At the end of October, a few days before Halloween, I was unfortunate enough to severely hurt my back. I had been lifting heavy boxes and bags while working, and had been lifting from my back instead of with my legs. Safe to say, eventually something gave when I bent over and I was unable to stand back up. From there, it was weeks of consistent pain.
Since then until fairly recently, I've had difficulty sitting in chairs and missed a substantial amount of class. Once I started to get better, I was in a mad rush to turn in various assignments and study for exams that I could have been better prepared for. As a result, my RCOS project got thrown to the wayside.
Part way through my health-related hiatus I gave up on trying to scrounge around for time for this project and instead decided to fully invest in working on the project over winter break as my only commitment. I spoke with professor Moorthy to let him know that I would be doing this, and I have plans to meet with him weekly (with the exception of when faculty are on holiday break) for updates and advice.
In other news, I will be giving a short presentation today. I will put up the powerpoint in a slideshare today. I'm also going to be uploading some design materials this weekend, as well as pushing some code that I'm testing, that I've written for my first module.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Fieldtrip to TTV Store in Albany
This post is mostly irrelevant in terms of the software project itself, but I figured I would document it here. Graylin and I took a trip over to the Ten Thousand Villages store in Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany today. It's one thing to see pictures on an online store, but it's quite another to actually be able to personally handle such well-crafted and intricate pieces. I was hoping that a manager would be there, but I didn't run into any luck with that and will just be emailing them instead. I took some photos that I'll share with you all, but I'll admit they most definitely don't do the products much justice (crappy cell phone photos; the store was very bright; even correcting for overexposure didn't help too much).
Here's a link to an open Picasa album shows a few pictures along with descriptions:
Here's a link to an open Picasa album shows a few pictures along with descriptions:
Friday, October 15, 2010
Preliminary Research - More Detailed Information
The more detailed information only deals with Women for Women (W4W) International. The Women of the Cloud Forest and Ten Thousand Villages don't really reveal too much of how they work with the artisans, and that will need to be clarified through further contact with these organizations.
One of the main focuses for W4W is helping women from war-torn countries to develop their own financial independence and stability. They do this through job training as well as making a variety of services available to help women start and manage their own businesses.
Examples of job skills taught are silversmithing, horticulture, and food processing. Business services include access to capital through microfinance. W4W provides microcredit to "solidarity groups" instead of individual entrepreneurs. This is to provide support for individual women, as well as ensure that loans are repaid (an individual gets a loan through the group, and the group is at whole responsbile that the loan is paid back). This type of model was/is still used with high levels of success by the Grameen organization in Bangladesh.
W4W also links small artisans with larger outside retailers (notably a successful partnership with Kate Spade, a high-end woman's accessories producer), and also places their goods for sale on ecommerce sites such as Global Girlfriend.
Another example of an interesting initiative which might benefit from the kind of tools that the Eden system would have to offer is the Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI). This program is a three year pilot that is designed to help women develop agricultural and cooperative development skills that will enable them to general income for both long term economic independence as well as food security. There are two such pilots, one in Rwanda and another in Sudan, and the organization's goals is to have 3000 women enroll in each program, and earn sustainable incomes through organic commercial integrated farming.
The overall learning goals of the program include integrating crop and animal husbandry, choosing marketable products to produce, and cooperative development and governance. The long term goal of the program is to establish "a core of functioning cooperatives capable of producing and marketing high-quality, high-value agricultural products."
Although some organizers simply link small labor to bigger companies to market the items, W4W is attempting through CIFI to make fully self-sufficient cooperative business women in developing countries (they're planning on another farm in Afghanistan), and such women could most definitely stand to benefit from business management tools that could be offered through the Sahana Eden platform.
My info dump is almost done, the next post is going to pose some questions that I've been thinking about, and that I'll be asking the organizations if I can successfully make contact (emails going out this weekend).
I also am giving an introductory presentation at the RCOS meeting today, and will post a link
One of the main focuses for W4W is helping women from war-torn countries to develop their own financial independence and stability. They do this through job training as well as making a variety of services available to help women start and manage their own businesses.
Examples of job skills taught are silversmithing, horticulture, and food processing. Business services include access to capital through microfinance. W4W provides microcredit to "solidarity groups" instead of individual entrepreneurs. This is to provide support for individual women, as well as ensure that loans are repaid (an individual gets a loan through the group, and the group is at whole responsbile that the loan is paid back). This type of model was/is still used with high levels of success by the Grameen organization in Bangladesh.
W4W also links small artisans with larger outside retailers (notably a successful partnership with Kate Spade, a high-end woman's accessories producer), and also places their goods for sale on ecommerce sites such as Global Girlfriend.
Another example of an interesting initiative which might benefit from the kind of tools that the Eden system would have to offer is the Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI). This program is a three year pilot that is designed to help women develop agricultural and cooperative development skills that will enable them to general income for both long term economic independence as well as food security. There are two such pilots, one in Rwanda and another in Sudan, and the organization's goals is to have 3000 women enroll in each program, and earn sustainable incomes through organic commercial integrated farming.
The overall learning goals of the program include integrating crop and animal husbandry, choosing marketable products to produce, and cooperative development and governance. The long term goal of the program is to establish "a core of functioning cooperatives capable of producing and marketing high-quality, high-value agricultural products."
Although some organizers simply link small labor to bigger companies to market the items, W4W is attempting through CIFI to make fully self-sufficient cooperative business women in developing countries (they're planning on another farm in Afghanistan), and such women could most definitely stand to benefit from business management tools that could be offered through the Sahana Eden platform.
My info dump is almost done, the next post is going to pose some questions that I've been thinking about, and that I'll be asking the organizations if I can successfully make contact (emails going out this weekend).
I also am giving an introductory presentation at the RCOS meeting today, and will post a link
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Preliminary Research - Summaries of Some Relevant Organizations
So to begin this direction of my project, I decided to choose a few organizations that I thought would have relevant perspectives on useful management tools for both small scale fair-trade artisans as well as the larger organizations that work with them.
I will give a general summary of the kind of relevant work that the three orgs that I've focused on, and then a more detailed analysis of what I could glean from the resources available to me online. The next step in my gameplan is to write up some emails to send to the various organizations, in hopes of gauging their interest in a project like Sahana Eden adapted for their field, as well as getting more information on the needs of both artisans and the organizations that work with them. This is so that even if they were not interested, perhaps a similar organization would be interested in using the tools.
I began with looking into Ten Thousand Villages, which was the organization suggested by Pat Tressel, the developer that originally put up the suggestion for this type of Sahana Eden implementation. TTV has a long history for a fair trade organization, and is quite literally one of the first such organizations. TTV links small scale artisans (usually working with a small scale middleman kind of org) with markets in the USA through a number of means, ranging from non-profit stores (There's one in Albany in Stuyvesant Plaza); community center, church, and school sales; as well as an online store.
I also looked into two other organizations that I was familiar with and have had contact with in the past. Women for Women International is a comprehensive organization that works with women from war-torn countries, including countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the DRC, and Afghanistan, among others. One of their main areas is helping women learn skills (artisanal and horticultural skills as examples) that will ensure greater economic stability and freedom. This front is that area that my inquiries will focus on. I am familiar with this organization because I sponsor a woman through it from the DRC (W4W focuses heavily on linking first world sponsors to be "sisters" and support a woman from a war-torn country to pay for her participation in the program).
The third organization is a smaller fair trade project called Women of the Cloud Forest, which connects products created by women in Costa Rica with consumers in the United States. The products consist of jewelry that is centered on the use of natural rainforest seeds as beads, as well as embroidered bags that feature animals from the rainforest in the designs. I came across this organization rather recently at a convention in Albany, although I had heard of them in the past. I got a chance to talk to the man who started the group with his wife there.
That's it for the summaries, the next post will go a little bit more in depth with some of the relevant workings of these organizations.
I will give a general summary of the kind of relevant work that the three orgs that I've focused on, and then a more detailed analysis of what I could glean from the resources available to me online. The next step in my gameplan is to write up some emails to send to the various organizations, in hopes of gauging their interest in a project like Sahana Eden adapted for their field, as well as getting more information on the needs of both artisans and the organizations that work with them. This is so that even if they were not interested, perhaps a similar organization would be interested in using the tools.
I began with looking into Ten Thousand Villages, which was the organization suggested by Pat Tressel, the developer that originally put up the suggestion for this type of Sahana Eden implementation. TTV has a long history for a fair trade organization, and is quite literally one of the first such organizations. TTV links small scale artisans (usually working with a small scale middleman kind of org) with markets in the USA through a number of means, ranging from non-profit stores (There's one in Albany in Stuyvesant Plaza); community center, church, and school sales; as well as an online store.
I also looked into two other organizations that I was familiar with and have had contact with in the past. Women for Women International is a comprehensive organization that works with women from war-torn countries, including countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the DRC, and Afghanistan, among others. One of their main areas is helping women learn skills (artisanal and horticultural skills as examples) that will ensure greater economic stability and freedom. This front is that area that my inquiries will focus on. I am familiar with this organization because I sponsor a woman through it from the DRC (W4W focuses heavily on linking first world sponsors to be "sisters" and support a woman from a war-torn country to pay for her participation in the program).
The third organization is a smaller fair trade project called Women of the Cloud Forest, which connects products created by women in Costa Rica with consumers in the United States. The products consist of jewelry that is centered on the use of natural rainforest seeds as beads, as well as embroidered bags that feature animals from the rainforest in the designs. I came across this organization rather recently at a convention in Albany, although I had heard of them in the past. I got a chance to talk to the man who started the group with his wife there.
That's it for the summaries, the next post will go a little bit more in depth with some of the relevant workings of these organizations.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
More Refined Direction
After struggling to orient myself within the project, I found a list of suggested project ideas that the Sahana developers had put up for a CodeaThon for the project. The last one on the page, relating to extensions to support new use cases, was the one that got my attention. My interest was piqued at the suggestion of an implementation of Sahana Eden that was directed at business management tools for small artisans in developing countries, as well as for the larger organizations that they are involved with (Ten Thousand Villages being the given example).
After speaking with some of the developers, they seemed very interesting in me working on this front. The community surrounding the project definitely wants to see the now mature system implemented in other useful ways.
With that, I've put together a bit of an action plan for working on this angle:
Given the possibility of various hang times in between trying to contact the appropriate people and organizations, I plan on further using the system and mostly focus on testing and fixing bugs in tandem. I am also planning on trying my hand on writing up user docs for some of the existing modules once I am qualified to do so (have literally no experience in user docs, so it should be interesting).
In the meanwhile, I've been testing out the various modules (found some bugs that I need to add to the tracker and will do so asap). I've also picked out a few bugs that I'm going to try to fix in the next few days (if I get Launchpad to be my friend, my contributions should get updated to the dashboard).
To keep this post not excruciatingly long, I am going to post the next subject (the results of my preliminary research) in a post to follow. I've been a bit overloaded this week, with my GRE this weekend, and am planning on picking up the pace after that.
After speaking with some of the developers, they seemed very interesting in me working on this front. The community surrounding the project definitely wants to see the now mature system implemented in other useful ways.
With that, I've put together a bit of an action plan for working on this angle:
- Preliminary Research (mostly done)
- Contacting Organizations (I'm here)
- Building Use Cases
- Putting together a blueprint
- Developing the implementation
Given the possibility of various hang times in between trying to contact the appropriate people and organizations, I plan on further using the system and mostly focus on testing and fixing bugs in tandem. I am also planning on trying my hand on writing up user docs for some of the existing modules once I am qualified to do so (have literally no experience in user docs, so it should be interesting).
In the meanwhile, I've been testing out the various modules (found some bugs that I need to add to the tracker and will do so asap). I've also picked out a few bugs that I'm going to try to fix in the next few days (if I get Launchpad to be my friend, my contributions should get updated to the dashboard).
To keep this post not excruciatingly long, I am going to post the next subject (the results of my preliminary research) in a post to follow. I've been a bit overloaded this week, with my GRE this weekend, and am planning on picking up the pace after that.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Hello!
Introduction:
This semester I will be working on Sahana Eden for the Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) program.
Eden, a project of the Sahana Foundation, is a free and open source disaster management system. There are two versions of Sahana, Agasti and Eden, the former being php-based, and the latter being python-based.
The project is led by a project management board, a group of people designated by the Sahana foundation to ensure that the project moves forward. The head of this group, Fran Boon, is also the "gatekeeper" of the code repository. The type of open source workflow that Sahana Eden uses is one that was previously unfamiliar to me. There is a single owner of the repository, and contributors download read-only branches which they can then request to be merged with the main branch when they add code. When the merge request comes in, the gatekeeper reviews the additions and either accepts them or rejects them as appropriate.
Relevant Technologies:
Web2Py - Web2py is the web framework that Sahana Eden is built on top of, and it was not web framework that I was familiar with prior to looking into Sahana. But after installing it and playing around with the admin application, I've found that it's fairly similar to Django (another python-based web framework) on the surface, although I wouldn't know if it's similar under the hood. For those who haven't heard of it, web2py is a full-stack (integrated server, DB, etc) web framework both programmable in and written in Python.
Bazaar - Baazar is the type of version control system used by Sahana. It's a distributed version control system (putting it in the same vein as Git, versus the centralized vcs's like CVS or Subversion). So far, it's fairly user friendly but seems to do everything far more slowly that I'm used to, I'm not sure if it's just a networking issue or if Bazaar really just is slow. I previously have fairly extensive experience with SVN, and a respectable amount of knowledge of Git, and am now more of a fan of the latter.
LaunchPad - Launchpad is a set of online, open-source, collaboration tools for software projects. Both the Sahana Eden project as well as my own contribution branch will be hosted on Launchpad. Launchpad uses another piece of software called Loggerhead, to view Baazar-based repositories.
Immediate Plans:
After a little bit of difficulty, I got Eden up and running, and have been playing around with the system. I've also been looking through the source. My immediately goals are to look into some testing and ease my way into the project through bug fixes, I will be getting into this in the next few days. From there, I'd like to target a project in development on the blueprint list. I will be putting together a preliminary schedule by the end of the weekend.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Professor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy for the opportunity to participate in RCOS this semester. I am sincerely sorry that I had difficulty in getting my project up and running. And as always, thanks to Sean O'Sullivan for making the program possible.
This semester I will be working on Sahana Eden for the Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) program.
Eden, a project of the Sahana Foundation, is a free and open source disaster management system. There are two versions of Sahana, Agasti and Eden, the former being php-based, and the latter being python-based.
The project is led by a project management board, a group of people designated by the Sahana foundation to ensure that the project moves forward. The head of this group, Fran Boon, is also the "gatekeeper" of the code repository. The type of open source workflow that Sahana Eden uses is one that was previously unfamiliar to me. There is a single owner of the repository, and contributors download read-only branches which they can then request to be merged with the main branch when they add code. When the merge request comes in, the gatekeeper reviews the additions and either accepts them or rejects them as appropriate.
Relevant Technologies:
Web2Py - Web2py is the web framework that Sahana Eden is built on top of, and it was not web framework that I was familiar with prior to looking into Sahana. But after installing it and playing around with the admin application, I've found that it's fairly similar to Django (another python-based web framework) on the surface, although I wouldn't know if it's similar under the hood. For those who haven't heard of it, web2py is a full-stack (integrated server, DB, etc) web framework both programmable in and written in Python.
Bazaar - Baazar is the type of version control system used by Sahana. It's a distributed version control system (putting it in the same vein as Git, versus the centralized vcs's like CVS or Subversion). So far, it's fairly user friendly but seems to do everything far more slowly that I'm used to, I'm not sure if it's just a networking issue or if Bazaar really just is slow. I previously have fairly extensive experience with SVN, and a respectable amount of knowledge of Git, and am now more of a fan of the latter.
LaunchPad - Launchpad is a set of online, open-source, collaboration tools for software projects. Both the Sahana Eden project as well as my own contribution branch will be hosted on Launchpad. Launchpad uses another piece of software called Loggerhead, to view Baazar-based repositories.
Immediate Plans:
After a little bit of difficulty, I got Eden up and running, and have been playing around with the system. I've also been looking through the source. My immediately goals are to look into some testing and ease my way into the project through bug fixes, I will be getting into this in the next few days. From there, I'd like to target a project in development on the blueprint list. I will be putting together a preliminary schedule by the end of the weekend.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Professor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy for the opportunity to participate in RCOS this semester. I am sincerely sorry that I had difficulty in getting my project up and running. And as always, thanks to Sean O'Sullivan for making the program possible.
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