We want to get information about alumni besides what they (are comfortable with) enter under their name. This can give us statistical input on what fields, positions, earning potential, willingness to donate, donate for the specific cause of the IITization, etc. Take a look at the IIT50 survey, for example.

We need to evaluate and select open source software to implement such surveys. The surveys would have to be tied to the Alumni Database to ensure that only alumni, and not some random souls, express their views.

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.

At this time, only the core ITBHU.org team can post articles under various categoris on the site that anyone can comment on.

The goal is to have simply php-based discussion forums that any regsitered alumnus can start a conversation under. Identify the software tools that will work with alumni registration. Define sections of the alumni-only site where job postings, resumes, institute contributions, iit efforts etc. can be discussed.

We are looking for a volunteer to own this and work with the (new) owner of the alumni registration todo.

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:

• We would not allow creation of arbitrary mailing lists contrary to what the original post suggested
  
• Mailing lists will be pre-defined and will be based on multiple different criteria like class, batch, class & batch, all alumni etc.
  
• There may be other mailing list created based on a chapter, project and Special Interest Group affiliation
  
• There will be a mailing list for organizational announcements from ITBHU.org itself
  
• Subscription to mailing list will be tied to the registration and alumni will have complete control over which mailing list they subscribe to
  
• Alumni will be able to change the subscription status for various mailing lists
  
• Mailing lists will be "closed", i.e. only people that are members of the mailing list would be able to post to the mailing list
  
• Mailing lists will be un-moderated
  
• Subscription and unsubscription will be closed too; the only way to subscribe/unsubscribe would be through the registration process or change-of-profile process
  
• Each registered alumni will have the option to reserve a unique virtual E-Mail address and associate with it their real E-mail address. This will be a well known and guessable address based on the name of the person and the branch/year-of-graduation (e.g. aakash_sahai@cse88.itbhu.org). ITBHU.org will provide services to forward any E-mail sent to this address to the associated real E-mail address.

DONE.

To protect alumni email privacy and also to give them a permanent email address they can be proud of, several associations assign email addresses that are forwarded to the alumni's privately stored email addresses.

The taks is identifying tools and policies to store each registered alumnus's private email address in the database and assign them a public email address such as firstname.lastname@cse87.itbhu.org that the server forwards to their

This will be tied to the convention where every one is identified by their first name, last name, three letter branch and year of graduation. We are already using usernames to access this site like "Sanjay Dani CSE87".

We are looking for an owner for this who is familiar with sendmail configuration, dns issues, email redirects and scripts to manage the redirections.

DONE.

(Sept 13, 2003: An initial board of directors is in place. We have identified some volunteers. However, this is an on-going process. Most of the navar links have gone live except for alumni registration. We are in touch with a few alumni who work for the government in New Delhi and are in the process of forming an action group.)

As soon as the navbar links go live, get in touch with alumni who are likely to contribute to the things to do.

Identify early influencers on charter, the organization and potential board of directors. We seek help from alumni who are confident of connecting with the decision makers in the Indian education ministry and the university commission for conversion into an IIT.

We will have a second round to contact all alumni after Alumni Registration and Authentication is in place.

We are looking for an owner for this.