Bloozle Team Marathon Meet

Date: 15 March 2008
Venue: National Centre for Student Entrepreneurship, NITIE, Mumbai
Agenda: Plan for reopening the beta and presenting at the barCamp

Well, it was an unusual groggy Saturday morning for most, waking up at an unearthly hour of 9.30 am!

The Cast

Nikhil and Hemant were the first ones to touch base, followed by myself, Aniruddha and my namesake. Aurko starred in a critically acclaimed cameo (after a long time) and we were also joined by Pankaj later (and Ashish for a fleeting moment). Manpreet & Saurabh were missed. We were also about to have some female company, but for Hemant scaring her wits away leaving the poor thing scampering for cover.

The Minutes

Our discussion track followed the one jotted(painstakingly) by Nikhil on the Wiki.

1. What is to be discussed at Blog Camp and BarCamp?
2. How to announce the reopening of the beta?
3. Relook at features
4. Find out bugs in the site
   
5. Develop a framework for the tutorial
   

Eureka!!
During the course of this discussion, we stumbled upon a truly innovative practice and (what we'd like to believe) which was implemented for the first time ever since mankind walked on the planet. We call it "physical editing of virtual content". Here's a demonstration:

1. Our invention - display a webpage on the whiteboard and make edits on the board!



2. Caught in the Act

While this "physical editing of virtual content" remained a preferred method to discuss most items on the agenda, Nikhil had a unique way of prioritizing features. He first ran through all the features noted in the shared spreadsheet (yeah, as if you didn't know) and then turned off the spanking new projector. We were asked to recall the ones which we felt important and these were ranked on priority basis. Collectively, we noted down all the critical ones in decreasing order of priority ... here are some of the items we jotted down:

1. IE compatibility ( Tests + Rectification)
2. Bloozle button ( To be used to add any post/blog to Bloozle database without logging into site)
3. Chat with Team Bloozle
4. UI/UX Issues
5. Rating/ Tagging widget
6. Filter for sorting feeds
7. Add tag button

Gotta acknowledge the intrepid duo of Manpreet & Aniruddha for taking on these task.

Lunch Break :)

All the home delivery outlets of Powai ahd schemed up against us today. None was ready to deliver to NITIE , Domino's Pizza Hut, Subways , Smokin Joe's included. This led Nikhil to pop the question of NITIE delivery as soon as some poor chap picked up the line on the other side.

Finally, Garcia's was our knight in shining armour, delivering pizzas and lemonades to us starved souls. I think the grub appeased Mucchal's tummy the most as he dozed off into the sleepy realms. Aniruddha kicked him intentionally/unintentionally?) back into reality.

Back to work?
Hemant and Aniruddha left after lunch - Hemant had some work at home and Aniruddha was keen to get back to his vi to punch in more code. The rest of us also took a break and went to roam around the NITIE campus and took a turn towards the Vihar Lake where we spent some time dipping our feet in water. Check out the outline of the hills in the background!





Then we took a longish stroll to the NITIE hostel canteens to have some tea ...

Indeed back to work ...
Finally, tummies filled and minds refreshed we returned to our dark room and projector to discuss the intro and the format of the tutorial. It was a quick and fiery session with everyone throwing in ideas and we changing our formats twice before we completed the discussion.

By the time we ended it was almost 8.30 PM and we all remembered commitments made to friends for Saturday night parties. So we hurried back ....