Well,
I've been thinking. What
really should be the goal of FSN? There are a few routes which this project can go in.
1) Well, this one will be there no matter what. A Scouting Database. I will hope to have one "master" DB with then mirrors located on whatever server wants one. Exactly how this will work is still a little in the air. Hopefully, once FSN gets a server, things concerning this can get a little more worked out.
Now, here comes the "split" part.
How much further should the "FSN" project go, and how much should be left for teams to do. Here's what I'm trying to say with that.
Should FSN have a Palm App? This would be designed by a team of people, with input provided by the entire FIRST community. (Here on CD) Of course, other teams could make other palm apps as long as they imported/exported in the standard format, and FSN would provide links to them. But, there would be at least one palm app. OR.. the other route to go here is that there would not be anything developed by a team of people as the FSN app. It would be up to teams to create whatever they wanted, and then hopefully share it with the FIRST community. This palm app holds true for paper, filemaker, ppc, access, ...
What that questions asks is the real "goal" of FSN? Is it to be a database or a system? Will FSN just have some simple stuff, and then leave it up to teams to create web interfaces, and other programs? OR.. should it be more of a system, where everything is attempted to be made by FSN. Of course, the later would still have the first db part which would allow teams to create their own interfaces. And, the FSN site would have links to those team creations.
Here's what I'm really tring to ask. I would like to begin to recrute people to "lead" different parts of FSN. Website, DB, XML, Access, PPC, Palm, Paper, ... These people would "lead" the development of these different branches. They would request help from others as needed, have their work in progress avaible to view, and contiue to post updates/idea requests on CD. However, would this be "breaking" the entire idea of FSN not having any "offical" product? Of course, teams could in addition create whatever they wanted which would interface as long as it complied with the data format.
Do you get what I'm trying to say here? What do you think?
I'm just trying to figure out what people really want FSN to do for them/others so that I can decide what FSN needs to do next.
Thanks,
Jack