Why do you want it so much?

Over the last ten days, I have been working with a few different areas of the Tibetan Administration in Exile, but the one area, causing me the most grief, and food for thought is TCRC ( the Tibetan Computer Resource Centre).

All of the staff are highly educated, speak English well and work in IT. So, it is much like working in Australia, except for the obvious location shift, the standard of computing equipment, and the standard of IT knowledge.

It's a phenomenon that is obviously worldwide, this CMS- thing. The Administration wants to convert their sites www.tibet.net to CMS, because "it's easier".

Over the last 10 days, I have been taking the staff on a crash course of CMS discovery, starting with the most important question ever, "What makes you think it is easier?" followed by a "Why do you need it?"

Sometime over the last year, the CMS word has boomed on Indian shores and mountains, and most businesses are moving towards this technology. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, I just wonder how many businesses really know what they are in for.

Going back to basics, it's critical to get an idea of what your site does NOW, and how you think a CMS could either;

1. Improve the quality of your web content
2. Improve the processes behind web publishing
3. Reduce the need for specialised training in users
4. Create collaborative publishing environments
5. Reduce the amount of hardware, licensing, etc required
6. Reduce duplication of effort

The thing is, that I haven't met anyone in a CMS environment where all of these items are met by introducing the system, especially in the first year, so the best you can hope for is at least hitting one or two of these targets.

The next thing I have been trying to introduce over here, is that your CMS should facilitate the features and functions you already have, REALLY WELL, before adding additional bells and whistles like polling tools, movie streaming, RSS feeds etc. It just adds another level of complexity for the team installing the CMS, and frankly for the users. If they haven't been using new features like RSS already, give them some time to become accustomed to the CMS first.


Our approach for "picking the best CMS for tibet.net" was to do a CMS review. I have come across a couple of good sites that have helped here. I should point out the www.tibet.net, is nothing at all like University of Melbourne, so the needs are entirely different, including the standard of technology, the skills required to learn the system, the infrastructure available to install it etc.

We went to www.opensourcecms.com to have a look at new Open Source CMS's on the market, and have over the last 5 X 3 hour sessions done an demo install of:

• Mambo
• Drupal
• Typo3
• Plune
• Joomla
• My Source Matrix

I should preface this with the fact that we had listed the features we required, which were;

• It's FREE
  
• The ability to customise templates easily
• It's quick to learn and teach
  
• PHP/MySQL
• It contains news features
• It contains RSS features
• It can embed media files
  
• There is a WYSIWYG for end users
• permissions based user set up
• A fairly flat architecture
  

We weren't looking for anything too grunty, anything too complex.

The team then spent roughly 3 hours playing with the system, using the Administration interfaces, using the publisher interface, reading the instruction manuals, signing onto Developers forums and just getting a feel for how they would have to work with the system.

Anyone interested in interface usability would have had a field day!
In the end, the Team selected Joomla. www.joomla.com

They had looked at the other CMS's and realised for them, it suited their needs best.

They are currently teaching themselves how to customise templates in the system, and how to use the different features.

The next step for the team will be to go back over their current site and hack out any bits and pieces that aren't needed, review the content they have, design a new architecture and start gathering content to move across.

So I suppose the lesson behind this story is to know exactly what you are asking for......

MORE next week.

The world comes screaming into the mountain

This is the end of my first week in Mcleod Ganj (work week), and it has been an incredible a learning experience, surviving the language barrier, the cultural differences in teaching methods, walking 45 minutes down the side of a mountain with my laptop and working on Saturdays has obviously shaken me around a bit.

My week is broken up as follows:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9-12.30 working with the Tibetan Department of Human Rights. Their website (www.tchrd.org) is currently being translated into Tibetan font called Bod-yig. The importance of such a translation was lost on me until I realised that each community is only as strong as the language they use to describe it. For any community, the integrity, the ability to pass on tradition, is directly proportionate to their ability to retain culture, via language, stories, paintings, songs etc.

In web terms, most developers know that we can pre-set a language definition into a page for browsers to render/opt up. For the Tibetans, this language has been Chinese, as there has been no universal font used in web development created specifically for the Tibetan language. The conversion of English language sites into Tibetan is a great step in retaining original versions of work. Later, this will prove to be fundamental in the translation of archived materials, ensuring that ''nothing gets lost on the way".

However, from a technical point of view, there are limitations. We have old, unstable computers, unreliable electrical sources, and web developers who still need to learn a lot more. It would be easy to step in and just " do the job", but who would that help? In order for the web to facilitate the Tibetan cause, Tibetans must be able to test, develop and maintain their own applications. Having tourists or teachers creating whizz-bang sites that no-one can update pretty much defeats the purpose.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons I work for TCRC, the Tibetan Computer Resource Centre. Their current 'thing' is wanting to move the entire of www.tibet.net into a CMS. The one they are currently looking at is Joomla, a PHP MYSQL open source application. Funnily enough I feel like I have been teleported into another version of hell, the only difference being that here I cant work on project plans, or technical specifications. Here, we are still learning that a CMS is not easier, or faster, it's different, and long term provides incredible benefits for content re-use.
Here the culture is meek and calm, and not investigative. The simple act of "trying out an application" is not something that is encouraged. This week really has been about getting the brilliantly talented group to just 'break stuff'.

To explain, the teaching method here for primary and secondary school includes mimicry, deep respect (and often fear) of the 'teacher', and repetition. The curriculum doesn't have space for questions, self learning, inquisitiveness. When you don't repeat something properly, you are smacked with a cane.

This is carried over into adulthood, and so the people I am working with are slowly, very slowly learning that there are no sticks, no mistakes, nothing that can be broken that can't be fixed.

Tuesday and Thursday, I teach basic html to Tibetan women. The move for women to create their own representations, their own sites, is a fast moving one. In fact, generally speaking, I would say that McLeod Ganj is ready to burst at the seams. The Tibetan Administration in Exile is beginning to realise the power that websites can have.

You only have to think of Google, and China, to realise that....

The rest of my week is working with displaced refugees from India and Tibet, cooking in a restaurant down the mountain and teaching some monks English. Frankly, I'm more flat out than I have ever been.

I'm also learning more than I thought possible. I've started taking a basic PHP class, so I can help out with the new CMS and I'm mostly UNLEARNING everything, in order to be a help.

Next week I will drop in on the Dharamslala Wireless crew, which might be of interest to you- more so than this incessant rambling.

Take care and anyone wanting to find out more, email me at clairesspencer@gmail.com