Wonderful Wednesday's

Perhaps I exaggerated a bit with the title but it was a very solid day nevertheless. Fairly early in the Morning we had a meeting with two of our project leaders to discuss our document that we put together over the last few days. I'm happy that some mistakes got filtered out as it does give a better view generally and also it won't be as likely that one makes the same mistakes.

After our lunchbreak I decided to try my luck on getting Google Earth to work on my testblog, I wasn't able to make a breakthrough however I shall return to Google Earth in a bit. So I decided to ponder about an idea which could be related to the PlanLive project as a whole however I won't go into details.

Back to the Google Earth issue, ironically one of my teammates also researched into Google Earth as the day was waning and he did manage to put Google Earth into his blog, thanks to his usage of keywords (or lack off). I couldn't help but feel abit silly afterwards.. All the same, I shall try to poke my teammate to get his blog link and if I get my hands on it, I shall inform it in a tweet.

Meetings continued

Our team was complete Today so we were able to put all bits and pieces together for our documents, after giving each other feedback on what works and what doesn't work we went back and revised the parts that needed attention. After revising the parts we made one document out of it and we're hoping to have a presentation about it soon.

As for myself after being able to import Google Maps in my testblog, I'm now trying to import Google Earth in my blog as it's more interactive, so I shall probably continue with that for the next few days. Also perhaps we shall be able to show the document to one of our bosses and hopefully it shall need little revising and perhaps make an appointment for the presentation.

Start of the second week

The start of the second week within Plan Nederland and it was quite the productive day. As is usual on Mondays the first meeting was at 10 AM (9 AM UK time), most of the Plan Nederland employees come together and talk about things that happened recently and things that are planned for the nearby future.

After that meeting our team put the documents together that we made either Thursday or over the weekend and it was decided by our team leader that the documents were good and only needed a little bit of editing. Later that day we had a meeting with one of our bosses that steer this project and after that meeting I know in what things I shall have to research the next few days, so I'm satisfied with that.

Also it was decided that both Widget and Pedia teams shall try and contact Plan employees who work in different sectors so that we get to know how things work basically within Plan and in turn they shall get to know us and what we do.

Meetings and research

Today saw another meeting between the PlanLive Widget and Pedia teams, basically a progress report of the research both teams have done over the last few days.
While I did take a few peeks and glances on the days prior, it was interesting to see what the widget team worked on and they seem to have many solid idea's when it comes to Widgets.

With the Pedia team I do have a clearer view now what should/shouldn't work on the Pedia pages due to idea's being thrown around within the team. However I think we're all anticipating the PlanLive workshop on the week of 19th October.

The current plan for the next few days is to work on the documented plan and if all goes well, our team should have it ready by Monday and then we'll discuss it also.

Experimenting(2)

Like I mentioned in my blog Yesterday I did some experimenting, mainly between Google Maps and Google Earth and of the various things I tried, I prefer using Google Maps instead of Earth, mainly because with Google Maps you can mark POI's (Points of Interests) and can add links/pictures etc.

I also created a Wikipedia page Today concerning Matungulu in Kenya, which can be seen in the Google Map example that is shown below this text.

I also tried to make my own Wikia today to perform tests with google maps, however oddly enough my Laptop is having hiccups with that site so I'll continue with that later on. However here is a sample of what I played with Today.

One final note: I do recommend to zoom out when you see the map, as it shall be zoomed in as close as possible, probably be a few clicks until you can see the proper World map.



PlanPediaTest weergeven op een grotere kaart

Experimenting

The next few days are all about experimenting, I've been able to download and install Google Earth and I've been looking for ways to incorporate both Google Earth and Google Maps onto websites and discovered that both programs had API's (Application programming interface). So I'll look more into that tomorrow.

Also our team have been exchanging idea's on how to make a fancy but suitable layout(s) for the Pedia project we're working on and we hope to make a start tomorrow on our documented plan, how things shall work/look like etc.

First real day

Today was the first proper day you could say, as it was the the first time the teams received a game-plan (albeit rough) so that means it will also be the first time the teams shall have to stick their heads together.

Personally i've been keeping myself busy with various websites that are related to my project and I hope to install Google Earth tomorrow (tried that today only to discover my lack of admin rights..).

I hope to have a few short write-ups in the next few days concerning the websites/programs I experimented with.

Communication training

Friday evening I returned home from a trip which concerned Communication Training. There were of course the students who started their placement within Plan Live, but also many other students who have their placements at other company's, reaching about 150 people in total if I were to guess. The training started on Wednesday Afternoon until Friday Evening.

The training could be divided in two parts, the indoor part and the outdoor part. The indoor part were basically classes in which everyone discovered their communication style (There were four of those: Controller, Promoter, Supporter and Analyzer. I was the supporter role).

From there on we learned how to adept our communication styles towards the other three styles, depending on what your personal style is. This can be useful as all four styles have their own characteristics and quirks.

The outdoor part were for the most part activities and moral games to help building the teamspirit of the various placement teams.

The experience was interesting and the atmosphere between the various teams was good.

PlanLive introduction

Today was the first day I started with my placement (internship) at Plan Nederland (which obviously stands for the Netherlands.. or Holland).

As can be soon on http://twitter.com/PlanLive - I was one of the ten students who started today.

Of course it's hard to work on one project with a group of ten, so to keep things rather simple there are two project teams - A PlanWidget team and a PlanPedia team

My focus is on the PlanPedia team and while both teams are working towards the same potential end product, both teams do different things.
PlanWidget focuses on small site applications while PlanPedia focuses on making the PlanLive site more streamlined, modern and easy to use.

I hope to reveal more information about this soon and if so then I shall surely update it within my blog.