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anujkumar
August 6th, 2004, 02:26 AM
Jatland has beed in existence for many years now. It has and have had member who love it, and it's doing great!
But, where does it go from here?

We have had many suggestions in the past about what sort of things can be done to improve upon what it offers now, including some very heated ones, involving funds.

http://www.jatland.com/cgi-bin/ub/UltraBoard.cgi?action=Read&BID=10&TID=189&SID=48737

Many of the specific suggestions involves improving the message board. Like:

Member's directory..
business directory..
more features in post..
security.. public access
making it more eye catching
etc..

Many have been implemented..

But I think site has reached critical mass as far as member's board is concerned. 2000 members only 100's participate, i don't see more than 100's participating anyway,.. Imagine 1000's messages daily.. there won't be any regular member than..so in that sense it has touched upper critical limit as well.

but message board itself is serving some constructive purpose like offering career advice (Dr. Birbal Singh's thread etc), in addition to general purpose time pass and interection. Some members found Jat friends in far away land. Some would have improved their reasoning (winning an argument)/ writing skills :P and a few might have connected to their roots who missed a first hand experience of the same.

and free metrimonial service should be the best thing about Jatland to many members who does not participate in the message board. (if somebody got married through Jatland, they should definately give a big party to jatland members :) )


Bottleneck in all this improvement story is "money" and "time".

Some suggestions were about, how to generate funds for Jatland.. like making the membership paid (sounds an impossible idea to me), or making the metrimonial section paid etc.

Then there more general suggestion about expanding it to something more than a message board/member's forum, which doesn't seems to go anywhere, (so more suggestions invited!)

Then what the point of bringing it again?

One difference that I see is that there are more enthusiastic members now. So even though site administration does not have time and money, what can be done is just to decide what needs to be done, once the expansion if finalised, then they should ask members for "time" publicly and doners for "money" for specific purpose. I think out of 2000 menbers,.. It shoud succeed.

I recall Nitin mentioning that he has some plans ahead. I would like him and other site administrator's to detial if they have any plans about it.. including the possibility that it's doing great there is no need to do anything else.

more after responses!

ndahiya
August 19th, 2004, 05:37 AM
Anuj

There are a couple of issues we face. First is ofcourse the time. The second is technical resources. Lot of the suggestions require a significant amount of coding work to customize the site, coz almost none of the packages available off the shelf can be used as is... Unfortunately none of the mods are technically proficient enough to do it...

Obviously, it also brings us to the issue of time. there have been a reasonably large number of people offering to help, but the followup response has been exceptionally poor. To be fair, it is to be expected. So far its been difficult to find motivation and skills in the same person among those who have volunteered.

Money is less of an issue on a on-going basis. In the past, whenever we've asked for money, adequate amounts has been contributed. Obviously, when we would like to buy some software, we will need more, but that can be organized, I hope.

The site redesign is really a non-technical issue (from a design point of view). The present design is almost 4 years old, although it was executed professionally. One of the reasons of keeping it simple was to ensure quick loading times for the pages, esp for ppl with iffy net connections... I feel it is due for a update, but we need someone to take the initiative and come up with a functional design.

It all come backs to ppl!!

Nitin

Nitin

jtsagi
August 21st, 2004, 10:15 PM
Hi Nitin and Anuj: I think its really a good idea to have Jatland upgraded. I would suggest that instead of looking for volunteers we should make it as a "PAID" Student Internship Project. I read on few posts that some students are looking for internships. This will provide them with hands on experience (another feather added to their resume), some money and also a sense of satisfaction that were able to do something for the community and ofcourse in return we will be able to have a new look to Jatland.

I am sure we will be able to find some Jat folks who are willing to spend money towards this cause (which includes me). Let me know what you guys think about this idea and we can start working on it.

anujkumar
August 22nd, 2004, 08:34 PM
Thanks for the reply, Nitin.

I think Jatin has some point.

ndahiya
August 29th, 2004, 12:35 AM
Good ideas, but almost no student would have active experience with PHP/Perl... Also, how much do you pay... Remember, Jatland does not have an independent revenue stream...

jtsagi
September 9th, 2004, 06:30 AM
Nitin: Most of the educational and research projects in universities are being done by students who had little or almost no experience in those fields. The student life is all about learning new things. They bring new ideas and fresh insights to the workplace. You are more motivated to learn new things and enhance your skills as a student as opposed to a volunteer.

Lets say you will be providing the design and then the coding and testing part will take 50 hours. We can pay at the rate of 10$/hour meaning $500 for the entire project. I would recommend hiring two students as two heads really are better than one (big fan of XP Extreme Programming). Coding in PHP/Perl is no "rocket science" and even if it was Uncle Sam's greenery $$$ gadho ko bhi ghode main badal deti hain.



Money is less of an issue on a on-going basis. In the past, whenever we've asked for money, adequate amounts has been contributed.

You can count me in for making some contribution towards this cause.

[quote]Nitin Dahiya (Aug 28, 2004 03:05 p.m.):
Good ideas, but almost no student would have active experience with PHP/Perl... Also, how much do you pay... Remember, Jatland does not have an independent revenue stream...