Explore ways that alumni can send emails to lists without the list being abused for spam by outsiders (maybe can mail a group only after logging in to the site).
Work with the software tools used for alumni registration.
Ideally group of alumni should be able to create the lists "on the fly" -- such as a specific class, specific branch, specific year, all alumni, all in a geographic area etc.
Aakash has downloaded majordomo software but it will be best to get an owner for this so he can look after several other things.
Status update: The majordomo software has been configured and a sample mailing list has been setup. Several decisions have been made with respect to the mailing lists:
This involves deciding the format of the information stored per alumnus, its validity, policy for sharing with the institute and other IITs alumni organizations, ensuring authenticated self-updating of the information by the alumni, privacy policy when sharing parts of the information on the web and only with other authenticated alumni.
Work with IITB and preferably use their database schema for storing fields such as name, nickname, batch, hostels, location, email/question for password recovery, etc. This is to learn from others instead of reinventing the wheel and also to facilitate any future pan-IIT info sharing.
Work with the Institute to get the graduate roll for first validation and registration of alumni. Share the database back online on a regular basis.
Select an open source tool that can facilitate collecting info, authenticating them, and making parts of the site open only to them.
The server platform is solaris, apache, mySQL and php.
Looking for an owner to lead with this.
Status Update: ( Aakash Sahai CSE88 )
The work on this activity has started with Ashish Singhal (CSE94) leading the effort on the database side. I am working with Ashish at the moment to define detailed functional specification and on evaluating and selecting the proper middleware tools. Once the specification has solidified, it will be posted to the main site to invite comments and suggestions from the alumni community.
DONE.
(Sept 13, 2003: The events blog is already in place and steadily taking announcements of alumni organized events. The blog also facilitates sending a trackback ping to the main site so links to latest events announcements are visible on the main site.)
Facilitate other chapters and alumni organizations to post their events as well as the upcoming events in the institute.
We have already been successful, through the comments feature, attracting two announcements -- one for the ITBHU-India chapter and another for the global BHU alumni meet.
We need an owner who can get in touch with the affiliates and alumni groupings out there what want to reach a wider audience. The owner will also explore if we can create a blog where anybody can post common interest announcements.
DONE.
(Sept 13, 2003: Many of these ideas have been incorporated in to the articles of incorporation, the bylaws for the non-profit corporation and on-going resolutions of the board of directors. These will be posted publicly when the lawyers give a green light that the formalities of the non-profit are completed.)
Aakash has started off with excellent ideas. He will shortly post a summary of the roles the charter outlines for alumni in the US, in India and current students.
The charter will cover the multi-pronged strategy for IIT conversion.
If you want to be involved in the early stage of defining the charter, please volunteer by email (do cc editor@itbhu.org when emailing Aakash as he is extremely busy with work issues) to help make this happen.
Comments :
Aakash,
I will be willing to help in this effort. Please let me know what areas you need help in for this particular task,
Manjiree Jalukar ( Tare ) batch of 88
S.Viswanathan(B.Tech,ME,89)
*** This ToDo has been completed and assigned priority 9 ***
The first itbhu.org site was limited to only Sanjay as the author posting on a single, main page. Then we added the core four people as MT authors in addition to an author named "editor".
The next step is to divide the site into multiple blogs that share a single common style sheet and index template using file-linking of the templates to a single file.
The structure for this has been completed, the first shared blog this was is this site "How can I Help" itself under the URL /goals/. Other blogs for IIT, Alumni Registration, From the Institute, Affiliates and Why ITBHU.org?. IIT and Affiliates are shortly expected here. Some of the posts to the main site will be moved there.