I wanted to write this blog entry from long time but as I didntnt have much time to spare I could not

We spent hours and hours on phonediscussing what to do and  what not, discussions on CAMP, CBITWORLD, CBITUSA, whether to hire  students ,  what shd be the comittees and what will be their roles. Policy decisions..

Seriously speaking you can call me a nerd . Iam not much of a management person . This is what i learnt from this project.

Let me put in what all i remember

Arround January-February:

• I get a call from a person called Aditya and we discussed a lot on issues of Alumni (I never knew this was kind of interview for me to get into a set of ppl who think alike)
• We had  discussion for almost an hour or two  (I still remember the discussions about talking about the website, its visitors etc..)
• Next thing i knew was that i got into discussions for Portal Development, CAMP etc...

Arround March :

• As per the requests started developing the CAMP program with the codebase of Deus Infotech
• Found the code really not that worthy to expand on
•  Iam not good at JSP (infact have no clue of it before). I cant say iam good in PHP but i knew what to do
• Started rewriting existing cbitworld.com in PHP.
• We had huge number of  discussions like you know whether to have two forms for registartion 
• This is the time I somehow started exploring Drupal
  
• In the next few days started analyzing Drupal. Got it into its groove.
• I discussed the idea with Aditya and Neelima and Aditya had 'n' questions about this.
• One day sat down imported all the users from CBITWORLD(This took some amount of time). As I was just into the groove did a very crude method of importing the users
• Discussions again. Made somekind of decision to move CAMP into Drupal but there were unanswered questions
• What will happen if someone eidts their user profile in one
• Can we have a common DB?
• Who is going to support this ? a company or Phani?

Aprl-May:

• Those days were more into Drupal
• Started understanding Drupal and started writing modules. 
• Had to take almost a week to convice Aditya, Neelima and Anuj to say OK we are moving to Drupal for all the three sites (this was a major decision as you know this meant some more time for the release)
• Planned for a  Aprilrelease
• Dates were going in/out. (I was busy with my college schedule)
• Then came May release
• We got a framework of the system. cbit_profile was up. Let me tell you a little about cbit_profile
• This module took most of my time.
• A very complex module (Maybe because this was the first time i was using something like wforms)
• All forms in one made lot of mess. Bugs.. Lot of Bugs.. validation became a mes.. FInally when i got it i wasso happy that i started jumping all arround.
• After cbit_profile everything looked like cakewalk.
• Then came in registration or search for a friend. This didnt take much time (Maybe two/three days)

May-June:

• Most of the development was done during this period.Lot of things changed . Content started poring in
• Discussions on what we need, what to put into each sites
• Discussionson hiring students
• Student Interviews
• Concentration more on CAMP.
• CAMP content was in and Anuj was doing great work.
• Mentor Preferences(This was a bit complex too becauseof some role changing issues)
•  I thought Mentee Preferences should not take much time and left it. (A major wrong decision)

June-July: 

• Google SOC was in. My app got accepted and what am i writing Drupal Imagemagick integration .. Awesome.
• Work moved at a nice pace
• Shankara and Suhasini were in with content of CBITWORLD
• Anuj and co were worried about CAMP.
• My trip to India
• I had lot of time to spare (I thought i willnot be able to . But lot of time)
• Agugust release schedule
• Mentee Prefernces Completed
• Mentor Request,Mentor Buddylist completed.
• COntacted a themes developer called Arpan. He had been a gr8 help in putting up theme. At start there were mixed reactions abt the work
• General problems of importing images.
• Lightbox integration (This was the module i liked best working on. A very smart way of integrating)
• Yshout (Aha.. this is a module) integration.
• Creating groups.
• Forgot to mention about Aneesh. This dude was an awesome help .Understood drupal so fast that i was really surprised. He tested my code to the micro levels and the next day wldsubmit alist of bugs.
• Shankara was the only person who still understands categories properly other than me and he has been a nice help.
• And for Aditya is concerned. He understood access control and blocks. Any block requests should goto Aditya
• Then Neelima and Aneesh started helping mein putting HTML contents arround the forms.
• Theme parts were ready
• CAMP dynamic blocks and pages
• The testing was done by all the members of gocbit and it seemed stable
• CBITUSA was just a last minute drop in (Wewanted to release CBITUSA a little later but we squeezed it off) Thanks to Aneesh and Aditya.
• Job&resumes - CBITUSA didnt take much
• Integrating buddylist,chat in CBITUSA .event calendar..
• One day we decide OK thats it get CBITWORLD down to get all the DB synchronized. Got it done
• Themes is almost  ready with some more fixes

August-now

• Theme issues were piling up. Arpan was fixing them
• Fixed cbit_profile
• Oneshot mail (for admins).
• Fixed Search for a friend.
• DB Import.

I have to write a few more things about which module took longer to which module was the hardest and which module was breaking etc.. but it willcome in later in Part 2