06 First Week Back

• 1. I (Bram) returned from a week-long seminar followed by a tandem ride up the east coast of Vermont, to see what the Tech Scouts had been up to and get us started on our projects. Goals for this first week: Get focused: Make sure everyone is on track with their Personal Plans.

  2. Close enrollment: Shepherd some new recruits (we are stopping at 12).

  3. Assess our tech: Make sure everyone has a working laptop and can do Daily Procedures.

  4. Establish our process (lead => prospect (Pre-Consult Form, Strategy Session, Consult) => Client (Scoping Document, Work Breakdown System).

  5. Choose our clients (fhyouth.org, girlsclubofgreenfield.org, recoverproject.org for starters).

  6. Record a video class: #1 HTML=>Wordpress Conversion.

  7. Check in: see how the first week went for everyone (Friday emails, phone calls as needed).

Some scouts have already done some serious work:

• • Robert developed a first draft for a Scoping Document Template.

  • Josh found some comparison sites for fhyouth.org and extracted the logos,. He then began transferring consult information to a Copy of the Scoping Template, which Robert is adding to.

  • Dimitry solved some difficult server issues, and is wrestling with one more.

  • Matthew worked on his Blog Post, and would like comments (and contributions!).

In Tuesday's class, I introduced some starter material that was then referenced by the video class:

• 1. What a LAMP server is (Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP) and that Wordpress is a LAMP app.

  2. How CSS separates out Design from Content (see the amazing http://csszengarden.com).

  3. How PHP/MySQL separates user-developed content (into a database) from page templates and functionality (PHP files).

The HTML=> Wordpress video class has been recorded, and is being rendered and processed now. It will be viewable from our Class Videocasts section, which will include a link to a Google Presentation (slideshow) and Camtasia Screencast (which includes live video of a talking head superimposed on the screen, positioned as needed).

If some of the above links do not work, it's because these are internal documents for Tech Scouts eyes only ... but many of them WILL work for the public.

-Bram