15 Months Later: A Self-Evaluation

Looking back at the first proposed timeline [PDF] I submitted to the Knight Foundation all the way back in May of last year, we're mostly on track for everything I had envisioned. There are two notable exceptions: 1.) we have yet to officially fund any localizations of WordPress into other languages (though we were instrumental in facilitating the translation of WordPress into Khmer) and the “curriculum of guides and tutorials” has not been developed as fully as I would like.

One of the difficulties with the localization on WordPress into more languages is that there are two separate localization processes for WordPress.com (the commercial service which many Rising Voices participants use) and WordPress.org the open-source version that anyone can download. There is no easy way, for example, to translate both WordPress.com and WordPress.org into Aymara. I have asked Jeremy (our Global Voices tech guru) to ask the WordPress people for a better solution when he goes to WordPress Camp in a week. I will also show someone from the Foko community how to use PO Edit to localize WordPress into Malagasy while I'm in Madagascar. (Actually, I see that people are already working on the Malagasy localization of WordPress … this is another thing – WordPress has been translated into more languages in the past year than anyone could have ever expected.)

Regarding the guides and tutorials, I think I could do a much better job of delegating some of this work to other members of our community. We have a total of $15,000 budgeted for the creation and translation of these guides. Because I had a specific vision for what the guides should look like, I have foolishly held onto the idea that I should be the one writing all the guides and then have them translated into other languages by Rising Voices participants. Since I would not invoice for the guides, I figured I could save Rising Voices money that could be used to get more participants to more conferences and events. In hindsight, I haven't had enough time finish all of the tutorials and guides. I should do a better job delegating this work. Are any of the Rising Voices coordinators interested in being the authors of wiki-based guides on WordPress, Flickr, and Video Blogging? I have asked Jer to upgrade our wiki so that it can be the definitive place for these types of documents and tutorials.

Finally, I feel that I could be doing better in my communication with all of the grantees. I would like to start scheduling skype calls with two project coordinators each week. That way I am able to talk to someone from each of the projects every two months. This has been difficult for me with my recent travel schedule, but hopefully Rezwan and Juhie can help me with this.

5 thoughts on “15 Months Later: A Self-Evaluation

  1. I think guides/tutorials would be something we all could use. We (@ VB) made up some guides to pass out as reference manual, but they may be too specific or too broad for others’ tastes. We’d be happy to share.

    One thing that came to mind when we were looking for resources to pass out is to not reinvent the wheel. There are some great screen shot tutorials on YouTube that would be interesting to overdub or subtitle.

    Maybe we all can add our favorite links or sites with these tutorials in order to begin to think about a RV manual.

    We are using blogspot.com, however.

    It’s hard to believe it has been 15 months! I was cleaning out some of stuff that I have in storage in DC, and found our original proposal. Man, we’ve come a long way 😉

    Thanks to everyone and I am eager to hear your thoughts on the past 15 months…

  2. Actually we started the translation process with bloggers friends 2 years ago and Hery (who opened the google code page) has launched blaogy.com and blaogy.org from this hard work. He is the creator of Serasera.org, the forumist community we’re working with and they open dizains of blogs everyday on this plateform. We opened dizains at the beginning but….nobody understood the translation!
    If there is anything I can do to help with the tutorials , I’d love to participate and share.

  3. Thanks Eddie and Joan for the feedback.

    Eddie,

    You bring up a good point – we need general tutorials that can then be adapted and translated by each project as necessary. Yes, could you please email me the tutorials that you guys have created so far? I agree about not re-inventing the wheel. For example, it’s probably best that we link to already existing tutorials about how to set up WordPress rather than creating our own. Can you add the video tutorials you’ve seen on YouTube to the sidebar of the Rising Voices wiki?

    Joan,

    I had a feeling you guys were way ahead of the game with the localization of WordPress. Is there a particular tutorial that you could help us create? For example, maybe making a podcast interview with Skype?

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