E-Liberate Plan
From apse
[edit] e-Liberate
[edit] Project Plan Authors
- Christopher Cramer (Evergreen State College)
- Jodie Blaylock (Evergreen State College)
- Nat Taylor (Evergreen State College)
[edit] Project Participants
- ibid.
[edit] Domain Objectives
What are you trying to obtain as a result of this project?
- A Ruby and AJAX powered online deliberation tool.
[edit] Purpose
Digression and inconclusion are pervasive in online discussion. In face-to-face meetings, parliamentary procedure is used to ensure decisions are made. Utilizing parliamentary procedure in online meetings will enable a civic participation model that can faciliate social change.
[edit] Description of main activities
- Learn Ruby and some AJAX (Jodie and Nat)
- Learn more Ruby and AJAX (Chris)
- Learn project management skills
- Leverage open-source tools to accomplish our goals
- Develop Ruby-based e-liberate software
[edit] Description of main deliverables
- e-liberate software
[edit] Project Scope
(include a section on each aspect listed below)
[edit] Complexity
Are there multiple activities that must happen in parallel? Are there tricky scheduling issues? (degree of coordination)
- Use of mediaWiki to produce collaborative documentation
- Use of subversion for software version control and collaborative development
[edit] Magnitude
[edit] Resources
What's needed? When? How will the resources be obtained? (includes special skills, consultants, other people and organizations, software, web hosting, money, physical space, equipment, transportation, etc.)
- Web host. Currently supplied by b3nt development, gratis.
[edit] Research
What type is needed and how will it be conducted or acquired.
- Web research on other chat programs and how they work
- Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide - Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Bookshelf
- humblerubybook.pdf , from infoq.com
- Rolling with Ruby on Rails Revisited, [1]
- O'Reilly - AJAX on Rails
- Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails, Pragmatic Bookshelf
- Rails Recipes, Pragmatic Bookshelf
- Four Days on Rails, [2]
[edit] Training
What type is needed and how will it be conducted or acquired.
- Read Programming Ruby, and complete tutorials.
- Complete online Ruby tutorials
[edit] Work with other people or bureaucracies
- Just the three of us, and Doug
[edit] Uncertainties and other risks
- Can three Evergreen students work together to produce tangible results?
[edit] Work Breakdown
[edit] Chris
- Functional specification
- Asynchronous update support
- Database schema
[edit] Jodie
[edit] Nat
- Source repository
[edit] Unassigned
- Deployment server
- Login page
- Registration page
- Meeting List page
- Meeting page
- New Meeting page
[edit] Audience
Anyone that needs to make group decisions and wants to make them without the constraints of a physical face-to-face meeting. This includes:
- community organizations
- non-government organizations
- trade associations
- political organizations
- corporations
[edit] Budget
A shoestring.
[edit] Schedule
[edit] List of tasks, milestones, deliverables, status
- Proofs of Concept (little programs that demonstrate some functionality)
- AJAX chat (program from net)
- phpfreechat
- uses flat files for storage. may be a good idea for server status updates.
- phpfreechat
- Open chat with persistent storage
- Juggernaut and Zinzani, flash-based server push interaction and chat
- rtrails, real-time rails
- AJAX chat (program from net)
[edit] List of Tasks (grouped by task type)
Milestone or activity (indicate which type of task)
Task description
- Determine where the application will be hosted
- Implement Login System - Put SOMETHING on the server.
- Design CSS
- Class Hierarchy with methods
- User Interface Module
- Rule Implementation Module
- Refresh Techniques
- Define interface between User Interface and Rule Implementation
- List Discussion Page
- Discussion Page
[edit] Constraints
- Web Server Constraints, we may need a VPS to implement rails... may not be available on conventional servers.
- May be able to install ruby and rails in home directory on Grace, not sure.
[edit] Resources
[edit] Start Date
A date and/or based on some event
- January 08, 2007
[edit] Finish Date
End of Spring Quarter, June 10, 2007.
[edit] Deliverable(s)
- e-liberate software, available to the public and tested by at least one community organization
[edit] Status
(to be updated during the project implementation as appropriate)
- Framework in place.
- Communication (irc)
- Project Management (PHProject)
- Documentation (mediaWiki)
[edit] Notes
(to be updated during the project implementation as appropriate)
[edit] Project Evaluation
Doug Schuler, the faculty and originator of the project, will evaluate. The evaluation will be based on acquisitin of practical knowledge and skills of developing a web application that the participants acquired during the course of the project. These include:
- multiple-participant project planning and organization
- web application development
- marketing to community organizations
- the Ruby programming language
- the Rails web application framework