As a chapter coordinator or an author of one of the ITBHU.org sites, you may be puzzled by the term blog.

Here is some background. The ITBHU.org site actually consists of several, semi-independent sites. These sites share similar content layout, color scheme and are hosted on the same server under the ITBHU.org address but the information content of each site is independently managed by a small group of alumni with exclusive posting privileges for that site. This way, a focused alumni group interested in running a local ITBHU.org chapter or a specific project such as Library improvement or the IITization effort manages their site without interfering with or dependence on other sites. This orchestrated delegation and autonomy empowers volunteers to do their bit freely.

At the outset, we wanted these focused groups to be able to launch their sites quickly without getting bogged down with the details of setting up their own server, their own domain name, their own content management system, hiring a designer that does the graphics and the HTML, etc. etc. In fact, when ITBHU.org started a year ago, we found that by the time charged up alumni solved half these problems, they lost momentum. Or conversely, if they ignored these problems, the word about their amazing work never got out and never gathered momentum and wide recognition. We had to solve this problem first in order to be the global umbrella organization for all ITBHU alumni.

The first goal of ITBHU.org was to empower alumni groups to focus on what they do best: authoring content for their site from time to time and leaving all the above details to be solved by a core set of ITBHU.org volunteers once for all.

Then we stumbled upon the newly emerging weblog (shortened to blog) technology. In simple terms, a Blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal. Many blogs are personal musings, while others are collaborative efforts based on an area of mutual interest. It was the collaborative aspect of the blog technology and its continued momentum as an evolving technology with open source foundation that convinced us to zero in on the Movable Type system. (In our humble opinion, today the blog technology is to the future of structured, secure and updatable web what the hyperlink technology was to the world wide web ten years ago.)

We are using it as a collaborative, web content authoring and management tool. The best thing about the tool is that it allows for the separation of responsibilities among three types of experts that pretty much operate independently without stepping on each other's toes:

1. the authors of content post articles as and when they please marking them for a specific site and category;
2. the template experts define the layout of how the authored information modules are presented -- for example, displaying five latest postings in the center column, ten latest comments on the right column, links to all the chapters in the left column, and so forth; and
3. the site designer define the stylesheets that govern the fonts, colors, borders, spacing, titles, dates, etc. for each of the information modules.

So the core group of ITBHU.org volunteers focuses on the second and third bullet creating a shared infrastructure for the management of all the ITBHU.org sites. While the alumni authors get a running start on their project or chapter by focusing on only the first bullet.

As we raise more money, we would definitely love to outsource the third bullet to a professional stylesheet designer for a better look and feel. We can also outsource part of the second bullet so they can finesse the templates for say making all the sites look more corporateish and less bloggish, or any other flavor, with one click of a mouse.

Lastly, we are actually seeing interest from other voluntary organizations to use some of our technology to streamline their collaborative work. As a non-profit organization, we intend to share this freely with others.

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