Friday 23 March 2007

So much to say and do...

Yesterday was the first advisory board that I have attended since joining the project. It was nice to see all the familiar faces and also a new one (one I haven’t met before). I feel that yesterdays advisory board meeting was really productive and informative. There are always more thing you learn from having everyone in one room.

I also carried out a usability test yesterday which was really successful, it has given me an insight into how differently each of the users is using the system, as it is the second that I have done personally. I knew from the start of the project we would need to support lost of different users, but I never realised how diverse their attitudes and uses of the systems was. This is just adding to my list of things to think about.

From comments made at the advisory board, there is international interest in the WebPA system as well as national. I did think that at some point down the line we would internationalise WebPA, but as a result of the comments made yesterday this may have to be done sooner, rather than later. I now need to brush up on how to get this achieved. I need to look at the PHP internationalization and character set encoding. I don’t think the character set encoding will be a problem, but I had best just check.

We are still on target at the moment to get a release of WebPA for the end of May, but only if I stop adding things to look at myself. If anything changes or I don’t think we will make it, then we will just have to take stock and reassess what we can do in the time. If you are holding out for a copy of WebPA, please just bear with me, it is on its way. But do be aware that it will not be all singing, all dancing from the 1st cut.

All this to do and two open source books to read!

* Producing Open Source Software - How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel
* Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software - Edited by Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam and Karim R. Lakhani

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