pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

hola amigos,

Wowowowowowwowoww I am so relieved to read the latest posts!

Thank you Chad, for being so honest and communicative, and thank you 
Lawrence, for hanging in there with us!  (Why do I sound like a marriage 
counselor)

Just a few things to synthesize:
-ZOPE/IBIBLIO – I guess we’re just waiting for Lawrence to hear back from

Fred.  And depending on the response, Chad and Rich can discuss options 
and choose a platform…so we can begin!

Also, Chad brought up a real good point, “Zope will probably halve the 
development time it will take to go as far as I want to go with 
permaculture.info.  It will also be easy to maintain and improve post-
project by less technical people.”  So I have some questions then: how 
many people know Zope vs. those that know MySQL?  Is Zope something 
people are learning nowadays?  You refer to the steep learning curve, so 
will it actually be easy to maintain and improve by less technical 
people?  Definitely something critical to consider in choosing our 
platform.

-NAME – Open Permaculture Project sounds fine with me.  I liked 
Permaculture Information Web, and how it went with permaculture.info, but 
am in an extremely agreeable mood at the moment ;)

Chad wrote, “To continue accurately in this way you would have something 
like 'An open library of plants, animals, people, energy, watersheds, 
construction, tools, community, permaculture systems, and their 
relationships'... kind of a mouthful.  'An open library of
permaculture and its relationships' maybe...”  Well yeehaw.  ‘An open 
library of Permaculture and its relationships’ I Love it.  And then, once 
we grow beyond plants, subject headings/list of links could be the 
different mouthfuls (plants, animals, etc.).  Or combos?  Relationships 
of relationships?  Getting ahead of myself now…

-PROJECT PLAN - doesn't make much sense at the moment, since we havn't 
finalized our platform yet.  I would like to edit it, and know how to do 
so for my tasks, but harder for yours.  Can each of you perty please 
write back to me, and let me know what week you're at?  It's fine if 
you're still in July or something - just let me know so I can re-arrange 
the project plan.  (Example, "I am in the middle of my week 2 tasks.")  
First 4 weeks of plan pasted below, check it.

-MISCELLANEOUS - 
-Gracias por hacer el domain transfer, Chad.  

-I’m glad you’re learning more about ZOPE, Lawrence.  I think we’d all
be 
interested in what you think about it.

-By the way Lawrence, you mentioned that hosting on Ibiblio would free up 
grant money to pay wages for the people involved in the project.  Not 
necessarily the case.  No foundations (at least none that I checked out) 
allow for more than 10-20% of the sum requested to be allocated towards 
wages/overhead.  We’d have to be using the majority of the money for 
other costs (equipment, materials, etc.)  So going with Ibiblio doesn’t 
necessarily mean we’d have more money for wages (unless we were dishonest 
about our expenses) – it means we’d have more money for something else, 
other than wages.  

Lovely.  I am smiling.

         peace
            yes
             la Stephanita

+++++++
Week 1: July 25-31
∑ Agree on common vision (clarify importance of user-interface) – I will 
initiate a dialogue about this and all should respond
∑ Learn about SCRUM (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/darrell.norton/
articles/3910.aspx) and respond if you are interested in using it
∑ Post name suggestions to wiki, and vote by Sunday!
∑ Stephanie 
o look into project management software and learn one if need be
o initiate dialogue about common vision regarding user-interface
o post decisions that need to be made on wiki

Week 2: August 1-7
∑ Whoever is in charge of shared web workspace (as determined Week 1) 
creates it 
∑ Vote for top 3 name suggestions on wiki, by Wednesday!
∑ John Howe
o Prepare communication to Ibiblio
o Get your “box” set up to start the project 
∑ Chad 
o Finish demo accounting/budgeting app. in ZODB w/CLI
o Create a Zope front end for app (to learn Zope)
∑ Stephanie 
o write first draft of email describing project to PC lists, sends to 
team for feedback
o write up description user interface/experience, send to list
o re-create project plan with new project management software, if need be
∑ Lawrence 
o write a clear description of relationship between PCKnowledgebase and 
HG (if separate entities)
∑ John 
o set up issue tracking system and whatever data/parameters/
customizations are necessary to start using it on our project
∑ Paula
o Send info about her work to the list

Week 3: August 8-14
∑ Chad and Rich
o a working database (with no real data) with php connection and simple 
front end (basically just checking that the different bits can work 
together)
o issue tracker working, cvs working, zope working
o Get it running somewhere/somehow
o Rich – start doing whatever needs to be done in order to get the latest 
version of PFAF that is under the CC-BY-NC-SA (2 weeks to complete)
∑ Stephanie
o write first draft of email describing project to PC lists, sends to 
team for feedback
o write up description user interface/experience, send to list
o continue updating project calendar
∑ John H.
o Review changes in the configuration of Zope 2.7.2 for releasing it to 
development access
o Get zope deployment platform setup for Chad (sometime in the next 3-4 
weeks)
o Back-end Q/A assistance (throughout process)
∑ John S.
o prepares and posts FAQs and other documentation on use of issue tracker 
and general software test/QA procedures and guidelines
o organize for user test of first “build” (to happen weekly from now on?)

Week 4: August 15-21
∑ Respond to Stephanie’s draft of PC email
∑ Respond to Stephanie’s description of user interface/experience
∑ Respond to Stephanie’s vision for user interface
∑ Finalizing design of server-client interface
∑ Chad and Rich
o Sample plant info added to database, simple query (maybe just query by 
Latin name) and simple plant report
o Facility to append info to plant, and add a new plant
o Go back to rethink/evaluate former 2 steps, come up with some sort of 
DB-schema
o communicate with Paula about how to get database information in usable 
form
o Chad – let us know if you are going to have something ready for testing 
by Saturday 
o Rich – should have latest version of PFAF that is under the CC-BY-NC-SA 
ready for John S. by the end of the week
∑ Stephanie
o Edit email to PC lists and send
o Edit user interface/experience incorporating feedback from team, send 
back out
∑ John H.
o Get zope deployment platform setup for Chad (sometime in the next 2-3 
weeks)
o Back-end Q/A assistance 



+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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