  • we have an MOU that they’re reviewing
  • we were supposed to have a meeting Monday but they postponed it until Jan. for the Digital Advisory Council so there won’t be much to report until then

End of year UM report/newsletter

Greg

  • I sent out an email askng for feedback and links that are the most important regarding each project – if you haven’t yet done this, please do so by the end of the week – I’d like to finish up the end of the year summary of what we’ve done as well as goals for 2009 and then make those available to all the stakeholders and also use it to send out to anyone who is interested in UM

Hesperian

Greg

  • target is to start helping them with the table of contents (TOC) starting in Jan. 2009
    and also to look at what content management system would make the most sense for their full production process
  • for the TOC, we’re recommending that they use a wiki with a TW version that can be used offline
  • there will intially be about 40 people (partners) contributing to the TOC

Academy

Heather

  • the video has been uploaded and can be seen at http://aicrc.projects.unamesa.org/Paper+Process+Videos
  • I’ve been focusing on writing up the procedures and a report which will be done by Friday
  • we’re continuing trying to find an intermediary
    • Paul has heard from someone
    • I heard from a legal services provider – Insight Center – which is an economic development non-profit but they have a legal unit that provides services to economic development non-profits
      • the attorney there contacted me to see if there’s something we can do so I sent her some info and will be over there for a different project on Friday and will also try to schedule a meeting with her

UnaMesa Goals 2009

Greg

  • (Cory) – Dimagi is constantly faced with the issue of ramping up small projects and putting together new wikis and integrating our technologies – would it be useful as we’re ramping up the projects we’re participating in (such as Hesperian and TeamPlay) to have a running blog of the internal collaboration as a document of best practices
  • (Greg) – yes, a good idea – also, I didn’t put on the goals that for 2009 one of my top goals is to have more communication with the community and part of that will be a blog on which I’ll take the lead and post to it once/week – we can also have each associate posting as well
  • (Barak) – it’s sometimes hard to know what UM is doing so a blog is a good idea as opposed to a wiki – the tools we use are great for collaboration but are not great for communicating beyond our group – there’s a “rule” that goes, “90% read, 10% comment & 1% create” – a lot of UM’s communication is for the 1% of those who create and I’d love in 2009 for a goal to be to reach those who read and comment – those people in the community who care about the work and want to read about it but don’t want to get involved in the creating – broadcasting vs co-creating would be good
  • (Saq) – I agree – we need a more accessible way to follow what UM is doing and a blog is a good way to go – I think, though, that if we’re going to use the current UM blog – http://blog.unamesa.org/ – the conference call notes aren’t what visitors there will want to read so it might be better to just put a link to the notes there – I also think that having multiple people posting is a good idea
  • (Barak) – it makes sense to think ahead of time about who the audience is and what the organization is trying to say
  • (Greg) – before the 1st of the year, I’ll be drafting the initial posts
  • (Cory) – the use case we’re working with now is that we have enough collaborators so we’re in the process of getting onto a more robust wikispaces platform but we know that the main contacts/stakeholders are never going to look at the wiki and will only use email, the more junior members of the team are proactive and will do whatever we ask and the others could go either way – do we want a prepackaged solution from UM to say, “You download wikispaces, you set it up like this, and you use TW to do the offline sync.” – is that the type of service that UM wants to provide?
  • (Greg) – I don’t think we’ve figured out the best practice there – the Student Notebook is the best example and we’re just now getting feedback on that – eventually that’s where we’re headed – the most important part of the best practice is to make sure we have someone who can integrate the info from the different channels (i.e. email, offline and online wikis) to make sure the info is current and well attended to – rather than technology, I think that Marianne is the most important part of our collaboration infrastructure at the moment
    • my goal is,”here is the recommended best practice” so the decision process is less for someone who wants to get started – that is what Saq is doing with the demonstration student notebook
    • (Saq) – I think we’re trying to make sure all this technology we’ve developed is generic enough so that those who want to use it can still use their own server backend – I’m hoping we’ll eventually get to the point where we can recommend certain tools for different scenarios
    • (Greg) – agenda item for 1st call of 2009 - have a page where all the adaptors that are working are listed so we have a place to point people saying, “If you have your data in this format, here’s how you can take it offline or put it into a TW for personal customization.”

Additional Items

Greg

  • as far as the follow up Saq will be sending out to the TW groups – it’ll be good to include a list of domains, both current and planned
  • (Saq) – I plan to put together a list of all the domains & services we provide for tiddlywiki.org

Saq

  • in the last year many people have asked if there’s a person they can contact for custom TW development work to be done ranging from small personal websites to rather elaborate verticals on TW – I’ve recommended the developers group or Eric – is this something UM wants to get involved in?
  • (Greg) – we would be willing to either do that work or be the project manager for the work under the condition that the person requesting the work is providing the funds to do it, or the majority of the funds and that work would then be available to the community at large

Eric

  • TW version 2.4.2 will go into beta in a week and a half and will have the official release in January – so over the next couple of weeks I’ll be troubleshooting
  • the increase in traffic to TiddlyTools has not dropped off – I’ll have gotten over 1/4 million hits on that one document alone for the year
  • over the last month I’ve been working on “moveable panels” – imagine taking a TW doc and being able to tear off the tiddlers and put them wherever you want much like you do with a windows desktop, I’ve also made the page infinitely expandable

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 12/10 – 2/17

End of year UM Report/Newsletter – each associate view http://tasks.projects.unamesa. org/Summary2008 and add their top 3
links for the work they have performed over the past year.

**Goals for 2009** - review it - all

Wikispaces Discussion work – uploading – let Saq know where it’s at - Martin

JavaRosa Jar – send link - Jon

Agenda for call on 12/17

agenda item for 1st call of 2009** – have a page where all the adaptors that are working are listed

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