[260] in magellan
Events Calendar progress report, 8/26/99
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deborah A. Levinson)
Thu Aug 26 10:33:22 1999
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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 10:33:06 -0400
To: magellan@mit.edu
From: "Deborah A. Levinson" <debby@MIT.EDU>
Cc: events-team@mit.edu
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Project Name: Events Calendar
Project Leader: Debby Levinson
Report Date: 8/26/99
Project Notebook: http://web.mit.edu/cwis/projects/eventscalendar/
Accomplishments past period
- Met with TechCalendar programmer Boris Zbarsky to discuss technical issues
- Met with Broadcast Messaging team to discuss commonalities between
our projects
- Had TechCalendar Perl code reviewed by IS programmer; code seems
very good, but may need to be ported to something faster and more
robust, like C
- Met with Mike Barker to begin discussions about Delivery requirements
- Met with Scott Thorne, discussed how an events system could
interact with Roles for authorizations
- Talked with Jim Repa about lingering questions about how Roles
works; Roles might need new hierarchical structures to deal with
student group authorizations, but should work as an authorization
repository for events system
- Through email and voice conversations with Amplitude Systems,
determined that EventCenter would neither be able to support
certificates nor communicate securely with the Roles database.
Eliminated EventCenter from consideration, leaving TechCalendar as
the selected option.
- Reported back to sponsor Kathryn Willmore, letting her know that we
were winding up and hoped to have a system in place during IAP 2000
(sponsor very pleased :-)
- Pinged stakeholders to get final opinions of TechCalendar (little
response, although it was positive)
- Finalized policy recommendations; got buy-in from Information
Office/Conference Services, Campus Activities Complex, and Sports
Information Office to act as "calendar coordinators" for stragglers
who cannot get authorized to post (e.g., because they are not
eligible to get personal certificates or need to post an event one
time only).
- Sent policy recommendations to sponsor for her approval
- Snagged hostname events.mit.edu
- Wrote Discovery Report!
Goals for the coming period
- Meet with Integration (today) to present Discovery Report
- Team debriefing with Greg
- Meet with sponsor to go over report findings in person
- CELEBRATE and congratulate team!
Issues
- We will need to meet with Karen Hersey of the Intellectual Property
Office to figure out exactly who owns TechCalendar
(Heimburger/Zbarsky or The Tech) and how to formalize handoff of the
code.
Key learnings
- It's amazing what you get if you just ask! The calendar coordinator
section of the policy hinged on getting buy-in from three different
offices to take on new responsibilities -- all three were responsive
and enthusiastic!
Team dynamics
- Great. Happy to be done, hoping all goes well with Integration today.
Additional comments
- Despite the fact that this went a little longer than I initially
projected (okay, a month longer, but we lost three weeks to team
member travel), I am very happy with the way this project progressed.
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Debby Levinson
Electronic Publishing Consultant
MIT Campus Wide Information Systems
debby@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/debby/www/
Humanity has an amazing inability to plan. Not too many
generations ago, when our relatives lived by hunting and
gathering, the inability to plan for the next season meant
death. Planners survived. The clueless died. But today,
Homo Sapiens eats at McDonalds - for the moment, planning
and survival are not strongly linked. --David Isenberg
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