2 CAME, PIZZA HUT SAW, GANG-STIR CONQUERED

Well, the title might sound a bit off track, there’s some story behind it. As all “Gang-Stirs” following this blog have read RK’s earlier post Somethings cooking! (stir-ring) me and RK met at Pizza Hut @ CP today (that explains 2 CAME, PIZZA HUT SAW part) and had a meeting of sorts (that explains GANG-STIR CONQUERED part). Without much further ado, I hereby put the minutes of the meeting (or discussion whatever one would love to call it):

Three broad points were on our agenda as outlined below:

  1. WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO?

One of the important points is what are we going to do as a team if we become one. The discussion was centered around:

  • Get or identify guys from varied backgrounds and technologies together. Already few “Gang-Stirs” have been identified for ownership of various tracks:
      • Mobile: GG
      • JAVA (ranging from middleware to front-end): JC/RK/NA/HKA
      • Rails: SD
      • Database/Backend: AP

 

  • Find/search for ideas that click. You can think about anything under the sun, but the implementation of the same should be possible for you and other “Gang-Stirs” to implement.
  • A website has to be put up containing a small description of our work/ideas. RK is driving this effort and will update once done.
  • Search for a hosting solution that supports JAVA/J2EE and we badly need this to be in place to proceed further.
  • Ruby hosting solution has been found. Check out justhost.com for more info.
  • Finally, need UI experts to design nice layouts for our ideas. I know most of “Gang-Stirs” (if not all) struggle at it.
  • R&D was also discussed, but it’s more of an individual rather than collective effort.

2. WHAT WE HAVE BEEN THINKING OF DOING?

The second which we discussed about. Few ideas which came out:

  • BIKE-ASSIST: Kind of a GPS/navigation system which would assist bikers/motorists find next option in case of breakdown. For starters, might be implemented on mobile/web platform. More info would be available once we actually start on this.
  • A RUBY PROJECT: Something similar to National UID started by Govt. of India under Mr. Nilekani. But the difference would be the identity of the person would not be based on data like ration card or gas connection etc. rather it would be on his own individual identity. SD can work on this.
  • E-Commerce Engine: I have been thinking about this for long, but it involves lots of effort and R&D from initial plan to final product. Hopefully, would start on this and come up with more details.
  • Work on improving and contributing to open-source projects under Apache preferably. This can vary from developing eclipse plugins to working on actual source code. Apache Maven has been identified for starters to work on the same.

3. THE PREREQUISITES BEFORE WE START WORKING

I think this is the most important part one needs to focus on before doing actual work. Few prerequisites have been identified for starters:

  • Complete ownership of the identified track is a must. Apart from doing the actual coding this would include mentoring the new guys, taking additional roles/responsibilites etc.
  • Each track would be responsible for their deliverable. By deliverable we mean a final product which we just need to deploy or copy and it would work without much additional rework. Apart from the deliverable, each track should have an extensive documentation on wiki or any documentation platform explaining features/known issues or bugs related to their respective deliverable.
  • Most importantly, need to stick to best practices and standards while going about our job/passion.

Well, that’s the whole summary of our discussions. Please feel free to comment and suggest further so that we might have a better perspective while going about our passion.