2010 Report

Internet Presence Working Group - 2010 Report /// DRAFT ///

Terms of reference

The WG was established at the 2009 plenary with the proposal:

That CIMA tasks a working group to investigate the best way of achieving a better CIMA online presence, and gives it the authority to spend up to 250€ in establishing the initial site for delegates review and use.
If Delegates and FAI secretariat are happy with it, for it to be added to the FAI domain eg as cima.fai.org

WG members

José Luis Esteban (ESP) Chairman
Richard Meredith-Hardy (GBR)
Vladimir Silhan (CZE)
Thierry Montigneaux (FAI Secretariat)

Activity

In line with the collaborative philosophy laid out in the original proposal, the following points were considered essential:

A web application is a must. You can access your information universally using a common browser from your laptop, phone, e-book...
Everyone must be able to create documents and to change documents created by others in whatever way they think necessary. This is called "collective document ownership", in parallel to the "collective code ownership" that is giving so many benefits in agile software development.
Everyone must be able to create a new document so that they can send a link to a mail list instead of distributing a load of attachments that the receiver will eventually delete and lose.
A proper WYSIWYG editor is mandatory. Only programmers like markup.
A version control system must be available, so that any irrelevant changes can be rolled back or the whole history of the documents (and who did what) can be traced. Your document is no longer a Ming jar that can be broken by a clumsy user. Or it is, but you can always travel back in time and recover it.
You can
link-to: The 'subscribe to changes in documents' link target is not supported.

so that you quickly know when there has been an update.
There are always some restrictions in the rights to view or edit documents, and this must be managed through user groups. Group membership must be managed at a higher level, it shouldn't be part of the collaborative tool.

The best tool providing all these features is a wiki system, perhaps the ultimate example being Wikipedia. A search for suitable software was conducted by the WG and Confluence from Atlassian seemed to check all the boxes; has a good reputation, especially for its support, and an unlimited user licence looked as though it was free within the terms of their Community License program.

Preliminary tests of Confluence started 24/Nov for one month (eval license).

Learning
Spaces created.
CIMA, who is who
Compiling past championships

The quest for a free license

FAI asks for one and Atlassian rejects it
CIMA president explains and they accept
We need to use FAI name so the Secretariat wants to own the free license
We get the license on 4 Jan 2010

Installation

Jan 2010 - Thierry makes various efforts to install it on a FAI server, but hardware not adequate and no plans to acquire another server.
7 Mar 2010 - installed succesfully on an independent server
Various initial configuration difficulties solved with assistance from superb Atlassian support.
At FAI Secretariat's request; reconfiguration of original trial CIMA wiki schema to a 'subspaces' layout where it could be used for multiple semi-independent purposes, eg by other commissions.
15 Mar 2010 - added to the FAI domain as wiki.fai.org
12 April 2010 - Up and running with full 'production' status with all CIMA delegates loaded as users.

Authentication system

User id sent to CIMA delegates
Other commissions will have to wait until FAI has a centralised directory (LDAP)

Recently

[Championships info]
[S10 proposals]
[2010 Plenary]

Content

Spaces for

Reporting from [CIMA bureau]
Reporting from each subcommittee or working group
Reporting from the monitor of each upcoming event
Personal spaces
wiki documentation: overview, FAQ and Getting started guide

Content especially needed:

[This Plenary] - Please load all documents
Calendar - please include your events.
[Championships] - please include any historical stuff you may have, especially in missing ones
[Records] - please correct missing details
Lost delegates - some delegates don't have wiki logins because the email addresses registered with FAI bounce - can you help find these people?

Conclusion of 2010 work

The WG is generally very satisfied it has achieved the objectives as laid out in the original proposal:
- To develop collaborative tools for the activities of the different CIMA activities
- To establish a central repository of all CIMA related information rather than it being scattered all over the internet.

The software does all it promised (and more), and is reliable.
Cost of the wiki being based on an independent server is within CIMA approved budget - 200€ pa.
However, while many CIMA delegates are not creating and editing documents it is still not being used to anything like its full potential.

Future work

The WG needs continued approval from the Plenary to:
- Continue to maintain and develop the wiki.
- Continue with a remit to spend up to 250€ pa of CIMA funds on WG activities.

All CIMA Delegates
- The wiki will only begin to realize its full potential when all CIMA Delegates start creating and editing pages in the wiki.

Other
- The WG must establish with Secretariat a protocol for what content goes on the 'main' FAI website rather than the wiki.