Name Brian James Herman
Contact/Email: brianherman@gmail.com
Background: I am Brian James Herman. I live in Chicago, Illinois. I study at the College of Dupage. And will be going the University of Illinois at Chicago in the fall. I have been the president of two Linux users groups. One at the College of Dupage and one at University of Illinois at Chicago. I have helped numerous people install Debian and Debian based distributions on their computers. I cut my teeth in high school with Debian 2.2 (potato). I am the best person because I am not going on vacation. I have experience with databases, web development, and subversion. I was a research assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago. My duties were the creation of an anti cross site scripting plugin with the Wordpress content management system.
Project title: Talks Database
Synopsis: This project will create a searchable database of all Debian related talks. The database will be wml and gettext compliant. It will also grab information from other sites and data sources to add to its database.
Benefits to Debian: People will be able to search through the presentations and view all the presentation in the database. This will provide more information to people that they couldn't get before because there was no way to search through this information. Also it will eliminate work as it will pull information from data sources such as RSS/E-mail/Blogs/Blip.tv/debconf and automatically add it to the database.
Deliverables: A searchable database and a web application that will present the talks about debian in a new an interesting manner. People will be able to search through the talks by title, topic, year, event and author. They will also be able to see all the talks that were given by speakers in the database.
Project details: This project will create a searchable database of all Debian related talks. The database will be wml and gettext compliant. It will also grab information from other sites and data sources to add to its database. The www-data group uses Perl and shell scripts for the backend of debian.org. This might be influential in what programming language I pick for this project. As for the database I will use whatever is being used at the www-debian project. A flat file database is also an option.
Project schedule:
Before April 20: Create a mockup of the web application.
May 23 – June 18 (Official coding period starts): Create a database schema with the following columns: Title, Language, Author, Date, Event, Slides, Link to Video Populate the database with the www.debian.org/events/talks data.
June 18 – July 5: Create the first prototype that outputs the data in an html format.
JULY 6th MID TERM EVALUATION
July 6 – July 15: Create the second prototype that outputs the data in a wml format. This prototype will also be gettext compliant.
July 15 – July 25: Create the automagic part. This will search the internet and newsgroups for announcements of talks and add them to the database.
July 25 – July 31: Add the querying by title, topic, year, event and author.
Fix bugs, document code and database.
Other summer plans: I have applied for an internship at Google Chicago, but I have haven’t heard anything official from them for three weeks.
Exams and other commitments: I do not have any other commitments. I am not taking any classes over the summer.
After the Summer: I plan to help out with the debian project with a lighter load during the school year.