More volunteers; more progress

Things are really churning along in Weavolution-land: in addition to me and Claudia, we now have four volunteers actively working on the project:

• Marian, a user experience designer who is writing up the requirements and sketching out the wireframes;
• Holly, a marketing and advertising expert who is helping us put together a marketing plan;
• Alison, a business/accounting guru who is helping us with our business plan;
• Kathie, a systems engineer who will be helping us with requirements definition and also with testing later

Also excitingly, I think I may have found a “real” developer to work on the site.  I’m not going to say any more right now, because it’s all tentative, but we’ll see.

Between him, those four VERY talented volunteers, Claudia, and me, we now have all the bases covered except legal.  For that we will probably still need to pay for services, but I think we might be able to afford that.

This is all coming together with great speed – more than I ever dreamed of when I first thought about creating a social networking site for handweavers.  There are SO many people helping out – with connections, with volunteering, with donations, with notes of support – that it’s almost overwhelming.  I did not expect this kind of community support, and it’s positively heartwarming.

At the risk of resurrecting a much-cliched quotation, it reminds me of the passage from W.H. Murray (often mistakenly attributed to Goethe):

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

– W. H. Murray, from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

If there is one thing I have learned in a lifetime full of adventures (jumping off cliffs, eating rats and scorpions and dog, winding up on the front cover of a Thai travel magazine dressed in nothing but body paint, and other sundry items) it is precisely this: when you commit yourself to a course of action, then the world moves with you.  Once you are committed, and turn all your resources to the task at hand, you will pay closer attention, seize opportunities that you never saw before, find people you didn’t think you’d be able to locate, and make your way across all obstacles.  It’s not that you are guaranteed success – I haven’t succeeded at everything – but it’s a lot more likely, than if you’re halfheartedly weaseling around an idea.  As the quote says, boldness has magic in it!

Getting back to nuts and bolts: I have partially built the prototype for the site, and had a longish conversation with Ron, the developer who created our “platform” for us.  Nothing too inspirational to report, but we had a good conversation about technical details and he helped me solve some problems I couldn’t quite work out on my own.  I now have a prototype project notebook page, project page, and a loom summary page with different looms listed by manufacturer.  I’m working on shaping that up and putting a short summary of the project notebook in the user profiles.

I am also going to start a separate blog for Weavolution, for those who want to follow the progress of Weavolution but don’t want to hear all about my cycling and chocolate lives 🙂 .  Look for it in the next few days.  (I will continue to post about Weavolution here, of course.)