This week I focused on trying to locate the Drupal community in Iowa, in the hopes of getting people to help us execute the project. I contacted a "virtual" company, Lullabot, that specializes in training people in Drupal; Cliff and I spoke with them and there is a possibility they may do some training for us in November. I also found an Iowa users group on the Drupal groups website and put up a post asking for help. I was invited to their monthly meeting next week in Ames, but am unable to attend. The responses I got did show interest in the project, so I'm hoping I can figure out a way to work with them.
I also contacted an instructor in the Art department about the possibility of arranging for design students to "donate" templates for the interface. I emailed my Electronic Publishing instructor from last spring to ask his advice, and I also found a person in the ITS department who is a Drupal enthusiast and is involved in the developer community on campus. Cliff and I will be meeting with him, hopefully next week (incidentally, this led me to discover that there will be a "Code Camp" in Des Moines in November, which might be a good place to learn about Drupal and meet collaborators). Finally, I emailed Bharani, the new tech support person for the digital fellows, to see if she might also be a resource on the project.
So I basically have a lot of balls up in the air right now, and it will take some time for them to lead to anything concrete, but I feel like I've made progress. The challenge will be to get people who say they're interested in the project, to actually commit to working on it -- especially if it's on a volunteer basis.
Other things on my plate: looking for sample interfaces -- mostly site builders, which is pretty much the functionality we want. I especially like Google Sites and Weebly; they both have clean, uncluttered design and user-friendly interfaces. I'm also working on making a web page for the CIP project on the Widernet website, as an informational tool for people who may be interested in working on it. Also, I'm narrowing down the possible features and functions that we will want to include in each template.
