Young Composers Roadmap - August 2006 Onwards

After a year and 3 months, one out of five bulletins has been accomplished?

The Mikes have a loose definition of soon.

Yes, progress has indeed been a lot slower than initially hoped.

Delays have stemmed from difficulties associated with finding software developers for the music management / social networking system. chopin did start up with one group of people, but they failed to deliver and in fact ended up defrauding him (credit card dispute resolution process is still ongoing). However, we've now found a new group of developers who are set to begin on January 14th 2008. This time around, there are safeguards in place to prevent fraud and ensure eventual delivery.

I must confess to having completely forgotten about the staff center. I don't have the time right now to develop it, and I dare say this state of affairs will continue on for at least another few weeks/months, but I'll try to keep it in mind.

P.S. Updated "site-wide authentication" on the list, as you indicated should have been done several months ago...

Sounds like any IT project - over budget, late....

As my grade 10 ComSci teacher said, the world of programming and software developement revolve around a triangle where only 2 out of the three sides are true at any given time. The three sides are budget, time and function. If the project is finished under budget and on time, it won't work properly, if the project is on time and works, it'll be over budget and if the project works and is within the budget, it'll be finished late

I like the new homepage

Excellent, any more suggestions for it?

Perhaps the top ten most viewed attachments should be on there as well?

I'm also happy that the homepage has finally received a long-overdue makeover...

Top ten most viewed attachments can't easily be shown there, since the software only provides the necessary functionality for viewing threads. I could potentially add code to get attachments to show up, but I also believe that one of the new design's key strengths is its simplicity, so bloating it with further content may do more harm than good.

I'd love to include some info on submissions uploaded to the upcoming music management system* once it arrives, however.

* I realise terms like this are old and tired...

Perhaps the top ten most viewed attachments should be on there as well?

This will be taken care of when the music management system is launched. The homepage will in fact be different than what you see now. What you see now will be redirected to be the main wiki page eventually.

We will have the top 10 or so rated uploads (whether they are midi or mp3's) Same applies to videos. The user can sort this by top 10 ratings, top 10 views, top 10 most discussed and top 10 favorites. We will also have most recent uploaded compositions/videos.

I'd love to include some info on submissions uploaded to the upcoming music management system* once it arrives, however.

* I realise terms like this are old and tired...

I know we have been promising this for awhile, and nothing seems to be happening. I first annouced plans for this I think sometime last March '06, according to this thread here. However even though it may not seem so, alot has been accomplished since then, (the planning, designing the specs, the hiring, obtaining the budget).

Anyway, I haven't put up an official notice yet (I will as soon as I release the funds to start the project) but we are scheduled on Jan 14th 2008 to begin work on all of this. The expected release date will be 4-5 months. If things work out as planned this time, we can expect this next exciting change to take place by May or June 2008. We also will be on a dedicated server.

I am hoping to make a video tutorial of the new features of this site before we launch, to act as a promo (maybe Mike can do this, I am very camera shy )

Edit: I just realized our plans have completely changed since the first time I brought up the social network idea in 2006. This is another reason for our delays. The free mod that was under production, that we were going to use for the very basic social network, was discontinued. This cost us some time as well. Then our plans changed completely when I decided that we needed to build this thing from scratch. It took me a very long time to come to the conclusion that we needed a custom built solution. But back in the day, I did not have the money for a custom solution. Anyway, this is the reason why we have had so many delays. From a combination of relying on free software development just to find out it was being discontinued, to simply changing strategy completely, to being defrauded, this is how I can explain the 1.5 year delay. There will be no more delays. We are doing this.

Promo video?

Oh dear... that makes all the waiting worth it. I think both of you and the mods should each do a segment.