Community Project at TechEd 2006 Australia
August 10, 2006
This year at TechEd I will be spending most of my time in the Dev’Garten helping developers, testers, business analysts, and architects get across Visual Studio Team System. Rather than produce squillion HelloWorld team projects in Team Foundation Server we have decided to do something useful and build one solution to help The Smith Family as part of the Microsoft Unlimited Potential program.
So – what are we building? Well, The Smith Family under Unlimited Potential runs an adult computer literacy program which is distributed around various regional facilities in Australia. At the beginning of the program the person undertaking the program fills in a survey in which they describe various things about their comfort level with computers, at the end of the program they fill in another survey and the results are collected and analysed to determine how effective the program is and to make any adjustments.
At the moment The Smith Family uses a combination of paper based forms, manual data entry and Microsoft Excel to perform this function.
The plan is to produce a web-based application that will be accessible over the Internet which allows someone to fill in these details in an online form – thus significantly reducing the time it takes to input the forms in, but also improve the data quality, ideally we’ll still be able to use the analytical capabilities of Microsoft Excel on the backend.
Call for Help
Sounds pretty straight forward? Not quite – we have only three days to get this done which means that we are going to need a core team of folks who are willing to help out with this project and help guide the efforts of others. My current thinking is that the core team needs:
- The Build Guy (me)
- The Web Guy/Gal
- The Database Guy/Gal
- The Excel Guy/Gal
If you are already coming to TechEd 2006, are interested in volunteering to work on something that will give you a warm fuzzy feeling then please shoot me an e-mail at mitch.denny@readify.net (please specify your strongest area when you nominate yourself).
August 10, 2006 at 3:19 pm
[...] Want to do some coding at TechEd? Come help the Smith Family. Well, finally Mitch has got the plan sorted out enough that it can be talked about
When you come to the DevGarten at TechEd, you can sit and play with all things Visual Studio Team System. But instead of just playing, you can make a difference. Site down, grab a work item, and check in some code. What’s the end result? An online form entry site, to speed up some manual processes for the Smith Family. Got a bit of spare time? Grab several work items – it’s all for a good cause, and you get to play with Team System along the way. Read more about it on Mitch’s blog. He particularly needs some core team members to help drive the development in the right direction. Can you help? Filed Under: TechEd, Geek, MudHounding [...]
August 10, 2006 at 10:57 pm
[...] If so, check out Mitch Denny’s post all about the Community Project at TechEd 2006 Australia. This is a great idea and with Mitch at the helm you know its going to be a hive of frenzied activity. [...]
August 10, 2006 at 11:37 pm
[...] Mitch Denny blogs (Community Project at TechEd 2006 Australia) about one of the most interesting alternatives to a Hands-On Lab for learning Team System – get a group of people together and contribute to an actual solution for a worthwhile cause. Very cool! [...]
August 10, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Congratulations. I think its a fantastic idea. Good luck. An analyst and a tester might not go astray though. But I suspect the talent on the team will more than cover it off.
August 10, 2006 at 11:58 pm
[...] Mitch Denny blogs (Community Project at TechEd 2006 Australia) about one of the most interesting alternatives to a Hands-On Lab for learning Team System – get a group of people together and contribute to an actual solution for a worthwhile cause. Very cool! This year at TechEd I will be spending most of my time in the Dev’Garten helping developers, testers, business analysts, and architects get across Visual Studio Team System. Rather than produce squillion HelloWorld team projects in Team Foundation Server we have decided to do something useful and build one solution to help The Smith Family as part of the Microsoft Unlimited Potential program. [...]
August 11, 2006 at 5:05 am
Hi Brendan – you volunteering?
August 11, 2006 at 11:44 am
Its something I would love to do but unfortunatley I wont be attending this year
August 14, 2006 at 10:18 pm
[...] Smith Family Project [...]
August 15, 2006 at 5:31 am
Hi Mitch
I’ll be the Excel Guy (or gal, if that works better)
August 15, 2006 at 6:15 am
Hi Andrew – will you be wearing a dress? Need to know so I can take photos!
August 15, 2006 at 11:21 am
[...] In response to Mitch’s call for team leaders, I volunteered for the role of Excel Guy. I got this in reply: [...]
August 16, 2006 at 12:40 am
[...] Community Project [...]
August 16, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Online form ? Wouldn’t that be a good candidate for InfoPath and Forms Server within Sharepoint-2007 ?!?
And some windows workflow bits too – approval process within SPS – out-of-the-box.
August 18, 2006 at 11:09 am
Hi Chris,
You know – SharePoint 2007 would be perfect for this, but one of the places where The Smith Family will be using this software is with people that have virtually no computer skills when they start the program. So the amount of visual noise in SharePoint 2007 could be more confusing.
A simple web page is the ideal approach in this particular instance I think.
August 20, 2006 at 3:20 am
[...] Tomorrow afternoon I jump on a plane to head up to Tech.Ed in Sydney. I’ve spent this weekend working through my various presentations and at course, ensuring that things are ready to go on the community project come Wednesday morning. [...]
August 22, 2006 at 5:16 pm
[...] I will be spending some time in the Dev’Garten helping out with the Community Project. We will be building a Survey Engine for the The Smith Family Foundation. The project is being run by .NET guru extraordinaire - Mitch Denny. I was fortunate enough to be nominated to his team as “The Database Guy”. [...]
August 23, 2006 at 12:48 pm
[...] Well, day one of Tech.Ed is over and I am back at the hotel taking stock. It has been really quite amazing to see how attendees and a few individuals in particular (you know who you are) have taken to building a solution for The Smith Family community project. [...]
August 7, 2008 at 12:14 pm
[...] couple of years ago, there was a community project at TechEd Australia to help the Smith Family (in the DevGarten). This year, UNICEF are getting [...]