Freely you have received, freely give – Part 1

TWIN (Technical Writers of India) is the first mailing list of Indian technical writers.  It was born in 1997.   Like any other mailing list, it is a coffee shop where people come to ask questions, post answers, share information, et cetera.  Posts to the mailing list are archived; the TWIN archives, like the TWIN mailing list, has free access.

By 2008, the TWIN archives had more than 35000 posts (growing daily).  The treasure trove was no longer as searchable as you and I would have liked it to be.  Gururaj is the current owner of the mailing list.  He asked me if I could drive a project to harvest the archives and collect the useful information into a searchable repository. I said, Yes. And sat down to think…

• Data source: 35000 posts which can be sorted according to date, author, or subject.
• Expected output: Question bank, searchable.
• Expected release date: December 2008, which gives me just about six months
• Resources: Nil. TWIN does not employ paid workers, does not have its own money, does not own computers.
• Processes: Undefined. No one has done this before (AFAIK).

What should I do? These, I thought:

• Get people
• Arrange infrastructure
• Do job
• Deliver

Get people, hmmm?  This was a project that needed people who could commit a certain number of hours every week, but not because they are paid to do so.  So, I advertised for volunteers.  For people whom I could offer nothing except toils, and sweat.  And Matthew 10:8.

I sent a mail to the TWIN list, and gave a two-week deadline. What happened next is what I’ll cover in my posts (Parts 2, 3, 4, …) over the next few days.