A jump start to the week

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a very good weekend, be it relaxing or busy as you wanted it to be! On my end, I took a couple of days off and had the chance to fly to Budapest to attend a summit on citizen media. It was great to network and be on the receiving end of so much information - and even to see that many people there were familiar with NABUUR.

As with every Monday morning, accompanied by numerous cups of coffee, we began with a meeting to make sure all systems are still go.

Some exciting news: Gertjan, our resident theming expert, has begun work on the NABUUR homepage and the Village homepage and we’re aiming to have something ready to show to you by this Thursday.

Also, we reviewed the current priorities to make sure nothing is being left behind, and made a planning accordingly.

Make sure to subscribe to the Twitter updates (follow us on www.twitter.com/nabuur) to get the latest happening – And we’d like to hear what you think, so please post your comments on this blog and join the discussion.

Until next time,

Romina

Migration

Friday afternoon, beer, wine and crisps.

Frans is bringing the good news: migration of the most important data is completed!
The 40.000 postings, the Neighbour profiles and the data of 152 Villages are migrated (copied). Still not visible but that will chance this Monday.

Also introducing beginning next week: the super search function on NABUUR.com. You can find basically anything you want (resources, Neighbours, the whole site) and it's organised and presented in an (almost) organised way! Imagine, you will be able to find anything (people, organisations, resources, postings etc) on the subject you are looking for....

Have an inspired weekend,

Gerdie

What's going on?

Romina and me are sitting with our faces towards two developers and they are not happy. After two days of silence we understand what’s going on and we would like to share that with you.

What’s going on?
I’ll try to explain in my own words. Last night Kester finished the migration. This was a huge job: imagine 40.000 postings, 12.500 Neighbour profiles, information from 152 Villages all moved to another website. This other website is called the developers website. Everything is behind the screens to make sure that the demo website is not harmed when something goes wrong. But then they noticed that the huge data migration has a negative influence on the performance of the developers website.



Frans Kuipers (lead web developer): ‘’it takes nearly 2 minutes to open the search tab. This is a problem we need to fix before anything else is done’’.

How do we continue
This will be a long night again for the developers team, trying to find out why the site is too slow now, trying to find an expert who can help out and continue with the look & feel as soon as possible. So we non-techies can start collecting feedback and test.

You can assist already now
If you know someone who is experienced in Drupal and My SQL: please send an e-mail to frans@nabuur.com as soon as you can!

A true team effort

Development of a website is not something which is done by a few people in the NABUUR office. Especially not the NABUUR website, which is a result of the input of many Neighbour discussions already in the summer of 2007. I think it's very special to see the commitment of people all over the world, dedicating their valuable time volunteering for the NABUUR.com website. This makes NABUUR a special place to work, having so many committed ''colleagues''.

Feedback team
The last weeks a group of Neighbours, have provided very valuable feedback during the development of the new Beta site. Under the guidance of Raul Alberto Caceres (facilitator and temporary NABUUR staff member from March-June) the feedback team was asked many questions on the functionalities of the (demo) website and for testing functionalities. Big thanks to Elsa Lama, Lynley Mackay, Carolyn DV, Barb Briggs, Jennifer Wells, Rahul Bhargava, Mary Smith and Tanja Simiatchieva. See their faces in the FlickR badge besides.


Volunteer developer
A Drupal volunteer also joined the NABUUR office to assist with the ''theming'' of the new site: Gert-Jan Idema. We would love to have a small interview with him, but he cannot be disturbed today because he is busy with the migration of all the data from the current database to the new site. Don't worry, the developers made a back-up. But this is an exciting process taking place behind the screens these days. More to follow tomorrow!

Gerdie

(PS we need you for the testing of the site, to check if all the data is there and on the right place, to test new registration, log-in procedures etc etc. Feel like spending a few hours the next 2 weeks? Send me an e-mail: gerdie@nabuur.com)

Picture of the day

Snapshot of Friday afternoon at the office in Amersfoort.

A pensive Frans contemplates his next big move (or is thinking "when are they going to stop taking my picture so I can get back to work?") and a 'typing-away' Kester is doing web development things I can't even begin to explain....

Feel like sharing?

Word on the blog has just gone out, so if you're reading us for the first time; welcome!

Feel like sharing this blog with friends and family, or fellow bloggers? It's easy as forwarding them the link and a quick message:

"Hey, I thought you may want to check out the new NABUUR blog. It's a nice way to keep up to date with latest developments, and count down together to the launch of the Beta site. And if IT isn't quite your cup of tea, don't worry - there's plenty of other things to read up on!"

Have a great weekend, everyone.
Romina

p.s. Are you on Twitter? If so, follow us at http://twitter.com/nabuur

Goodies

Inside the tag cloud above you'll see a list of terms that represent what's upcoming on the new website. Not everything is visible just yet but we wanted to give you a quick preview of what you can expect within the next few weeks. Obviously we're very excited about these new functionalities, especially since many of them have been requested by you for quite some time now!

Just a few of the goodies highlighted:

Chat - The chat is back! We'll be able to chat with one another in each Village.
Banners - Copy and paste the banner found on the right hand side of this blog and take NABUUR to your own site or email signature
Groups - Like minded people, connecting with peers, in their own space. Join a group or start one of your own

Here's hoping you like the preview...More where that came from, so check back!

And we enter the blogosphere...

Since the beginning of the development of the NABUUR 2.0 website, Neighbours have been assisting and interacting with the developers. With the developers working overtime, the Beta version (meaning all functionalities are ready-set-go) is almost there. To communicate all the goings-on, we felt a standard newsletter wouldn’t quite do the trick. We wanted to engage you in a more interactive manner, so we thought; if everyone else is blogging, why can’t we?

Think of this blog as your source for all things related for the NABUUR improved site, which will go live within a few days. Gerdie and Siegfried will also contribute to the blog; so you can rest assured that you won't be scratching your head with too much techie-speak.

Look around the blog; you'll see some new goodies, chances for you to actively participate; and regular updates on the countdown to the NABUUR Beta site, which by the way, we think will make you (really) smile!

And please don't leave us talking to ourselves; do contribute - we always look forward to reading what you have to say. We'll keep the blog going after the website launch and hope it will become a fun way to communicate from our screen to yours.

More coming soon...Stay tuned (and don't forget to subscribe to our feed so you can stay on top of all things NABUUR related).

Romina :)