[WebPub] new MIT mailing list - contractcoders

[Chad Galts]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sending this note around. It fits well against a series of conversations we had in the School of Engineering last summer -- the results of which have not been entirely realized yet, but your note could help with that...

The conversations were organized around a simple idea: since a third to a half of the units in the School of Engineering seem to be rebuilding their websites at any one time, how could we work together and share the results? We arrived at two preliminary decisions (upon which others will follow when we have some time to pursue them). The first was that we could share hosting expenses within the School so that smaller units didn't have to invest in the same scale solution as much larger ones. For now, this just means I'm giving away space on the box I lease from IS&T to units that can make a credible case for it. I'm getting a little more mileage out of my SLA, and a number of smaller units are getting hosted for "free." A more comprehensive solution to this will, I'm sure, present itself eventually.

The second is a little more on point with your idea. 18 out of 19 units in the School who are building or contemplating building a new website expressed a preference for using Drupal as their CMS (the only reason the 19th wanted Joomla is because they're already using it). Given this level of unanimity, and the fact that Drupal is supposed to be an open-source resource, we offered to help coordinate the provision of Drupal resources that were generated for projects within Engineering to anyone else in the School who wanted to use them. So, if site #1 invests in the development of a complex authentication pathway, or a calendar module that can actually talk to events.mit.edu<http://events.mit.edu>, or something else -- sites #2, 3, 4, etc. would be able to use these things, or some version of them, without having to pay the same bill as whoever built site #1. Or they can pick them up and improve them, then give them back. This isn't a radical idea -- just a matter of leveraging the open-source model, and connecting the right people to the right lists. We haven't really gone anywhere with this yet, but what you're proposing could obviously be part of it...

A couple of other things: we've also been talking to the School of Science about doing this together, as well as IS&T (everyone likes the idea, but we haven't figured out the specific paths for proceeding yet). Also, after we determined that D7 was the most likely candidate for wide adoption, our hosting offer was modified to include only sites that are being built in that CMS at that version.

If other people on this list want to share what they've built, or are considering building in D7, we would all be a few steps closer to some shared resources. And we're of course happy to do the same. So far, we have:

1. Authentication tools that work with shibboleth (a couple of different versions already)
2. An import feed from events.mit
3. A specialized RSS feed from the News Office that depts can use to auto-populate their news sections
4. Others...

These things are all there if anyone wants to use them.

-c

--------------------------------------
Chad Galts
Director of Communications
MIT School of Engineering
617.253.9411


On Nov 20, 2011, at 10:49 AM, Chris Peterson @ MIT wrote:

Hi all -

A few weeks ago I began looking for an outside web developer to work on a project for the admissions office. At Harvard, there is a specific mailing list for such contract coders, to which departments, offices, etc will email job postings and interested/available contractors will reply. After asking around, it appears there is no such list at MIT.

Operating under my personal principle of "anything Harvard can do, we can do better", there is now a mailman list for this purpose: contractcoders at mit.edu<mailto:contractcoders at mit.edu>, which can be joined at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/contractcoders.

Please circulate this email to all of your developer (internal, external, whereever-ternal) friends, or people who may want to hire developer friends, so that they are aware it exists.  The goal is to build a critical mass of developers so that the list becomes both a helpful resource for people who need work done, and for people who need work to do.

For the time, I administer it. I imagine that at some point its administration will ascend into a state of bureaucratic immanence, but for now, any questions or concerns should be directed to me.

Thanks!

- Chris Peterson
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