Fall 2007

-We had split up into small, temporary, four-man groups to look a little more at the different "categories" we had found on last Friday, the day of the last milestone. Leaders were choosen on a volunteer basis for these groups (though some people were already gone and thus unable to volunteer). I volunteered to be the leader of my group. In my group (the search/navigation team), we were able to meet both Saturday and Sunday and talk though a lot of options and ideas (see Meeting Agendas, Minutes->Navigating Information group->Note 09-16-07)


-We split up into four smaller "main" groups, three in each. These included the three topics from before (Content, Authoring and Search/Navigation) and a fourth back-end group.


-We also added two "extra" groups, a Technologies developement group and a presentation group. These groups each included one of the non-leader members from each of the four main groups.


-The team leaders (of the main groups, and Derek happened to be there) met on Tuesday to discuss what needed to be done. We agreed that there needs to be a clear interface line between the back-end and the front-end. We discussed some what might be necessary, but decided it was the goal of each group to figure out what they needed from the back-end by the set Thursday lunch meeting. See Meeting Agendas, Minutes->9018 TeamLeaderMeeting for more details on the meeting.


-I talked with the two members of my group Wednesday in/after class (it had to be individual because Sohum was tied up with the presentation team during class, so I talked with Dave during). Dave and I decided upon some basics, and agreed to research some information on how other websites do their searching for user-created data. We decided to look, in particular, at the sites where the search engine is not the goal of the site. Dave was assigned E-bay, Sohum Amazon and me Wikipedia. These results were to be done by 10am the next day (thursday) so I could look at them before the lunch leader meeting. See Private Documents->Search Navigation Team for the results of Dave and Sohum. I didnt type mine, so they aren't up...I'll try to type them up and put them in there soon. As a former Comp410 student working at National Instruments said, "If it's not written down, then it doesn't exist!"  -- SW


-The team leaders met at lunc on thursday to give the specifics. We saw the GUI mock-ups that would be for the meeting and each said what we needed for the interface. The search/navigation team needs
*a search functionality that, given a string (of keywords), a category(possibly) and the number of desired results, the back end would search and return the top 100 results (by relavence only). The search team will probably be the ones to implement this in the back-end, but the interface needs it. Results possibly returned as an ordered list of contentIDs
*to retreive a "preview" of content (to display) from the contentID
*to retrieve author, rating, and possible other small details of content from the contentID


-We had our customer meeting and went over the GUI mockups and project descriptions with Luke. See Meeting Agendas, Minutes->9-20-2007 Customer Meeting for details of the meeting.


-We received our tablet-PCs in class Friday and got them set up. (Paperwork signed, accounts intialized) Ive had fun playing with mine :).

-The team leaders were unable to meet until Tuesday evening, thus putting off my group meeting. The reason was because everyone had scheduling issues, and even the choosen time was during Felipe's TA hours. This meant my meeting for my group was put off until Wednesday, so we had a couple "dead" days, of sorts. The reason I put it off was because I did not know what my group should be focusing on to start with, as before the meeting my only direction was the team name (and I supose what we had discussed as the temporary group).
Did you really have no idea what your group was supposed to do until the team leader meeting, or were you just waiting for the last specifics?   In general, there's always a fair amount you do know, so there's always lots to do.  -- SW

-Search/navigation can't really be done until there is at least a semi-working back-end (with information to test). Stub-code, stub-code, stub-code!!   You don't need the fully operational code just to get started.   -- SW

 

 

Therefore our direction is a little less clear, but we do have a lot of research and such to do before we could begin coding anyway. Still, I feel mildly uncertain of what we are to be doing as not milestones have been set (by Friday).

-We have set a definite time every week (Thursday lunch) to meet with the team leaders, so we can check in weekly and thus won't have to wait, so that shouldn't be an issue in the future.


-The search/navigation team will do research and figure out algorithms to use. We will plan out exactly how to do the searching, and prototype for now. We have a lot of that to do, so it'll be fine. Also, since I'm typing this Saturday (late), Brad has posted milestones, so that should solve a lot.

-I think its good that the groups are small but still have leaders. This means that its more one-on-one and easier to meet, but there is still someone to give direction.


-I also like that, at this stage, everyone is either a leader or in two groups. this means that everyone should have something to do, and less time will be wasted (hopefully).

-On Monday's meeting, I feel that the three temporary teams didnt have enough time to present, and thus were very rushed. I personally felt rushed and my "presentation" was therefore all the more scattered and jumpy.


-class time in and of itself hasn't been too useful. Monday, we were too rushed and didn't give everyone the desired time to present. Then on Wednesday, we didn't have anything to do for most of the class. On Friday it wasn't the fault of anyone, but with the laptops coming in, that absorbed the class, which is fine.

-Seeing as its nearly impossible to get the whole class together, I feel there must be a better way to use the class time. Maybe that's, if nothin else is pressing, having the groups all tell where they are. I think it would be helpful for everyone to know what all the groups are doing. I would like to have at least a general idea of what the rest of the class is doing, without having to go and read all the files put up by other groups (or in the future, code). I think everyone should have at least basic knowledge of the entire project, so as to keep that in mind. By splitting into the small groups in class, the groups get more and more seperated from one another.

-I really like that brad took the intiative and just assigned everyone to groups. That probably saved a lot of time, and I don't think anyone is wholely unhappy with the results. If they are, then it's their job to go and talk to him about it. The class represents a small company, with Brad as its head. That means he's our boss. That means he tells us what to do, which he did. I think its important to remember that the class is a company, not a democracy. While getting everyone's opion is important, and listening to it, someone must make the decisions. If we try to get the class to agree/decide everything (which we're not), then everything would take a lot longer, and we just don't have that time. Thanks Brad, for being a leader!

-As for the people in my small group, I haven't really had enough time with them to give too much opinion, at least of Sohum. I did work with Dave in the temporary groups, so I've seen a bit more of him. I really like that Dave isn't afraid to talk and tell me what he's thinking. In the small groups, its more important to make use of the three minds are beter than one thing. (Because it is only a group of three, if it were too big it wouldn't work the same.)

Sorry its so late guys! And wow, it's a lot longer than I planned.