Personnel
The months of January and February were very hectic for CAU; they marked the leaving of several members and my introduction as C/O. Starting off, we had Adtrace, Socrat, tulkas, and Dutchie99 leave for various reasons.
I've promoted PixieLuv and Knoledgesponge to X/Os of CAU. I've promoted DarkJester to C/O of Class Delivery and istill316 to C/O of Testing Center. I've also promoted istill316 and DarkJester from Trooper to 2nd Lt. for demonstrating a good work ethic and taking on productive assignments. I've promoted Ravn and Jehnx and made them our representatives to the Promotion Council.
Previous State - Resolutions
The beginning of the month saw CAU in a dismal state - the homepage was being hacked by former members, and there was no place for anyone to do any work. After doing research into site software replacements, we have gone with the following set-up on the Blockhouse server:
Site News/Navigation/Homepage – WordPress
Class Delivery – Moodle
Knowledge Bank – TikiWiki
FLI – Uses CD and KB sites
Testing Center – Text driven tests and a custom test engine being built.
Major changes have come as we have ditched the previously written site for more modern and secure scripts. The largest change is a package called Moodle for our Class Delivery system. Moodle comes with an extensive developer base, and is used by accredited universities around the world. This takes Class Delivery into the 21st Century with an extensive set of tools to educate our members with.
CAU is also patching the holes of the past. We have instituted a new copyright agreement that is similar across all sites. It is available at http://kb.university.cyberarmy.net/tiki-index.php?page=CAUCopyright. This agreement means that we will never leave the entire brigade's work at the mercy of a single disgruntled member.
Sub Brigades
CyberArmy Advanced Hardware Projects
Ravn is working on recruiting new members for brand new projects. CAAHP is a highly technical group, so personnel changes can affect it greatly. Current projects under development include: tutorials on building a MythTV PVR, robotics, and hardware reviews.
Class Delivery
Before becoming C/O of CAU, I'd never even met DarkJester. A trooper who became a C/O almost immediately with his choice of software for Class Delivery, and promoted quickly to 2nd Lt., DarkJester is working on recruiting more teachers to help create and teach classes. At the moment, Class Delivery is run mostly by CAU members who create their own classes. For instance, I'm working on an IRC class for new CA recruits.
Some of these classes have really changed my own perception of what a class is. For instance, PixieLuv is working on a class teaching World of Warcraft. While this may not be a class that will result in helping someone achieve a Ph.D., it is the type of class that will bring in new members to CyberArmy by allowing them to learn something fun while a member of our community.
I would stress to anyone interested in working for CAU to seriously consider Class Delivery. As you can see from PixieLuv's class, it doesn't matter what your expertise is in. Anything from the scholarly to the fun to the absolutely strange are more than welcome!
Foreign Language Institute
FLI currently has 149 class logs translated into 12 different languages. Mirmo has built a provisional website to house all translated texts, and is working on adding correct Hebrew posting. Last activity from this group includes 11 translations into French, Spanish, Dutch, and Hebrew. Excellent work guys!
Knowledge Base
Knowledge Base has been learning and working with their TikiWiki package. Over the past month and a half, we've taken the entire KB and converted it to this new system. Work is still ongoing to polish the conversion entries and remove any entries that were requested to be removed.
Currently, Rae has taken over as C/O of Editors, Asdf has become X/O of Editing, and Jehnx has taken the lead in admin/accounts as X/O of KB.
PixieLuv, now also X/O of CAU, has led efforts to increase the power of CA's publishing corps via the CA Writers and Editors Forum. Rae and Asdf created a CAU-KB Editors test. Currently, they are working on a Unified CA Editors Test through the CA Writers and Editors Forum.
KB Writers have had a slow month. Software access problems have affected KB. Writers is also working on trying to work with other brigade writers through the CA Writers and Editors Forum, but has been hitting some roadblocks.
Testing Center
The Testing Center has been off to a rocky start. Testing Center is currently in a bind from 3 different directions. First, because of our software upgrade problems, materials have not been readily available to them. Second, because of the multiple software platforms, they are not able to learn the software to a level to create meaningful work. Third, there is a lack of personnel for this group.
We've made some progress on these problems. Testing Center now has its own separate forum to work from. Testing formats have been moved to purely text-import method to allow the use of this forum as a workspace and to alleviate the need to learn software. We've also recruited two coders to work on new Quiz software so that Testing Center will be able to test their quizzes, as well as allow them to plug-and-play with any other software/brigade/project.
The State of CAU
I'm no longer a big believer in grading brigades, and I certainly won't assign grades to subbrigades. However, as this is CAU, I feel giving the entire brigade a grade may be appropriate into leading off my summary of how CAU is doing.
At this time, I would give CAU a B+. Now, while no great work has come out of CAU for over a month, I must give this brigade very high marks for what it has endured.
At the bottom half of January, CAU lost all leadership, both C/O and X/Os as well as several C/Os retiring. It lost its former domain, the site software was simultaneously demanded removed by its author as well as hacked through various means, and previous authors were asking for their works to be removed. As of January, CAU had a new url, new software, all new leadership which had little or no experience commanding a brigade or sub brigade, and a completely new vision for moving forward.
In fact, it was as if CAU was completely destroyed and built from scratch. I cannot recall a brigade ever going through so much, and coming out the other side as well as we have. When I took over CAU, an 80-90% fallout was expected. While that fallout never materialized, the effect was similar in terms of how much had to be rebuilt.
We've missed some of our initial goals, and I take full responsibility for those. Those mainly concern the software problems that have stalled activity. While those keep CAU from getting an A, I think in every other aspect CAU has made a complete turnaround from where it was just 4 weeks ago.
While our leadership is inexperienced, it is eager and open to the changes we're making. While our software is almost unknown to many members, it is more powerful, secure, and will have a lifespan far exceeding what came before it.
Right now, the greatest difficulty we really face is personnel. We need teachers, test creators, and writers. Regardless of what software we have or how experienced our leaders become, the content creators are the lifeblood of CAU.
CAU must continue to make great strides to maintain its level as a B+ brigade.
The Road Ahead
CAU is now making some strides thankful to individuals who have stepped in to CAU to give their time and expertise: N3cro, SAJChurchey, Gisterogue, and InspectorGadget. We are working towards unifying our logins, creating software where necessary, and coordinating with other brigades.
Bug fixing has become my temporary number one priority. Problems with DNS, site access, and script errors will be solved in the month of March. With every error, an existing worker cannot work.
Recruitment is going to be the buzzword for CAU this spring. It is absolutely critical for us to recruit individuals for our projects. We are looking both inside and outside for these individuals.
One of the recruitment initiatives I'm pushing is for symbiotic workers. For instance, a coder who creates a class on coding is simultaneously creating more coders which will benefit their projects. CAU is in the unique position of creating a feedback loop with anyone it works with. Knowledge begets knowledge, and that is certainly CAU's greatest strength.
Ikioi
C/O CyberArmy University
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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