UnaMesa » 2007-08-29

Aug. 29 Call Notes

Agenda

*A review from Martin B on the integration of TW and SR.
*MORE project - suggestions on the best route to take for both the prototype and for the long term
*Update on SMS gateway- Jon will present his questions and findings on best mechanism for getting a prototype off the ground
'''

TiddlyWiki (TW)

Installing ZiddlyWiki at tiddlywiki.com - this is one of the server based versions of TW and it was hosted on a site that went bust so has been defunct ever since - we'd like to get that back up and running as one of the server side adaptations of TW

TW stats -
make them password protected to keep potentially sensitive info secure - Andreas will take care of this and talk with Jeremy about level of protection needed and access
Also there are historical stats to be included
Andreas will enable tiddlywiki server to use compression to deliver content

Misc
*The minutes of last week's meeting were posted to a blog - is this the best way to record the minutes since others may need/want to update them? Greg would like to see it as a webpage and then have a pointer to the blog - the blog is useful to have a running list

SharedRecords (SR) integration
(update by Martin)
*Martin got that going and circulated it to the group - now he needs feedback before going forward so that he can address real problems and not hypothetical ones - he will do updates after receiving feedback
*(Greg )- we were discussing the possibility of putting links to all of the UM, intermission and all the various public and private repositories into a TW and then have that synchronized through the SR mechanism - we would have essentially a wrapper around all of the UM and specific project information - is the synchronization stable enough to do that and use it as a working example? And would this be a good first working example to provide feedback to you on what's missing? (Martin) - it is stable enough to do that - only problem is that if you have a slow connection the update can be so slow as to give the impression that it's not taking place - no reason, though, that it can't be used for real - the mechanism uses the standard server adaptor so, in principle, it can work over any server side back end we use for TW so it's not a SR specific application - it could work on the social text (ST) site once it's set up, just replace the SR adaptor with the ST adaptor and set up the feed to an appropriate work space

MORE project
(update by Priya)
*This week Saq and Eric worked on the prototype - got the video in and Saq is now working on the layout
*Priya got a prototype ready by using the service that's available so now it needs to be tied in with the prototype Saq and Eric are working on and we'll have something ready by the 1st.

SMS
(update by Jon)
*The service Priya found is a good option for getting prototypes off the ground, the only drawback in the long run is that it attaches advertisements to the text message that you send back so that would be an issue from a production stand point - but it's not a problem in the prototype stage
*In the US you're still looking at a $1000/mo fee for the short code if you want to be running a production estimate and that's independent of all other technical charges such as air time
*Internationally, there's no solution that works across international boundaries that's at all cheap so "click a tell (?)" appears to be the cheapest service that can be used and they have different rates depending on the cell carrier being used in a particular country. For example, Bangladesh has 3 different cell phone carriers and you have to purchase your phone # from each carrier so that their cell phones can text to your number, so setting up the web service for an SMS gateway in a country internationally has varying degrees of difficulty
*Neil has been looking at how to get IVR set up there rather than looking at a more expensive externally located solution - Yusef has connections to all three carriers there - we have an IVR company willing to dedicate their software to us free of charge for this project and the boards are only $125/line - if the boards are stable and the software is good this is a good price as compared to other solutions - technically you're supposed to be certified in countries for this IVR equipment and we're not sure if the boards are certified yet in Bangladesh so we're trying to get this info on whether or not this hardware could be set up easily in Bangladesh or not - the prices quoted by Yusef for getting it set up with one of the mobile carriers were around $40,000 USD and the IVR technology would have to be set up with each of the carriers - need to speak with Yusef to find out why this needs to be done with each carrier
*There are not a lot of cheap IVR sol'ns out there because the companies that typically use the technology are price insensitive
*Ideal solution is a village kiosk with a skype relay - doing this with IVR and over cell phones is not hard, it's just expensive
*Figuring out a better medium that still doesn't require literacy is the goal
*Doing video feeds would work really well if there was a way to disseminate those on a large scale (i.e. through broadcast tv)
*This problem is one that many are facing - if we could provide some infrastructure that was available for social enterprise purposes it would be a good resource for the communities

Infrastructure
(update by Andreas)
*Switching over the SR web server to the new version of Radiance to make the download page easier to maintain
*Reorganization of SR code base still in progress - (Greg) - we need to have an idea of when the reorganization of SR will be complete as we're in the process of talking with other groups about doing different clients for SR and I don't want to begin those conversations until the code base is done and will not be changing

Monitoring
(Greg)
*Marianne will be a repository for FAQs on the various groups such as Google groups, TW or SR - for example, when Eric or anyone associated with UM provides help, she will collect the responses and post them in a single place where it's easier to find instead of having to read through the whole newsgroup

Fund raising & contribution approach
(update by Greg)
*Still scheduled to speak with Victor (CFO)& Jessica Margolan about putting together a one page brochure about UM that everyone affiliated with it can use to explain what we do, why we're doing it and how - in order to start building more connections with other organizations, especially other social enterprises and be able to present UM in a succinct way
*Hoping to have contribution agreements, copyrights and materials available for all UM projects by next week - at some point we want material to be contributed to UM so that the assignment of the copyright is there and UM can license it under the terms that make sense for a particular project. This will allow for integration and an easy to understand method of how to compensate people for making contributions:
Those on retainer - the material you create will be assigned to UM
Those not on retainer - will receive one-time payments on behalf of the community in exchange for their contributions
As an author, when you make a contribution to UM, you get a grant back of a non-exclusive license to that code and you're able to license that to anyone else in a non-exclusive way under whatever license you choose
"Creative commons by attribution" is compatible with anything else as long as you provide the link back or attribution by whatever way specified by the contributor or the owner then you can combine it with any other code or work any way you want
"Creative commons by attribution" is a license that seems to be compatible with almost any other open licensing scheme. The people at Creative Commons have worked very hard to make it have meaning in as many jurisdictions in the world is possible. This is extraordinarily hard to do- that's why UM has settled on it as the default
"Creative Commons by attribution" is the default license granted to anyone associated with UnaMesa. For the general public, "Creative Commons for noncommercial use" is the default. (We're encouraging people who want to use the code for commercial purposes to work with and contribute to UnaMesa in one way or another.)

Action Items

*Andreas
look at server based version of TW and see if can get it running
SR code base - get that into position for others to start building on top of it

*Andreas & Cory - give an update next week on when the code will be complete

*Marianne
put conference call minutes on UM wiki page as well as on blog and put link to wiki page on blog - unamesa:conferencecallminutes or something similar - that way we'll have an historical record that's easier for everyone to access & modify if necessary
investigate free conference call numbers for those in other countries
Create a list of the UnaMesa repositories (Wiki, web site, google docs, socialtext site, blog) and see about putting them into a single HTML (TiddlyWiki) page with the help of Martin (or Saq/Eric).

*Marianne & Eric
propose how to gather and store FAQs in an efficient way and start to have in the weekly notes the questions that have come up on the TW & Google groups that were answered by people affiliated with UM

*Priya -
actual working demo link to the MORE project
document how the broadcast/response script works

*Jon
Investigate IVR further - particularly with respect to the difference between IVR and SMS - can we get close enough with SMS or some conbination of SMS and live calls or calls to Skype #s ?
then speak with Greg to discern if UM should invest in short codes in the US and an international IVR system for at least prototyping and start working with in-country organizations who might be able to secure a local IVR system at a lower cost

*Greg
will have a draft of UM information sheet that all can give feedback on

*Martin
**Have an initial take at putting all of the various UM repositories of information into a single TW and synchronizing that with SR
--[[User:MarianneSemenoff|MarianneSemenoff]] 14:18, 31 August 2007 (PDT)

[[UnaMesa:ConferenceCall/2007-08-22|Previous Conference Call]]<br/>
[[UnaMesa:ConferenceCall/2007-09-05|Next Conference Call]]

[[Category:ConferenceCalls]]