Who wants to volunteer to help photo.net grow?

[andy mcleod]

1-4, and interested in learning 5.

 

I have done customer service over the phone for 2+ years and another 6 months writtten and email CS, and I do tech support for a dial up/client based isp. So I can talk and write pretty, and deal with user confusion and error.

 

I would be into helping, but am short on time with a baby to watch. I would guess 2-5 hrs/week based whether or not the kid settles.

 

Non profit status doesn't make a difference to me, but I bet we could work it into a canon vs nikon sort of thread.

[chris_hawkins]

This thread has been uplifting. The call for help has been heard and the many thoughtful responses make it clear that a strong base of capable volunteers exist. I'm not part of the management, but I want to say THANK YOU for volunteering. Photo.net is a real community.

[holyexposures]

I have professional experience in SQL programming, and in moderating forums (ie. #3). I can contribute 2 hrs week.

 

Regards,

Moshe

[mg]

Philip,

 

I might not have had the kindest words lately, and I have deleted all my pictures, and haven't surfaced much since our latest (quite animated) discussion.

I have virtually left Photo.net mostly for one reason: the bans.

 

I keep an eye on what's happening - though you might not care much about me, which I understand. And I'm pleased at least by the fact that Ian MacEachern was accepted to re-enter Photo.net. And also to see that you have taken the initiative of posting this thread. Finally, glad to see as well the many responses you had so far.

 

I wish a few other bans could be reconsidered, and that a clause about the rights of ban members on their images could be added to the rules and other copyright issues clarified if needs to be.

 

Now, if I would be back as an active member on PN, what could I offer as a contribution? Nothing from what I see in your list. But maybe a few other things - more like ideas that would cost nothing to you and to me just a bit of my time - the goal being to make this site a better place... If you think you need people for that kind of stuff, do let me know... I could spend anything between 5 and 12 hours a week, depending on how interesting the job would be to me... I would only be considering helping in purely photographic matters.

My 2 cents: your Number 3 is very important in my opinion. There are probably many people here who are qualified as moderators, but since I don't know all of them, I would just let you know that Philippe Gautier - whom I know pretty well -, Mary Ball, Brian Mothershead, and Marshal Geoff have all the confidence I can have in anyone to be the best possible moderators. Just an opinion.

 

I hope Photo.net can restart to be the place it was or even better.

 

Best regards.

[bong]

photo.net has been an educational and entertaining resource for a long time. I'd like to give something back so, if you'll have me, I can volunteer 5 hours a week.

<p>

I can help with any item except for 3, 7, 8, and 9. I'm a programmer by trade and have extensive experience writing distributed applications. I am most fluent with C++ but can pick up a language quickly. I am very comfortable working on Unix with the usual software development tools including CVS. While I don't have Oracle experience, I have enough database skills to read and understand SQL.

[rajiv_prasad]

7 quite well. Camridge, MA resident as well.

 

Can help out with 8, 9.

 

Hours per week - some.

[regular tim]

Hi folks.<br>

<br>

I talked with Philip (he was kind enough to call and take about an hour out of his day to talk with me directly) and tried to suss out the situation that prompted this call. My expertise is in building large, stable networks that survive byzantine failures. I also do a little software development (C, C++, Perl, PHP, and shell, mostly). I am an amateur photographer and not experienced enough to moderate.<br>

<br>

Looking at the volunteers, people fall into two classes: nerds, and photographers. Nerds, read on please...<br>

<br>

I have some suggestions which I proposed to Mr. Greenspun, and which I'd like to present to those of you who have volunteered technical skills, in order to see what might be worth implementing. As per my email, I have organized them by number, cf. Philip's list.<br>

<br>

#4 -- Bugzilla or Gnats, which are web front-ends for organizing and prioritizing bug fixes. If photo.net does not yet use such a system, I'd be delighted to set it up. Who among you, that has volunteered to fix bugs, would derive benefits from such a setup? If the number is greater than one, I (or another willing volunteer) should set it up.<br>

<br>

#5 -- submission of articles directly into CVS from a web form. This is relatively trivial -- either ViewCVS, Chora, or CVSWeb can be set up with a modified privelege system so that users may edit CVS'ed files in-place. Rollback is always possible, and if there is a need for scripts to integrate this with the ACS installation, I'd be happy to do it. I've set up the ACS and OpenACS on my laptop, and my rudimentary skills with such would (I think) enable me to set this up. We use a similar methodology where I work, and clients love it.<br>

<br>

#7 -- Philip mentioned considering the purchase of a couple more 2U commodity Linux servers to accomodate development and email handling. I am assuming that someone is willing to set up qmail on the latter; if not, I'd be happy to do it. IMAP was also specified as a means for hosting vanity emails (foo@photo.net) and for manipulation of the user feedback mail to deliver to volunteer pools. Obviously these machines could also handle spillover load from the frontend servers as needed. For remote management, I suggested a dedicated <a href="http://www.cyclades.com/products/stdalone/ts1_2000.php" target="_new">Cyclades terminal server</a> to concentrate serial consoles from the main Solaris box, the loadbalancer, and all of the 2U's. In addition, I feel like a PC-Weasel card (which allows Intel hardware to behave like Sun boxes inasmuch as the BIOS is accessible remotely -- see <a href="http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html" target="_new">www.realweasel.com</a>), would be a useful upgrade. At $350/box, however, it would cost as much to equip the 4 2U's with Weasels as it costs to purchase the terminal server itself. Those of you who have offered to administer boxes, would you be willing to patch kernels and make live upgrades remotely, if you knew you could recover from a botched kernel install by using the Weasel? Would the ability to do a hard reset on an overloaded box, or manage SCSI buses remotely, outweigh the expense? I am equivocal about this, but I have made enough midnight colo runs that I felt like suggesting it. I have a naughty OpenBSD mailserver which is getting Weaseled as soon as the card arrives at work. Normally, I'd use a regular Cyclades card in an existing 2U, and a bunch of minicom scripts, for serial concentrators; but Philip pointed out that the price of a z-Series Cyclades card (16 ports) was greater than that of some of the low-end (8-port) TS boxes. I checked the pricing and this is correct. Also, Cyclades now makes $9/apiece RJ-45 to RS-232 DB-9 crossover cables, eliminating one of the main hassles of setting up serial concentrators (eg. pinning out those f*ckers with parts from Greybar Electronics and RJ-45 cable). <br>

<br>

#8 -- How about allowing observation of the instance via OracleTool (<a href="http://www.oracletool.com/" target="_new">www.oracletool.com</a>, free) or the late ArsDigita Cassandracle project... I did not have a chance to ask Philip whether either of these are in place, and if so, whether he or Rajeev would accept suggestions from professional DBA's who have volunteered here. My limited experience doing Oracle DBA work has convinced me that offering a read-only view of an instance's internals is very valuable. Those of you who are offering professional DBA skills, would you find a 'viewport' into the main photo.net instance valuable, or not?<br>

<br>

#9 -- there was mention of switching from a somewhat untrustworthy Ascend loadbalancer to an Alteon which Rajeev purchased on eBay. (good buy! those Alteons are great) I suggested rolling this out as soon as practicable, partly because the Alteons have an SNMP MIB which allows monitoring of connection hand-offs (and, implicitly, of load sharing). Does anyone disagree with this, and if so, why? I also suggested a bit more distributed and fine-grained monitoring of the hardware and network availability, in order to allocate the photo.net upgrade budget more wisely, so that money is not spent unnecessarily. Would those of you who volunteered technical skills be willing to consider running a Thoth monitoring node on one of your systems?<br>

<br>

<br>

Please comment on any or all of the above suggestions, yea or nay. I would like to see any budgetary impact from the changes generate an equivalent or greater increase in revenue, whether or not photo.net is reincorporated as a 501c3. There is no business case for throwing away money on unnecessary hardware, but likewise I feel like the biggest potential gains (in terms of volunteer utilization) require some investment in hardware to support them. What say you?<br>

[igor_bitman1]

Hi,

recent lay off. Last position-Web Developer.

Live at Lexington MA.

Thank you

Igor Bitman

[carl smith]

<i>pilot - photo.net Cessna Citation Jet <br><br>

 

will fly for film</i><br>

<br>

you can fly the beaches with a photo.net ad trailing from the plane!

[eric_onore]

I am an Attorney in private practice in Hartford, CT. I have derived a great deal of pleasure and knowledge over the past couple of years from this site. I would be happy to volunteer five hours per week in areas one through three. My computer skills limit me to those areas.

[richardl]

1 I'm probably too far from the states for (Rep. Of Ireland), 2,3 & 4 , I could quite easily and would like to do for probably 5+hours a week, I can code html fairly well if thats of any use. I'm Calm, level headed and stay out of the flame wars. If I'm any use, I promise to do my best. I'd like to give something back to this fabulous community rather than just looking in and taking always. I became a committee member of the Rugby club for the same reason, have played for about twenty years, Saw things that needed changing and decided to do something about it by getting involved, rather than just bitch about things like most people do. Anyway I'm yours for 5 hours a week if that's any good.

[mathias_hansson]

7 8 and 9 some hours a week yes I can help, I do that for a living. Ive done unix for 6years, networking 3years (cisco) It seems like quite a few are willing to work with these tasks and thats good. Now we have this thing with the timezones, when you US-guys are sleeping we in europe are awake. So maybe you should have one euro-team and one us-team (and maybe asia-team?) to make sure the uptime is high. that way you dont have to get up in the middle of the night fixing thinks when a daemon stops running. (Maybe we can have a discussion forum to bounce idees also?)

[regular tim]

You hit the nail on the head! My suggestions are all centered around the notion that, with a global pool of volunteers, the wisest investments would be those which allow Philip and Rajeev to leverage the volunteers' skills, and do less on-site work themselves. I am hoping that technical folks like you will be inclined to evaluate my suggestions and those of other technical volunteers, so that Philip and/or Rajeev can simply 'green light' the most promising ones.

 

A discussion forum specifically concerned with technical volunteer work on the site might be very useful for this purpose. It would be ideal if it was easy-to-find and moderated (well, at least somewhat). I would hope that the petty perl-vs.-python-vs.-tcl nonsense, for example, could be weeded out (ala Nikon-vs.-Canon threads ;-)).

 

You have about 1 year more experience than I do in each of the above-mentioned fields (Unix, and routing). It seems like you're in the same boat I am. Would you care to comment on which of the suggestions are worth spending time on, and which you would consider most important? I got the impression that monitoring and remote hardware administration were the most pressing concerns, followed by contributor workflow and site documentation, which is why I concentrated first on those issues. With full remote console access, do you think that a global volunteer pool could free up Rajeev to do documentation, etc. instead of admin drudgery? Why or why not?

 

thanks,

[erol_a.]

I am a nerd, however my geekiousity in the computer realm

doesn't reach into network/server/OS systems much. <P>I am

however a Boston-based writer, photographer, and student

designer. I've been a photo.net member for years now and

would be happy to contribute articles and/or edit static material

for a few hours a week, no problem. I'd also be happy to help out

with the newbie handholding and/or contribute to any newbie-

oriented static pages that could present the FAQs and constantly

belabored points in a perhaps more accessible and 'functional'

manner. <P>I am slowly gaining experience in the more

advanced functions of digital communication, and being close in

location to the HQ of sorts, would be happy to perform menial

comp tasks provided there's someone to give me a once over

and do a little-handholding. I'm sure there are enough qualified

folks here, but if need be, I'm happy to do my part in restoring the

good name of Photo.net!

[mark_smith12]

I would be happy to help out with Items 2-4 (or 1 if necessary). I have the requisite skills for these items. In fact, I have volunteered for bug tracking and reporting before for both websites and software companies so I am reasonably proficient. If you need the help, just ask.

[maheshrs_photo]

I can volunteer for #5 (managing editorial).

 

My skill set: been working (using/programming/etc) with Unix for quite some time now. Regularly use emacs and/or vi every day. Regularly use bash every day. Have used CVS for quite some time to manage C software development. HTML docs should not be much different I assume.

 

I know some HTML (basic tags, and tables and frames).

 

Can contribute at most 5 hours a week (mostly on weekends).

 

Would definitely like to learn more about web-stuff (aol-server and more importantly db-backed sites, etc) as we go by. I guess volunteering would provide a hands-on opportunity if you let me sneak around other parts of the system over time.

 

So, can I volunteer?

[albert_nietzsche]

Im ready to help wtih 2 and 3

i dont have enough time for the others about

maybe 5 hours a week tops for me.

[oliver_s.]

Huh, several weeks without Photo.net and I find <i>this</i> on returning...</p>Anyway, tasks 2-4 should be possible--usually half an hour every day, when the flame warriors take a break for reloading. (Currently I'm located in Central Europe, so that time is nine o'clock in the morning for me.)</p>Good luck to Photo.net,

[old reb]

I am an IT lead technical Specialist for a national Insurance chain.

I can and do HTML, XHTML, some ASP, some Java and Javascript, and I can run several test tools, eg WinRunner, TestDirector, LoadRunner (all trademarked Mercury Interactive testing tools). I have been a photographer for about 30 years, love it, my wife, daughter (OSU Honor Student) and son are all studying and learning photography.

I would like to help, in whatever capacity you see fit for me. Just let me know.

I am here to help.

Ronald R. Goodwin

Columbus, OH

 

ps - I believe Photo.net should consider the non-profit org route.

[pslim]

I am a application programmer. I can do web page, using tools like TCL, Sql, stored procedure, CVS, some javascript in UNIX environment.

<br>I also handle a bit server admin work. As I have been playing with Solaris, Free BSD and Redhat.

<br>A bit network too.

[cd thacker]

I can definitely help in areas 1-3, and possibly 4; 5-10 hours a week, minimum. Background: cursory familiarity with Web-related environments (tangentially related work experience); strong art background/training; enthusiastic (as in fanatic) amateur photographer; ready to help in whatever way I can. And lastly, I think non-profit status would be great for photo.net.

[david_holowiski]

I'd be happy to help, and would be able to give 5-10 hours/week, sometimes more. May day job is tech support, so I'd be more than happy to help with the following, as it's what I do all day every day, and could do with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back:

#2 user handholding

#4 bug tracking and reporting

I also have limited HTML and programming experience but as I said, #2 & #4 are what I'm really good at.

[david_holowiski]

Oh, i guess i forgot to add my experience. Over 5 years in tech support supporting just about everything you can think of. Very good with people, I'm the guy you hope to get when you call the tech support line. Like I said user handholding and bug tracking and reporting make up a large part of the day for me at work, so I'd have no problem doing it for this wonderful site after hours for nothing.

 

Some programming experience from one of the helpdesk jobs, some HTML experience from building several small web pages, and some Linux experience from reinstalling Linux 10's of times on my home PC.

Fairly new to photography, having started as a serious hobby about 5 months ago.

[kobi]

(i) Sign me up for "6," programming -- as long as I don't have to deal with MS tools.

(ii) Sustained load per week is probably 8. Willing to sink much more initially to ramp up.

(iii) 10+ yrs UNIX programming (HP/UX, SunOS 4.x, Linux) in production environment.

(iv) Non-profit status has no impact on my willingness.

--

kobi

[orbosen_roy]

I can do 5-7 hours a week and help on # 1, 2, and 3. I would love to help. I can do all the required skills for these 3 areas.

 

thanks!