People
Voluntari.ly is setup as a programme under the Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust (PFCT). The core team consists of Andrew Watkins as Product Lead (50%) and Walter Lim as Design Lead (100%). Both joined the team in late January.
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Our goal is to have 5-10 regular contributors supporting the development over the next few months coupled with bursts of work from hackathons and days of code using a wider group of volunteers.
Processes & Tools
In February an initial technical advisory group met to discuss the options for the software stack to use to build the application. It was agreed to use a common modern stack consisting of MongoDB, Express, React and Node (MERN). This provides us with a single language (javascript) from front to back coupled with a framework supporting a layered pattern of service APIs and Component based web application. All the components are open source and have no licensing costs.
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Our initial test deployment of the product is onto Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Container Service (ECS) using Docker images for the application and Mongo Atlas Cloud Service for the database.
Visual Design and Customer Experience
Consultation on the functionality required and patterns of use started with a Hackfest in Dec 2018 that outlined the core problems we wish to solve, personas for key stakeholders: volunteers, teachers, corporates, agencies etc. Along with a range of use case scenarios. These gave us our outline functional design and requirements list.
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[Point to example screen shots.]
Product
The core purpose of the Voluntari.ly is better learning outcomes for young people by bringing adults with expertise to meet schools and teacher's needs through Science, Technololgy, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) activities. However, it is not limited to that.
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Feedback from all parties is crucial to the effectiveness of the system. Using feedback we can improve the experience of volunteers - so that they want to participate again, of the schools and students - so that they learn more, and of the activities and content products - so that they are more effective and have better learning outcomes.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
The MVP is the simplest possible system that can start to be used in the real world. It may not have many features but those that are present work and people can use the system for real outcomes. This is then the starting point for iterations as we learn more about the requirements of the system and the best way for it to operate.
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Stretch goal is company single sign on support.
Diversity
The Voluntari.ly application has been designed to be multi-lingual from the start. It will launch in English and Māori.
Our current contributor team is wonderfully diverse in gender and origins.
Upcoming Events
On Sat 4th May we will have a 'Working Bee' to take the product forwards on some key foundational technologies. Hosted by Datacom.
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