Great news! All parts of our data model are now in Rails! We used the Ruby gem Devise for the user model, and Prism now has user account capabilities (and the links for “sign in,” “sign out,” and “sign up” on the homepage)! The documents are also in the system and each has its own…. More.
Teaching CoffeeScript
As the Prism project has progressed, one of the technologies we kept pushing off teaching was JavaScript. We knew this is one of the core languages that they would need to learn to actually work with the browser, but kept trying to determine the best way to actually introduce JavaScript in a way that would…. More.
All Hail the Workplan!: Accountability and Collaborative Research
In our first official meeting as Project Managers, Sarah and I drew a line on the whiteboard that had two distinct endpoints – a start and a finish. The start point was that day’s date, January 17th, and the endpoint would be whatever date we could get the group to agree on for Prism’s launch.…. More.
teaching prism how to speak spanish and french
Well, it looks like me and Annie will go on different development branches for a few weeks. I have been assigned the noble task of teaching Prism how to speak Spanish and French. The goal is to give the tool the largest possible reach on day one. Internationalization has always been one of my hot-button…. More.
Done is the engine of more.
(My title is not mine! It is lovingly borrowed from Bre Pettis and Kio Stark’s “Cult of Done Manifesto”) I love lists almost as much as I love agendas and program management in general. Here is a status update in list form for you, Dear Reader. And Team, please feel free to expand/clarify/correct the following:…. More.
“Final” Prism Wireframes
Despite whatever I might have said in previous blog posts, coding was quite a challenge for me and not something I could see myself devoting sustained attention to, so I was pleased to find some inkling of intuition about graphic design. My days of designing my high school newspaper on antiquated Adobe software suddenly became…. More.
Teasing the Blogosphere
Describing visual work in a blog without being able to reveal the images is more than challenging: it’s boring. After we discussed this issue in our most recent Praxis meeting, the group suggested I post a Prism striptease. Linked below is a teasingly cropped and subtly altered image of the logo we decided on last…. More.
Building and Texts
Alex and I finally have something to show for all our work! We built the document model for Prism that allows us to add new texts to the database! It even passes the tests we built! We’re putting the finishing touches on it now, but we should easily make our deadline of this afternoon, so…. More.
Why I love project management
Last week Brooke and I celebrated our new roles as co-project managers by running our very first Praxis meeting. We had a fairly ambitious agenda, and I must admit that I was a little bit concerned about whether our enthusiastic (debate-loving) group would be able to get through everything we wanted to do, but thanks…. More.
Praxis, MLA 2012 and timeliness
I’m finally settling back into my C’ville routine. My last stop this winter break was the MLA convention in Seattle. Like many of my colleagues, I also felt that “the MLA’s heart (like a post-holiday Grinch) grew at least three sizes over the four days of the 2012 conference.” While last year echoed a prominent…. More.