Second project update for Nominet Trust

The full report we submitted to The Nominet Trust is copied here below and the full budget report is attached. Well done all!

• Transition Network: Project Sharing Engine progress report
• Application Reference: YOOV1303931247
• Report delivery deadline: 16/03/12
• Author: Ed Mitchell
• Status: Final

Workstream one report:

Our initial meetings and subsequent online communications with our webmaster community went well and gave us the direction we needed to proceed with the design and build phases of the 'alpha' product. We are now in the middle of the alpha product build phase and hope to deliver it in early April as planned.

Please summarise any project developments not covered in your Project Flightdeck:

Social:

The webmasters community started well, and there has been some good feedback from them about the design of the product. We have had some challenging conversations which required some specific attention, but handled delicately, they have shown us some improvements we can make to our overall work (for the whole web proect as well as the Project Sharing Engine Project) so they are appreciated.

Technical:

We initially planned to spend a regular amount on maintenance, but since decided to roll this up into a larger maintenance overhaul later in the year on the hosting servers as we expect this will be required after the alpha phase testing. We are currently discussing whether to use this on another 'virtual server' set up or to maintain our own hardware - both options have their pros and cons - our aim is flexibility as the product is unpredictable at this point. Otherwise, the technical development is proceeding well.

Tell us about any unexpected support you've recieved to help deliver the project? e.g., pro bono support, financial help? (200 words max):

None at this point.

Please detail any unresolved issues affecting your project that are outside of your control: 

As in our summary, we are are unsure of which route to take with our web hosting options, but this is a good sign; we are discussing it a lot and don't need any help right now.

Please tell us about any issues affecting your organisation that may impact your project delivery e.g. staff capacity, funding levels:

Ed the project co-ordinator is getting married; following his fiance's redundancy, they have decided to use the summer as an opportunity to travel in Europe and visit Transition groups in Europe. Following discussions in Transition Network, we have agreed that Laura Whitehead will take on the co-ordinator role over the summer. This has been approved by Nominet Trust. We do not expect this to affect the project.

Please tell us about any significant changes to your project budget since your last report e.g. overspend, additional costs:

Our situation is that we aren't spending the money yet! We have not spent the maintenance money as we agreed it would be best to roll it up into a big webhosting change once the alpha product had been tested and we could see it in action. So it will appear as unspent. We definitely will spend it though. Also, at this moment, the development team are in the middle of their development work and will not invoice us until we reach the end of this build phase - so our development and design budgets are looking unspent too - but that is just as we are mid-budget. We are using the money!

What activities or events do you have planned, over the next period, to promote your project and raise its profile?:

Our main communications tool at this point is the project blog; we blog the project regularly. We also put updates into our monthly newsletter to our full list. We will have our next face to face group meeting in May/June, and will have a workshop on the project at our annual conference.

Please tell us about any ways we have been able to help recently and what the impact of this has been:

We are working with The Media Trust on our communications plan. We have got our first plan together which is being shared with them. We really appreciate this - being a small emergent organisation focused on support, we can't afford a specific communications role as such - so this is great!

Are there additional ways in which we could offer you support?:

At this point, can't think of anything, thank you.

About the author

Ed is the Web Manager for Transition Network. This means that he works on all the web stuff from the day to day support, to tactical activities to strategic and special projects work for Transition Network about linking up all the Transition Initiative websites without them having to come to the main site all the time for updates and news.

He lives in Bristol, likes digging and climbing, growing vegetables and reading, bicycles and books, swimming, camping and generally being outdoors.