Insiders’ Pedia Blog

It’s Friday, while most people are winding down, I am working as hard as I can to complete the California Portal on IP.

I’ve been slowly squirming forward, now I can see the finish line.

You got to love geography to do this job. Defining the Regions took months, now I am finalizing the Sites within these regions, and typing names of cities, towns, counties, neighborhoods. Before I can even start to type down the hundreds of cities, towns and counties I first must get familiar with them. This is where research is needed. I need to know these socio-geographical areas and populations even the local culture as well as possible, as if I lived there. This is crucial since Sites are smaller than Regions and should hold some cultural identity to the Insiders living in that Site, a Site makes more sense to people than a Region does.  Thus, creating Sites requires more time and thought than needed for creating Regions

For a state as populous as California, this is taking some time  

BUT I am about 80% done.

To steadily make slow but firm progress on such a monumental project one must posses a love for learning, especially when it comes to cities, counties, mountain ranges, metropolitan areas. In order to create the underlying structure for IP I had to spend countless hours researching, comparing and researching more. I couldn’t have done this had I not liked geographical info and demographics, looking at maps and pictures from other parts of this GREAT nation.

I also, obviously, need a lot of patience and resiliency. Patience to keep chugging along, thoughtfully, and not not rush things through; and resiliency to not let setbacks discourage me from completing this project.

I believe this project and the amazing potential it has in helping Insiders (i.e. YOU) makes it worth every bit of effort.

After well over a 100 hours of work since the last blog post, I am getting closer to a Beta release of the the California section; it’s almost ready and is online now (pre-Beta). It is undergoing testing and needs a few final touches now, do not use it please until I post an article specifying that the California sections is fully functional. If you can’t wait, go ahead and use it, post California pages, you wont loose these pages, but the website performance may be less than perfect, for now.

The Minnesota section (i.e. the Minnesota Regions page, or the Minnesota Portal), the first one to be opened publicly, was simpler than the California section, it since has undergone some enhancements based on a few changes in this project’s requirements and based on testing. It continues to be up and running now as a Beta release.

As you see, each state (i.e.website  section) is being completed and put online, one at a time, sometimes the section is available as Beta, or even pre-beta. Improving this project requires not only well defined requirements and exhaustive process planning but also real world testing. To achieve this real world testing, I decided to push the completed parts out and get them real-life exposure, then learn from that experience.  There is a methodology that I am following, this is all planned. All I can ask, if a website section is in Beta and is unpolished, please use it on an experimental basis. By using the website you will help me make this website better. Your feedback is always welcomed.

I have put over 1300 hours of work into this project so far. In the future, I will pull out my notes and give you a more accurate estimate on how much time this project took from inception to, well, completion. Completion, is not the best word to use here, as I do not expect this project to ever seize to grow and reach more people. Everything here is done in modular fashion by state sections, and by milestones defined as part of this project’s requirements.

No advertising what so ever has been done. A few people are testing the site. Once 10 states are completed I expect to get the word out on this free, open source, Insiders’ Encyclopedia project.

Find the (pre-Beta) California Portal here

Ethan