A text describing our history and motivation for the Baha'i Tech Network can be found below and downloaded here.
We encourage you to contact us if you would be interested in assisting with future projects. We would like to work with fellow volunteers who are similarly enthused about creating software that can have a big impact on the Baha’i community.
History of the Baha'i Tech Network
The Baha’i Tech Network started from discussions among some of the Baha’is at Microsoft about how they could best harness their skills and experience to serve the needs of the Baha’i community. The group felt that software has an ability to impact lives, yet there didn’t seem to be enough focus in the Baha’i community on tapping into its potential. With a good number of Baha’is on campus specialized in creating software for the masses, it seemed logical to try and channel the abilities of the Microsoft Baha’i community to meet the needs of the Faith.
As a first step, a group started to get together on a regular basis for “hack sessions” consisting of eating good food, staying up far too late and clambering away on laptops to write pieces of code and integrate everything in the end to create a small working application. As the Quotes Gadget for Vista seemed small, fairly simple and a project w/ a potentially large impact, it was chosen as the first project. After only a few sessions much of the application was built.
Finishing up the project was fairly difficult as it soon became clear that fixing bugs and stabilizing the product wasn’t best accomplished via late night sessions. Certain tasks were therefore delegated to specialized individuals until that person saw them through to completion. Through a bit of a time crunch and a final push, the project was released and has since received a lot of positive feedback.
Following up from the first project, the network has been investigating the next project to take on by consulting with various individuals and prototyping a few projects.
Mission Statement
To create software that assists members of the Baha’i community in their everyday lives while building the necessary infrastructure to make such development sustainable.
Why do we feel the Baha'i Tech Network is Needed?
After surveying past successful Baha’i software projects, we observed that most of them tended to result from one person undertaking a tremendous amount of work and seeing the application through the conception, design and development stages almost entirely by themselves. Although it is commendable that such individuals have managed to balance their lives while serving the Faith in this manner, most Baha’is are not able to do so.
Collaborating on a broader basis has been difficult since there is no apparent community one can plug into specifically for the purpose of contributing to Baha’i software projects. From the stage of idea generation all the way through to the final implementation of an application, individuals would benefit from being able to work in teams rather than alone.
As the Baha’i community grows, so does the need for specialized software. The requirements of this software are becoming increasingly more complex. Many of the software needs are common across the world community but are often not communicated to those who may be skilled and motivated enough to contribute to them. Further, the software needs of the institutions of the Faith could sometimes be met if there was a way for their needs to be listed in an open forum and a pool of development talent was able to lend their skills to provide guidance on the direction of community projects.
The Baha’i Tech Network was founded out of a desire to bring more organization, collaboration and distribution to Baha’i software projects and to better harness the skills and efforts in the Baha’i world software community.
Guiding Principles
The following are some principles we would like to follow for the Baha’i Tech Network:
Trustworthy & Secure: we are now witnessing the proliferation of Baha’i software. It is becoming increasingly more important to distinguish between software that is secure and can be trusted, and that which is questionable. The Baha’i Tech Network needs to make every effort to ensure that code produced through its projects and initiatives is safe for members of the community to download and install.
Open & Transparent: individuals of all backgrounds should be able to contribute where possible. The general public should be able to easily find out what projects are currently underway as well as their status at any one time.
Independent & Agile: too much control can stifle productivity and creativity. While some structure, designating ownership and enforcing accountability is necessary, projects should be somewhat self-organizing and able to operate in a semi-autonomous manner.
Spirit of Service: a spirit of service should characterize the work done by the volunteers in the Baha’i tech network. While it is natural for every contributor to become passionate about the project they are working on, we hope that the needs of the community will take precedence over the needs of individual contributors and all will make efforts to detach themselves from particular ideas or ways of doing things in order to not stifle the unity and productivity of the group.
March 2006 – BahaiTools.com website established
May 2007 – BadiCalendar published on BahaiTools.com
Jan 2008 – Baha’i Tech Network established and BahaiTools.com adopted
Feb 2008 – Quotes Gadget published on BahaiTools.com
Roadmap
As the Baha’i Tech Network takes on more ambitious and high impact projects, it is hoped that the group will gradually mature and increase its capacity to impact and serve the Baha’i community. We currently envision the group passing through three stages of growth:
PHASE 1: LOCAL VOLUNTEER SOFTWARE PROJECTS
Phase 1 will be characterized by a group of local volunteers producing Baha’i software. During this phase of development, design and testing will be mostly disorganized as the group learns how to manage development involving multiple volunteers.
PHASE 2: DISTRIBUTED VOLUNTEER SOFTWARE PROJECTS
Phase2 will be characterized by the group creating Baha’i software in a distributed fashion. During this phase we envision that the group will start adopting practices that are standard so that development efforts can scale and developers, testers and leads may play a part no matter where they are located.
PHASE 3: DISTRIBUTED & INSTITUTIONALLY GUIDED SOFTWARE PROJECTS
Once the group has learned about how to manage distributed development and has successfully produced many projects, we feel the group will enter phase 3. In phase 3, the systems will be in place to allow contributors to be able to drop in and out of the projects as their schedules permit and the capabilities of the group to handle distributed development will have been established. At this time, we hope that the Baha’i Tech Network will become a resource which the Institutions of the Faith can call upon to assist with their development needs.
Roles for Development
In order to manage development, we feel that every effort should have individuals that will play one of the roles outlined below. Naturally, in each project, a single person might play multiple roles.
Project Lead: Every project should have one lead that spearheads the effort by writing the written specifications of the features of the application and generally coordinates the development and testing effort. Although, consultation will characterize the development effort, the project success rests in the project leads hands as they are ultimately responsible for driving the project forward.
Designer(s): Each project should have designers who will serve to make the application beautiful and easy to use. They will assist the project lead in the design of the application and assist the developers in a project to make the application simple to understand and appealing to the eye.
Developer(s): Naturally, every project will call on developers for implementing the product specifications.
Tester(s): Every project will have one or more testers responsible for quality and final sign off of the application.
Past Contributors: