Conan update & design doc

[Elizabeth Bacon]

Hello IxDA,

In September, we announced the commencement of the implementation  
phase of IxDA's major infrastructure project, ever-so-fondly named  
Conan. Since that time we’ve been working hard with Palantir, a  
specialist Drupal development company, on refining the detailed scope  
of the new website and nailing down our design specifications &  
requirements. That work represents a big step forward, and we’re  
pleased with the way it has progressed and resulted in a scalable web  
platform using the Drupal architecture.

The detailed picture we now have of the implementation effort has also  
afforded us with a better understanding of where and how development  
time is best spent. Along the way we’ve realized that the scope of  
work that we used to evaluate the potential development partners who  
responded to our RFP back in July is substantively different to what  
we’re now looking to implement. Based on that recognition, we have  
gone back and discussed the revised scope with Growing Venture  
Solutions (GVS), another leading Drupal development company & the  
other finalist in our initial search for a development partner.

Using what we now know, we believe that GVS is the better choice for  
this project to develop our infrastructure from this point forward, in  
order for the Conan project to deliver the most possible value to  
IxDA's worldwide community. We hope you’ll join us in thanking  
Palantir for the work they have done to get us to this point. And we  
hope you will join us in welcoming GVS to the Conan project. Here's  
their website: http://growingventuresolutions.com/ We'll soon be  
starting production development with them shortly, and are estimating  
the effort to take about 12 weeks. With some good luck and wind at our  
backs, we could have the new website launched by Interaction'10!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to share the Conan Design Doc  
with you all: http://bit.ly/ConanDesignDoc. This material represents  
the fruits of over 10 months of work from the all-volunteer IxDA Conan  
team. We investigated our community's needs, developed user experience  
requirements, conceived interaction design & visual design solutions,  
and conducted a concept feedback round.

If you want to comment on what you see in this material, please talk  
about it here on list or feel free to send private feedback to me via  
email. We'll see what we can do to prioritize new ideas or suggestions  
within the current project. Else, we'll create a product backlog, as  
future extensibility is a HUGE cornerstone of our web platform  
strategy. Conan is by the community, for the community! :)

Thanks for your attention! Do let me know if you have any questions. I  
look forward to sharing more news and information as the project  
proceeds. Onwards & upwards!

Cheers,
Liz, IxDA Vice-President and Conan wrangler



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