[Tm4j-developers] Some news and an idea

[Florian G. H. <f.g...@gm...>]

Hello.

Kal, Gerd, I have some news I'd like to mention to you. Not about any
progress on the TM4J DOM package (yet), but perhaps worth discussing.

OK, the initial news is that I'm back from 3 weeks of training. I
have a few certification exams left to take, but at least I'm no
longer occupied 100% of the day. So I should be able to make more
time for TM4J in the weeks to come, and we'll see some progress on
the DOM package in the foreseeable future.

The other news is that my current project just bombed. I've been
working on a knowledge management project, TM-related, since
February. This started out as a college initiative (the "applied
science" bit, you know), and was about to be continued as such -- and
to hit commercial development -- this fall. Yesterday, two of the
five developers involved informed the rest of the team that they were
no longer interested (contrary to commitments they had made just
three weeks before), and the partner organization is more than likely
to go ahead and pursue the same thing with some other development
team. Bottom line for me is, I'm out. Bummer.

Now, I'm in a situation where a) I don't have a TM project on my
hands and b) I don't have a college project on my hands (the latter
is mandatory for my coming two semesters). I don't like either of
these two facts. :-) Now, I would like to know from you what you are
thinking about the following ideas: 

* For the record, delegate a specific pending task in the TM4J
project to me (e.g. work on the DOM package, if we want that),
* File that task as a one-man project with my college (FHS
Informationsberufe, Eisenstadt, Austria) with a projected 200
man-hours total amount of work -- that's the default for what they
consider a 9-month project, believe it or not. The number is totally
ludicrous, and is one of dozens of strange rules imposed by our PHB.
They always want lots of paper, status reports, and MS project files
to make the whole thing look like what they think is a professional
project.

Now, all of this is, as of yet, totally unofficial, and if at all
possible, will definitely require a lot of negotiation with the
college on my part and a bit of paperwork on your part. But I would
like to know if, provided I manage to get all obstacles out of the
way, you would be interested in actually taking that course of
action.

I fully understand that all this is happening a bit suddenly -- after
all, I've appeared in the TM4J project out of the blue just a few
weeks ago and none of you have had the chance of really getting to
know me. So absolutely no hard feelings if I get a no-go. :-) But if
you guys are thinking this is a feasible idea, please let me know as
soon as you can. I'd have to start contacting the college
administration ASAP and see if I can get them to approve. My classes
start on September 17, and if we want to do this, I should aim at
reaching some sort of productive stage by October 1.

I'd be pleased to read your comments,
-- Florian

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Florian G. Haas
FHS Informationsberufe, Eisenstadt, Austria
http://info.fh-eisenstadt.ac.at/~haasf/