DPRG mailing list archives: [DPRG] Web Page update

Wed Feb 28 02:20:47 CST 2007

Thank you very much to all of the individuals who donate time, money
and resources to keep this club going. It is incredibly generous what
people do for the DPRG. It means quite a lot to me.

I think ... that everyone has different motivations for the club. For me,
it is a forum to facilitate technology, primarily software, development
for robots. That is my main interest. But I also understand that if
everyone thought this way, the club probably wouldn't be as healthy
and active as it is.

I go back and forth on the marketing versus core engineering versus
education balance. The pure side wants to focus on engineering and
ignore marketing and education. But marketing makes the world go
around. And education is a very considerate thing we all benefit from.
So my guess is that all three: marketing, engineering, education, are
probably necessary for a vibrant group.

With my first job out of school, I remember someone told me that if
a company must choose between an engineer writing code or an
engineer writing documentation - that writing code almost always
wins. I think it is the same with whatever our personalities and aptitudes
allow. As a group formed for an engineering-oriented hobby, we are all
mostly focused on engineering issues - building robots, writing software,
maintaining and extending operational infrastructure. It is what we
know. Also, interactive marketing is a huge amount of work. So I think
we naturally focus on the engineering core when we run short of time.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
>From: "Bruce K. Harlan" <bkharlan at bkharlan.com>
>Sent: Feb 27, 2007 4:48 PM
>To: dprglist at dprg.org
>Subject: Re: [DPRG] Web Page update
>
>OK, didn't know that there were so many worms in that can... 
>My original thought was that if we are trolling for new members, our web
>page is probably our best advertising.
>
>I can write fairly well, but I could use a strong set of notes from the
>author. I could perhaps cobble something together for edit and review.
>What else can I do to help?
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Bruce K. Harlan
>
>
>> 
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:01:00 -0600
>> From: "R. Steven Rainwater" <srainwater at ncc.com>
>> Subject: Re: [DPRG] RE: Web Page update
>
>> I'll have to take some the blame for the website since I'm the
>> webmaster. It's been a while since I posted a general update on the
>> website status, so I'll throw that in as well. The free time I have
>> available for websites is divided between www.dprg.org, robots.net, and
>> www.advogato.org. The other two sites have been generating a lot more
>> feedback lately, so they tend to get a disproportionate amount of my
>> available time.
>> 
>> On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 09:55, Bruce K. Harlan wrote:
>> > The list of officers has not been updated.
>> 
>> This is normally done by the officers themselves but you're correct, it
>> hadn't been updated. I've taken care of it.
>> 
>> > The calendar is 2006.
>> 
>> The powers that be haven't decided on one yet. As soon as it's delivered
>> to me, I'll get it up on the website.
>> 
>> > No notes on upcoming March meeting.
>> 
>> If you mean the news field at the top of the page, I occasionally post
>> something about an upcoming meeting or event if I know it. Any of the
>> officers can edit this field as well. I'll ask around at the RBNO
>> tonight and see if anyone knows anything interesting to report about the
>> upcoming meeting.
>> 
>> > No new articles since 2002.
>> 
>> True, but we do have at least one new project (Dec 2006) and a couple of
>> new tutorials (2005, 2003) in the last few years. I generally post any
>> articles, projects, or tutorials that are submitted but getting people
>> to write articles is not an easy task. Especially with magazines like
>> Servo and Robot out there paying for articles. Some folks prefer to get
>> paid to write (if you're in that category, consider working out a deal
>> with the publisher to retain the rights to your article so you publish
>> here as well).
>> 
>> If you've written (or would like to write) a freely-licensed article for
>> the website, please send it and I'll be happy to post it. If there's any
>> single thing people could do to help me improve the website it would be
>> submitting articles (preferably as ASCII, ODF or some other
>> non-proprietary document format; and with public domain or freely
>> license photos or diagrams if possible). 
>> 
>> > I enjoyed Will's dissertation on motor torque at the last
>> > meeting. Can we publish information such as that?
>> 
>> Sure, write it up in an article format and send it to me, I'd love to
>> see it posted too. Will's done several very interesting talks including
>> one on gears that I think would make great additions to the site. But a
>> volunteer who could compose some articles based on his talks is needed.
>> I rounded up some public domain illustrations of gears to go with his
>> gear talk but never managed to get anyone to actually write the article.
>> 
>> Also, you didn't mention the photo gallery - I'm a bit behind on
>> submissions there. I've got CDs full of pics from David Ellis, David P.
>> Anderson, and at least one other person, queued up to add. (not to
>> mention 100+ images of my own). 
>> 
>> And, lest you think, I've been slacking off completely :-) most of the
>> work over the last few months has been in consolidating all the DPRG web
>> elements onto a single server. Original, the website was split over
>> three different shared servers. Now we've got a box pretty much all to
>> ourselves, which will give us a little more freedom going forward. This
>> was much needed work but doesn't produce much visible change that the
>> end user can see.
>> 
>> As part of the consolidation, the 40k pages of the mailing list archive
>> are now on the same server with the rest of the site. The list archive
>> has been rebuilt to improve the integration with the rest of the
>> website. We've also moved the list to a newer version of GNU mailman.
>> 
>> Just last week, I finished updating the site search on the list archive
>> to use Google's new AJAX-based search mechanism. Depending on how it
>> works out, we may switch to that for the main site search as well. 
>> 
>> I've been talking with Eric and the other officers about a few new
>> features that will be rolled out this year. I'll post more on those as
>> they go online.
>> 
>> -Steve
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------
>> 
>>
>
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