Hi fellow YWAM IT servants,
Earlier I posted a note that we would be posting some specs for a project that would like some input on. Well here it is... but we want more than just your input. We are looking for help in implementation as well. This is a project to serve our whole mission and we believe will serve to improve our interconnectivity across the globe.
To start with, this can be dealt with as two separate projects or as one project in two parts. One of the major themes for Lynn Green as the international Chairman is to improve our interconnectivity and communications. This is through the illustration of the nervous system and the need for communication to go both to and from the extremities. This project is focusing on providing some of the tools to improve these communication links through a YWAM global intranet.
Along these same lines, the GLT is calling all of YWAM to a monthly day of prayer that will helps us realign with what God is doing in us (YWAM) and the nations He has called us to. For this prayer project we are already developing part of the infrastructure of communicating with email, but we also believe a web presence is part of the strategy God wants to use. For this part of the project we want to create a means for sharing what God is speaking to us across the globe.
Below I am spelling out the specs we are looking at (you are welcome to add ideas to these as well) in 2 parts. Our current thinking is that MS SharePoint is how we would prefer to implement this web presence but we are very open to other recommendations. A few key things we are looking for are: ease of implementation (out of the box???),multi-lingual, available developers, and modularization.
Specs for Prayer Initiative website:
Blogging for registered users (along with the ability to easily moderate blogs)
Resource page (creative ideas for praying, YWAM teaching on intercession etc...)
Podcasting resources
Monthly prayer focus and archives
We are looking at the possibility of creating an Intranet for the whole of YWAM. In essence this will be a portal to find the resources that we as YWAM have and use. The idea of this site is not to centrally control the information but to have a way to centrally access it.
We have our basic specs and we have had ideas of how to build it – but we realize that there is strength in numbers, so below I have listed our ideas and requirements and if you think you know how this could be constructed in terms of platforms then please get in touch. YWAM Intranet.
Requirements
Enterprise Search - The site has to have a facility to index all other YWAM websites so that they are easily searchable.
Link to current resources - The site needs to have the ability to link to current resources (documents, websites etc…) such as ywamkb.net, ywamit.com and any other site that has teaching or any resources online. It only needs to link and maybe have an introduction, because the idea of this is not to centralize content to but to make it easily accessible from this site.
Social Networking – Link to current social networking groups in YWAM – such as YWAMConnect.net / facebook groups and myspace.
User Management – Although a lot of the site will be open for anyone to view – there may come a time that we want to offer some closed areas, so we need to be able to manage our user base at some point.
RSS – The site will do what YWAMPlanet does in terms of pulling in content from all the YWAM sites will RSS so that the news that YWAM is producing can be easily viewed. Also the site must be capable of outputting RSS
Staff directory – The site must e capable of holding an opt in YWAM staff directory
Leadership communication – The site must have an area where leadership can post news and appeals and generally connect with the mission.
Multilingual Support - The website must have the ability to be displayed in multiple languages.
MSSQL – The website has to be able to link with MSSQL
Collaboration – The website has to have the ability for teams to collaborate on documents and projects.
Comments
WOW this is a tall order!
Dear Jeff,
This is certainly a tall order!
I have some thoughts about the whole picture but realisitically this is going to be a one off project plus a longer-range target for the future.
Some suggestions:
1. Keep it simple - The interaction we seek to foster will come only if it is really easy for people to contribute to the site.
2. Serve it only over SSL via HTTPS so that all YWAMers can join in.
3. Authentication - we will pray as bases and teams so why not authenticate like this. I propose using the Go Manual codes as the username and then sending all bases their code plus a strong password automatically generated for them (and don't allow them to change it!). This way you can pre-fill the user registration data base and only need to handle corner cases.
4. Use Wordpress or Drupal or something - there is a lot of expertease here in using them plus they are open and scriptable - we can extend them if we wish in useful directions.
5. Content - publish a daily prayer point and invite comments and responses. Publish a weekly digest on the site and via email.
6. Comments - Try not to pre-moderate comments so users see they have made a contribution quickly plus they can respond to others comments. Perhaps you could use a threaded system like the one on this Drupal site so people can take a theme and have a conversation about what interests them. Interaction happens when people are free to talk and not restricted.
My 2 cents
Kev
My other 2 cents
Dear Jeff,
I split my comments in two as I think you have two ideas here and they need to be seperate. I really think the second part is a wish list and not a spec at the moment but the core ideas are important and need thought.
I think that the aim to "heal the nervous system" is important but we really need to diagnose the problem well. Currently the problem is stated quite vaguely. (I can't recall reading any thing specific). What I am trying to say is INTERACTION is harder to achieve than implementing the technology. We have to create online communities. That is not easy. Most YWAMers are busy people and international interaction is important, but not a vital component to their day to day lives.
From my experience growing an online community with YWAMKB I have learnt that a lot of people like the site but actually very few people have contributed an article and even fewer contribute more than one article. There is some good interaction, but actually there are not that many people doing it. Likewise this site here is GREAT, but I can't see more than 20 people using it? (Correct me if I am wrong Bill).
So I wonder do we know what the right question we should be asking is yet?
That said, I think an Extranet is a REALLY GOOD IDEA potentially but there are some BIG issues that need to be thought through:
1. Technically: What do you want to support? Windows 95,98,2K,XP, Vista, Mac os X, Linux - all of these systems are in use (well maybe not 95!) and good luck getting 17,000 YWAMers onto one system! Plus browsers IE 5, 6, 7, Firefox, Safari?
2. Single signon for YWAM websites. Probably the most desirable feature is a way of centrally authenticating YWAMers and allowing sign on across all YWAM websites current and future. I don't know of any system that authenticates to all of MS Sharepoint, Drupal, MediaWiki, YWAMCONNECT.net (?), Typo3, Wordpress etc. There are some technologies that are available but this needs a great deal of evaluation. The benefits could be enormous though...
3. Central administration and development - a project this size will need a staff for developing software, administrating systems and authenticating ueser - particularly if we have a registry of YWAMers. It raises lots of issues such as - how to you add new YWAMers? How will we know if these are genuine YWAMers? How will we remove YWAMers? (or will we?) Could it exclude YWAMers from developing nations who might not have ready internet access the way we in the West do? How many languages will we support and can we get staff for that?
4. Cost - you didn't mention a budget and I guess that means there is none. I am scared that we might get into another situation re the 50 days of prayer when there was a shocking 30,000K overspend left at the end. To be honest I would have preferred no shiny Website to the disappointment of handling a debt AFTER a project has finished. Keeping something like this alive will be costly, just in time let alone hardware/software costs.
5. MSSQL and Sharepoint - it sounds like you have a preferred solution already. Is it flexible enough to handle point 2? Are you sure that it is the right answer?
Hope this feedback helps. I am in Harpenden 1-4 October so if you want to continue over coffee I am around (With the WELT meeting)
Cheers,
Kevin
A few responses to the
A few responses to the questions you put up. First a comment...
We have already done a lot of foot work in on this so what we have presented is based on that foot work. While we mention that SharePoint is a strong contender, we are not sold on it and we are coming to the IT community for more input and ideas. What I would ask is that you take a look at SharePoint as you suggest other possible applications so that we can all have a pretty good overview of their capabilities. While the second part of specs looks like a wish list, it is something we can implement with SharePoint. That is why we have listed them all there and what to get an idea of other ways these same things can be achieved or finds others that can help on the development of SharePoint [.net/asp programming]
Not to respond to your questions:
1. The solution we are looking for needs to be compatible with as many different browsers as possible. The operating system is not important as we will always have a variety in YWAM - but we need to work on compatibility with all the major browsers... IE, Firefox, Safari.
2. Single sign on would be great but is a difficult ideal to achieve. What we are wanting to start with is a user management system so that as staff and students enter the intra/extranet we can manage which resources they have access to more effectively. This is based on some experiments we have been doing with a few international leadership team.
3. These questions on administration are important questions that would be good for us to hash out some more. We have some ideas on how to start with this and the idea of "swarm intelligence" mentioned below is an idea we should explore. We do still have a challenge with some of our staff and students being isolated because of technology, but at the same time, we need to move forward with those that this can help and serve. Technology is not the only means we have for serving our people who do not have access to these types of tools. As far as development, yes, it will require some centrally organized project management... but the team can easily be spread across the globe.
4. No, we did not mention budget but that is not because there isn't one. We are in the process of seeing a budget raised and will not start until we have the budget. We have been working through the implication of running a system like this and that is why we have come to this community... if this is the direction we are going to go we need to be sure we have a broad buy in from this community.
6. We mention SharePoint because it will do the things that we require but we are not totally sold on it. We have brought this to this community to help us in the evaluation of other alternatives along with the ability to implement those alternatives. However, we do need to stick with systems that are compatible with MSSQL as we already have a strong base of data stored in MSSQL.
Jeff
Budget for 50days.net
Where did this figure of 30,000 come from? I would have to go back and see, but I think that was the total costs approximately INCLUDING printed materials. Additionally, there was no budget to begin with. 50days.net was done very quickly, so we in essence pulled it together keeping costs as low as possible as Lynn said he would take up an offering to cover it.
Here's a short breakdown of the costs as I recall:
Software was Mambo, mapserver, etc. and was all open source.
Now there were costs associated with 4k, that were outside of this budget which were done out of David Hamilton's office and this is part of an ongoing project. For example, I know that they had a copy of ESRI Arc Map which runs about $700.
Additionally, the 50days.net prayer manual was produced in Colorado Springs and was posted to every YWAM location in the world. Originally the biggest cost of 50days.net was not technology, but rather postage and printing. However, the last I heard was that the mail house that was contracted to send out the prayer books did such a bad job that we were going to get a partial or full reimbursement. I have no clue how this ended. I assume no news was good news.
With all of the above, in addition to some monies that were contributed from the Bible project, I am under the belief that the offerings covered all the costs. I am not aware of any debt left over because Lynn and the ICT would be currently bearing that debt.
That said, I am not all knowing, so if there is something here that I don't know about, I'm happy to be enlightened!
To everyone!
Dear All,
About my comments on the 30,000 overspend. I just talked with Donavan face to face before reading his post above and he has relieved my concerns! I recall receiving the letter from Lynn where he talked about the 30,000 that needed raising. However, there was no clear breakdown (and the IT spend is small compared to paper and postage) and we never heard the second part, which was Lynn solved the problem!!!!
It is always a pain not to hear the resolution to the story!
So I am happy now!!!!!!
cheers,
Kevin
another comment
I agree with Kevin, & I understand that his comments are not to be discouraging (nor are mine), but simply to make sure we're understanding the implications. I would suggest that before any programming work happens at all, there would be some serious cost analysis done into a system like this, not just from a financial aspect, but from a time aspect as well. How many people at how many hours per week would it take to maintain & support a system like this? Who would those people be? Are we sure we want to limit the technology to Microsoft-based products (thus potentially limiting the skill set required for maintainance)? It seems to me that this is something that would require much more prayer & planning than appears to be happening. I only make that comment because, as Kevin also said, the goal is stated rather vaguely, & with a project of this enormity & far-reaching impact it would be wise on all of our parts to consider all of the possible costs involved before actually beginning planning.
Perhaps we could consider following the "systems analysis & design" model for creating solutions. This requires quite a large amount of research at the beginning of a system's life cycle, but it would be well worth it for a project of this enormity, so that we don't repeat the 50 days incident. Also, this model I believe would lend some structure & help create achievable goals to finally discovering & creating a solution that would be viable across the mission.
Please forgive me if there is information that I don't have about what has already been discussed. If all of this has been discussed & solved, then please dismiss all that I just said.
Bless you as you proceed in this project following the Lord's lead.
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
prayer, planning etc...
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comments. It might help if I explain our process to you here...
We have put a lot of prayer and research into this already, and posting this on ywamit is part of that process of prayer and research. We have brought to this community some ideas to work with, processes together, and ask for concrete suggestions that would differ from the current conclusions. We have gone through a process of discover to determine the resources necessary for both development and maintenance and we know we don't have all the resources within our current team, but we also believe that this needs implementation from a broader YWAM IT community/team.
I hope this helps you understand and gives you more confidence in the process we are in. We did not post all the details we have worked through mostly because then it would appear as a done deal... which it is not.
Jeff
Understood
Hi Jeff,
As you can understand, coming into this thing blind as I did, it would be easy for me to jump to conclusions as I did... of course I never imagined that you wouldn't have done your homework, but I didn't want to take any chances, based on what you had presented. It's such a huge project that I simply wanted the best for you guys. So thanks for explaining this a bit. I understand your position & I apppreciate it.
This is the beauty of communication... give & take... clarification & collaboration. This is the process of healing the nervous system in action.
Bless you!
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
How to achieve a deeper buy in...
Dear Jeff,
Good comments. It is good to know deep thinking is going on here. I am reminded of the idea of a "Chinese Contract" proposed by Charles Handy in his book "The Concrete Raincoat". The idea is that an agreement is achieved with a very long process of consultation and then once agreement is realised then outwork is swift because... everyone agrees. Handy contrasts that with a more American way of working in that agreement is quickly achieved and then persuading people to go along with the decision takes a very long time!
I wonder whether we do need to look for models of ways to make decisions the Chinese way. For example in the world of the Internet suggestions for changes are made by issuing RFC's "Requests for Comments" which anyone can comment on over a period of 6 months. Then often a task force will go ahead with the proposals.
I would love to see a bigger area and a longer period to discuss these things. I applaud how far we have come!
Why not open source?
I agree with Kevin. I think keeping it open source is going to be the best idea. Maybe it's just me, but open source feels like it fits into YWAM better than something more commercial. This is partly to keep costs down, but also because this project will need either a broad base of support from IT people all over YWAM or a mediu-sized, dedicated team working fulltime who know how something like Sharepoint works. If you don't foresee being able to have the latter, then I think using open source (hence, well-known and easily extensible) is almost the only way to go.
As Chris said, this may all be moot, since you may have already figured out how to overcome these things. I'm also speaking out of an ignorance of what Sharepoint is or how it works.
As far as adding new users goes, I have been intrigued lately by the thought of swarm intelligence. I'm no expert, but that is basically using the same principles that govern the behaviors of swarms of bees, ants, and schools of fish. Specifically, you would start with a large core of approved users, who could then in turn approve other users. Those users in turn could approve other users maybe requiring more than one user to approve someone as a sort of "insurance".
In fact, and I don't have any specifics as to how we should implement it, but I think in an organization as de-centralized as YWAM is, swarm intelligence could come in very handy for this whole project.
my .98p (about 2 cents) / response
Firstly with regards to the intranet idea - the idea is not to change anything about how we do things - in the decentralised nature, and the idea is also not to make anyone "get onto it" but create the portal to be a place where we can centralise access to these different sites.
So basically it is google for YWAM, with a space for leaders to put announcements to the mission. Or if the leaders are writing elsewhere we will just pull it in with an aggregator
Chris - thanks for your comments - I was confused a little by one thing - what is the 50 days incident??
We are definately sure that we do not yet know what technology we are using to implement either of these sites - whether it is microsoft or open source or something else- the one thing we are sure of is that we do not want to be serving the tool - we want the tool to serve us!
Kevin - in terms of online community - it always takes time. Wikipedia would be considered a failure as a corporate intranet - because so few who go actually contribute. YWAMIT has about the same percentage of regular contributors to users as wikipedia (about 2%), we currently have a few shy of 1000 unique visitors to the site per month. So I would take heart with ywamkb - I think it is a great tool that people will start to use more as time does by. The reason we want this intranet is so people can find great tools like ywamkb easily.
Sorry this are ramblings - I hope they make sense.
Thanks again for all the comments - I love that we as 'the body' can get online to discuss this stuff - you guys are legends!
David
50 days...
Hi David,
I was simply referring to Kevin's comment in this discussion that said
"4. Cost - you didn't mention a budget and I guess that means there is none. I am scared that we might get into another situation re the 50 days of prayer when there was a shocking 30,000K overspend left at the end. To be honest I would have preferred no shiny Website to the disappointment of handling a debt AFTER a project has finished. Keeping something like this alive will be costly, just in time let alone hardware/software costs."
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
Sorry Chris
Sorry mate I did not read that properly...my mistake.
Being on the 50 days project - I was not aware of any debt from the web side of that project - we got a deal on the hosting - the website was open source. but I could be wrong (as my wife would willingly tell you that I often am!)- so I will have a look.
Open Source
I agree with Kevin et al. about using Open Source software. The first and most obvious reason is because of the fact that it is free. However, I think just as important is the fact that most Open Source software out there is standards compliant. It seams to me that one of the biggest functions of such a site will be aggregating content from outside resources. Many of these resources already use standards compliant software to begin with, so the best way to use such resources is with other standards compliant software. And all the needs for this site (CMS, bloging, RSS, podcasting, etc) already have been implemented in a variety of high quality Open Source projects.
another vote for open source
Hi @ all.
I also vote for using Open Source software. A few basic reason are it's free, although since you think about getting some MS software you think about a appropriate budget, so it would only be fair to think contributing some money to OSS developers of the software you would use (in case OSS will be used). But up front there is no cost what could make the start easier.
Also I think that there are more ppl out there who could contribute towards an OSS developed site than when you go for MS software. Simply more ppl know about PHP than ASP and .NET, etc. Plus having the programming environment.
The question comes to mind is, why does it has to be with MSSQL? MySQL works just as good. Maybe I'm missing something here, but why does it always need to be MS software? Do you get special discount? What if we can't afford it at one point? For what ever reason.... Then we are stuck with the version we have and are not able to upgrade. Besides the fact that I don't really like the MS politics. But that might be just me. So, forget about that.
Another question I want to ask is, what about security? If "someone" hacks a password of a user and we have a central login then this person has access to all connected sites at once. I'm not sure if that is really an good idea.
Another thought. What should this site be able to do what the ywamconnect site is not able to provide. Maybe not at the moment but I would guess it's easier (and faster) to add to ywamconnect than to start from scratch. Why trying to build yet another community? How many of those ~16000 registered users at ywamconnect are active contributing users? Why should we expect that with another site there will be more?
The timing issue. So, this project/idea is now about 2 months old. It should be ready (at least the basics, what ever that exactly is) on the 3rd January 08. This is, from now on, in less then 3 months and some decision making still needs to happen before programming/developing can get started.
Maybe it would be good to define the basics, what should be the minimum stuff that is required to start with. It's good to have the big picture so that who ever is working on it knows where it's heading to. But in order to make it happen I personally think it's necessary to define the goal for the January launch date. Then, when you know what exactly you need by this time you can ask for ppl to help with that.
So, to get me right here. I don't want to say that it's impossible or a bad idea. But I think it needs some sort of serious devotion to that work if you want to get the job done. I myself don't have the time to work on that. All I can offer is to help test the site with W2k and Linux, Mac if really necessary. But answers to the questions / comments above would really help (at least me) to get a better picture of that project.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Single Sign on
Dear All,
I have just been looking at some single sign on technologies. It seems that LDAP and OpenId can work together (LDAP as the database backend). The good thing about this is it seems MS Sharepoint can access LDAP for authentication too (this is from my rough reading). If so we could implement a single sign on across Sharepoint, Drupal, Wordpress, MediaWiki etc. As OpenId has lots of resources and tool kits in PHP,Python etc. you could add authentication for most other Web bases products perhaps.
LDAP is a highly rated, and fast database for authentication (it is not a general purpose database) and can hold 100,000's of names arranged in simple hierarchies. Lots of companies use them for their International directories. MS adopted and "extended" the standard, I believe, in creating Active Directory.
I vote for open source.
The first thing I thought when reading this post was "Why use MS Sharepoint? Use Drupal or some other open source platform."
For a project like the one proposed, the benefits of using open source, standards compliant software go far beyond the monetary one. If you want YWAMers from around the world to take part in developing, managing, and using this project, then use something that the majority of YWAMers already use themselves. You'll find more support, participation, and feedback for something that people can set up and test on their own systems for free than for any proprietary platform.
Also, with Drupal 6 comming soon, the multilingual interface and single login issues will be much easier to implement.
Nathan Johnson
YWAM Perm, Russia
www.ywam.ru | www.ywamperm.org
Open source is the way to go.
The only decent version of SharePoint is the MOSS 2007 version. SharePoint in general creates a data sprawl problem somewhat because most users just create a generic looking sites with little to no modification. Regarding single sign on, LDAP would be the obvious choice but you still need someone to maintain an open directory and enforce things such a password changes. At least with LDAP, most application have integration. ADAM is MS LDAP clone and might be another good choice but again you start down the proprietary world of Microsoft and soon you're roped in and more dependent upon Microsoft. I agree with Nathan, open source is the best way to go. Even consider the spirit of the Open Source movement and it is better aligned with a YWAM philosophy.
===================
Greg Paskal
http://www.MissionWares.com
===================
Free Video Editing Tool
Does anyone know of a good free video editing tool?... besides Windows Movie Maker
Thanks
What I know of......
Hi,
For Linux there are:
Kino
Cinelerra
Jahshaka
For Windows:
Zwei-Stein
I've tried to use each of these... to one degree or another... I never was able to get them working, but I think I was hoping to find something like Avid or Final Cut Pro in one of these... but, of course, I didn't... So, I really don't know how good these are. They are active projects with recent updates, so they must have some level of usefulness. Well, anyway, enjoy!
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
Free Video Editing Tool
Thanks Chris...I'll have to give Zwei-Stein a try, it looks quite pro...
Unfortunately, I don't have Linux, I've been interested in trying it out but I wouldn't know where to start, you guys are way far ahead of me in the IT world...
Thanks again.
Leo
Video editing on Linux
I have not done any video editing on ether Linux Mac or Windows, but I have seen this article about it (http://www.linux.com/articles/58458). Also, if you would like to give Linux a try, I would sugjest going to ubuntu.com. Ubuntu is a very popular, easy to use and yet versitle version of Linux. Just download the disk image, burn it to cd, put it in your cd tray and restart. You can even test it out right off the cd, without installing it on your computer.
Ubuntu Studio...
Check out Neo's post about Ubuntu Studio....
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
Video Editing Tools
Thanks for all the input guys, I've been using Windows Movie Maker until now, for some reason doesn't seem to work anymore, whenever I finish the project and try to save into a movie it says it can't save it and it doesn't give any reasonable reason why, to be honest I'm getting tired of Microsoft and Windows...I would eventually like to be Open Software only, however, despite the facts that there are many good options in the Open Software / Free Software realm there is still ways to go before we could be totally dependant on it. So I guess in the meantime we wait for that day when we can ditch Windows; OS X is pretty decent and reliable but Apple are pretty expensive machines specially for us missionaries. Anyway, enough with my rant. Chris I tried Zwein-Stein and looks like that program has a pretty steep learning curve, it is not user friendly at all. Thanks for the suggestion though. I guess I will give Linux a try and see how it goes. Peace Out.
Leo - Future YWAM Cuernavaca IT Dude...
Same here
We should take this conversation into another post or into email... I will message you privately.
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
Update? - International Project needing collaboration!!!
*bump*
I was wondering what you guys decided to build your infrastructure with?
Lynn mentions a high $ cost (more than my small Base's annual budget!) and I was wondering if this was hardware/software/snailmail or what hits so hard?
Blessings
Mike
Lynn mentions money...
Hi Mike,
Are you referring to the latest letter from Lynn regarding the prayer days next year? I will assume you are and continue. In his letter he mentioned $75,000 as a figure for what was needed for the prayer project. Yet I am wondering if he is referring to Jeff's post here. I have written to Lynn asking a breakdown of the budget as it "hits so hard" as you said. He passed on the request I think but I am still waiting an answer.
I think we can all think of lots of essential uses for this amount of money. To throw it at collaborative prayer doesn't rate highly for me. After all KK used to be able to do it with "Prayer and Faxing", couldn't we do it with "Prayer and Blogging?"
I pointed out to Lynn that the YWAMKB site has cost a total of 16 Euro in its life... (Same for Planet YWAM). I am sure I could host a Wordpress blog for another 16 Euro (which YWAM Brussels would donate of course!) that we could use for a prayer news and responses. We could give out a few guest authorships and comment approval's rights. (16 Euro is the charge for domain registration).
I am mostly concerned about the integrity around finances here than about technical merit. Jeff says it is for a project in two parts or two projects. If Lynn is asking for two projects he should, for integrity's sake, split his appeal in two parts or supply some form of breakdown. I think many people will do a double take when asking for this much money and will understandably request some justification for this amount. As I am already doing.
And until I get my response from Lynn, I can't ask my team to consider giving. If I am not convinced by the response, I may ask my team to give to a more vital cause.
What do others think?
Kevin
what i think
Hi @ all.
Just to make that clear up front. This is not meant as accusation about anything, since it's so easy to point fingers and it's hardly written about the good things. These are just some questions that I had when I was reading through the email. I believe there is a good explanation for all the questions / concerns.
1.
I was wondering how I got on that email list in the first place. It comes from the domain ywamlist.org. I never visited that site or do remember that I signed up for receiving a newsletter like this. Maybe there is something that I do not actively remember but I just do not know how and why and when that would have happened.
It's not that I would not want to receive this email I just don't remember how I should have gotten on that list.
2.
So far I received 2 emails, on the 7th of both Nov and Dec. The subject and the content is exactly the same. Why is that, was that an accident or "just" a reminder that this project needs financial support. Don't get me wrong but friends who get my personal monthly newsletter are saying about much more careful communication about finances that it sounds like a begging letter.
3.
About the money it says in the email that $75k (I assume US$, is that correct? Usually I calculate in AU$ !!) is needed on top of "what the GLT has already given towards this infrastructure". How much is that (overall cost for the project) and what is "this infrastructure"?
My supporters (and by considering giving towards this project I'm in the same position as my supporters have towards me) request an high level of integrity / transparency regarding the finances. However, all I can see in this email is that "someone" wants $75k for a website. It's from YWAM and since no one gets paid in YWAM this must be money for hosting the website, at least from what I can get out of the newsletter.
From what I can see the main thing will be to send out newsletters in different languages. More features on the website will come in future. It's not clear what this "features" will be or what it means from a technical perspective.
Assuming "it" is something rather intense from a technical point of view and it needs a fairly powerful server to host the site you can rent a root server for 79€/month. But that one will be a serious machine (AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Dual Core, 6GB RAM, ~1500GB HD). If you need that for just 1 website, what sort of site will that be?
Anyway, assuming that is really the case the $75K will pay for that server for more than 50 years (assuming it's in US$). A Domain costs about 12€/year. Year, not month!
That money must be needed for more than the infrastructure. But unfortunately this is all I can get out of the newsletter that I got.
4.
Regardless of point 3 I personally would be interested of a breakdown of the costs for different reasons. One, I guess, more unusual reason would be to learn from others how to budget a project that size. Although the size of the project is a bit unclear so far. Anyway, besides the transparency all that can happen is that I personally can learn through it.
Also, I, and probably others as well, would be interested in the technical side of it. Again it's something I can learn from but also if we know more in detail chances are that we can give advise or help better than by having a vague email. The above comments have some stuff but as I understood it's more of a wish list nothing that is already decided. Decisions should have been made by now? Or at least more should have been talked through by the core developer team. It would be nice to hear what's going on. Specially since here was asked for advice and an overwhelmingly lot responses voted for FOSS.
And FOSS is more than able to handle all the YWAMers. I know of a online forum which is totally based on FOSS with more than 150,000 user and more than 1Mio posts. Say, how many full time staff has YWAM ;) ? And how many would sign up on a website like this and contribute on a regular basis??
5.
To have a global monthly day of prayer is something really great. Not because we then make sure that everyone is praying at least once a month ;) but it gives us as YWAM a deeper sense of family. I hope we have intercession times on every base, yet we are not necessarily connected in prayer as a global mission. Maybe it's just me but I feel that WE have intercession on OUR base and in MY ministry. I don't really feel to pray with my YWAM family world wide.
A website with potential room for comments, testimonies, praise reports, etc would be a great thing to connect globally.
A long time ago God stirred the idea in me to pray (world wide on a monthly basis) for those "who are in high positions" in regards to IT. Based on the scripture in 1.Timothy 2:1-4. IT and Internet is such an important part of this world with many people and companies who hold a lot of power in that area.
Instead of me reinventing the wheel could this be a partner project / addition to this prayer project? Something like every 2nd Thursday of a month?? Any ideas???
OK, that's me, who's next? ;)
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
email address
Hi Neo,
I think the email from ywam.org comes from information taken during the Go Manual survey (I think others can confirm this). All staff members emails are requested for each location. That may pose problems for some staff (I think there is an opt out clause). I guess it might depend on who entered your survey info.
Cheers,
Kevin
re: email address
Hi Kevin,
so that would mean that the bases got contacted and they gave out the information? If so, I can't recall to ever have signed something (either Base or Ministry) that would allow them to share my contact details. It's an email address that besides family and friends almost no one knows of and the the base here has the policy to not give out details without explicit permission. The only other place I ever used this email address was on ywamconnect.net.
So, there are really only very view possibilities where this email address could come from. Who ever gave out this details, may the fear of the Lord come over this person. I'm almost 100% sure that this was without my permission. Makes me a bit sad. :(
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Another Response
Hi Neo?
The 2007 YWAM International Survey had a note from Lynn on behalf of the Team3 and the GLT kindly requesting locations to provide staff name and email address in regard to a upcoming global monthly prayer project. Your email address was provided on the survey form by your base and that is how your name was added to this list. ywamlist.org is YWAM's new list server - we are in the process of moving several of our lists like ywam-base-announce over to this new server. Part of the reason for this is we have better control over the system, security etc. As well as we won't have to put up with googlegroup ads at the bottom of our list emails. The list server will also sync with our data base information such as base, UofN, and staff lists.
I belive Jeff has already addressed some of your other concerns.
I'm personally very sorry if adding your email to this list has case you some frustration - I'll be happy to remove it if you let me know what it is or you are welcome to unsubscribe - also note if you haven't actually used the signup form then you will be automatically dropped from this list shortly as we have promised to do for anyone who didn't signup for the prayer day emails. If you base provided your email address with out your permission then that is something you will need to take up with them.
This is the first project of it's kind that I know of where we have attempted to communicate directly with each ywamer across the globe. I personally believe it is a big step forward in the area of communication.
more question arise....
Hi,
and thanks for your comment. Although I must admit that this piece of information raises some serious concerns.
So, the email address are collected via a survey. But our Base has a very strong privacy policy. How can it happen that my email address was given to someone without my authorisation? I mean, I know that I'm a slow thinker and keep forgetting things but I don't recall anything I should have filled out last year and put in my email address myself. Specially because I'm about 253% sure I would have chosen another email address for that very purpose.
There are only 2 places in YWAM that have this email address. This is the Base here and YWAMconnect.net. And non of them should have given away personal information. Actually due to privacy laws it should have been a pure waste of time to ask for these details, anyways. My concern is not to be on this mailing list, I pretty much support this initiative with all my heart. But I have some not too warm feelings about how my personal data is handled.
Whether my Base really gave out this information or not is something I'll find out, that is for sure. However, this information should not have been requested in the first place. Besides the privacy laws I thought that at least YWAM is taking more care of this sort of information. Since we all (should??) know about the danger of exposure of personal information and what that could mean for some workers in "not so Jesus friendly" countries.
Just to let you know why I provided this particular email address. When I first time wrote an email to YWAM I thought about which email address to give out. What if the server is compromised and my email address gets "stolen", what do I want to have in that system? I have 2 of those sort of email address, these 2 get ~90% of the spam I get. Over all I have 9 email boxes that I'm monitoring (private and ministry) and a bunch more email addresses that get forwarded to one of those.
The really interesting thing is that in some blogs we discuss privacy issues, data safety, encryption, etc and on the other side personal information is simply requested and provided in a survey. I know that I'm a real pain in the butt about this topic. But I think that we as YWAM need to get our act together about this topic.
What would happen if I sent an email on behalf of my ministry or base requesting the email addresses of all YWAMers? Hopefully nothing. I mean, who am I, who knows me, therefore who should reply to me with this sort of information?? But what if I set up a Gmail account with Lorens name and adopt his writing style? I guess we would be surprised how many would respond to the email. Or even better, how about using a real existing email address (that is stuff that can be found out) or at least a emails address with a existing domain, say uofn.edu or whatever else, and changing the reply-to entry. How many people check where the email is sent to when they hit the reply button?
There is simply too much potential for miss-use. This is just too sensitive. Email address from workers in "closed" countries could be exposed to who really knows who is getting it at the end.
I do believe that this can be a big step forward in communication. But don't let us try to get everyone on there no matter the cost. There are other ways to communicate to every YWAMer. Like writing to the Bases and asking them to forward the information to their staff, just as one example out of the top of my head.
Besides, I thought that YWAmconnect.net should have been the first attempt to get every YWAMer on the planet together on one web site and get information out to everyone. I hope it's needless to say that we will not get everyone on there, anyways. However, it worked very well for YWAMconnect, even though access is by invitation only.
So, this is what I think about this topic. Again, I don't want to bash anyone. But I have experienced some rather "interesting" things since I'm in YWAM, we've even been asked to shut down some web sites once due to security concerns in a certain situation. While in other situations we request and provide freely personal information.
I think that we need to be careful what we do. E.g. that we don't miss-use the web ourselves.
BTW, I'll sign up for the YWAMprayerlist. I hope I made myself already clear that I like that whole thing. But please let us be good stewards with all resources, not only money but also personal information that we are requesting and providing.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Agreed!
Thanks Neo and Kevin for your wonderful additions.
At the risk of stirring a hornets nest I would like to see some details as well.
The email from Lynn, and also sent by Jeff N to the YWAM announce and MMLeaders mail lists on 20 Dec was indeed an exact copy of the mail sent on 29 November. I want to get and hear of these initiatives but do not want to be spammed either. Perhaps there was a mistake on the second round of mailings as one would expect an update or even progress report on the fundraising. That would encourage us and stir us in our giving.
Anyway - we are promised another mail with the specific points for Jan 3rd next week
We should all be mail-bombed (sorry for the use of the term!) one week in advance of the prayer day.
I look forward to this monthly initiative and how we can use and learn to collaborate with whatever tools are offered. We have 70+ locations with potential access to GENESIS videoconference so some bases communities can be praying together internationally at low cost over IP.
Jeff, David, Donovan... can you enlighten us please on what tools are being used for these events?
And as an old banker - I would like to have an accountability report (for transparency/integrity) before releasing our ministry funds into the project. I have many requests and demands from my limited funds and need to honour our donors too!
Blessings and have a merry CHRISTmas!
Mike
mike, you are right
You are right with the dates, it was the 29th Nov and 20th Dec, of course. I wrote I got it on the 7th each both months. Well, that happens when I try to do 5 things at once and that too late at night when I'm sleepy.
Anyways, you should not say sorry for saying "mail-bombed". I still hope it was sent accidentally or at least not thought through before sending. Somehow I can hardly believe that this would be on purpose without the slightest glimpse of an update. Plus the one that should come in mid next week is announced and therefore expected. So, after all, "Spam" would be the wrong term.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Agreed!
Mike wrote:
Hi Mike, I'm not involved with this project, so I'll have to defer to David or Jeff! Mercy Christmas and Happy new year everyone! - Donovan
Continuing to follow up...
Dear IT Friends,
Broad Vision (Healing the Nervous System and Collaboration)
First I would like to restate our challenge, which we have phrased in the visionary term, “Healing the Nervous System”. YWAM is a fantastically dynamic organization which has seen phenomenal growth over the past two decades. Much of that dynamism has come from our decentralized structure and the encouragement to pioneer. However, with this growth has come some breakdowns in our communications, collaboration and interdependence within our YWAM family; especially as we are spread so completely across the globe.
As we walk into the next expected growth spurt we need to see correction in the areas where we are weak. The problems which we need to address include: communications between leaders, staff, bases and teams; a means for collaboration across the globe in a virtual environment; and creating a place where interdependence will lead to greater fruit for the Kingdom.
We know that building a technical solution will not resolve these issues, as YWAMers themselves have to choose to be interdependent (walking in humility, willingness to communicate etc...), but we can provide an environment which encourages this interdependence. This is where IT people can play an important role in YWAM and do our part in seeing the “healing of the nervous system” be integrated into our everyday life.
We have included this IT development as part of the prayer initiative because we believe fresh unity and interdependence is part of what the Lord is going to do through these prayer days. We could not split these into two different projects but there may be more than one phase of implementation.
I hope this helps state the vision and the problem we are attempting to respond to without writing a book. If you would like to dialogue on this further, I would suggest that we schedule a Skype call or Genesis link in the next couple of weeks and I would be glad to facilitate this further.
Budget Questions
Before I answer your questions about the budget which was sent out in November, let me apologise for the way it all came out. In that first letter we sent out about the monthly prayer day initiative we really wanted the focus to be on preparing YWAMers for the prayer initiative. We put the budget in the initial letter to give YWAMers an opportunity to help fund to the infrastructure that will support the healing of the nervous system. Unfortunately the way we wrote the letter seems to have emphasised the financial need over the need for YWAMers to sign up and receive the monthly prayer focus updates.
We did send the letter out again not recognizing how the financial need overshadowed our desire to get YWAMers to sign up. We are learning, so please forgive us as we learn these lessons along with you. This challenge is added to as we are attempting to do everything in 6 languages and therefore translation is needed each time we do a different communication.
Now for more details about the budget. I know that when many YWAMers see a budget for US$50,000 or more, many respond with “why so much?” The first thing we need to recognize is that we are not looking at a simple web site that will serve a small part of YWAM but we are looking at a corporate/enterprise solution. We have done quite a bit of research on different approaches to a solution like this it doesn’t matter whether you use open source, Microsoft, Apple or any other proprietary solutions, it costs money to implement.
Important elements for implementing an enterprise-wide solution like this are security, redundancy, storage and connectivity. All of these bring an element of cost into the equation no matter what you use to implement the system on.
Why SharePoint (MOSS)
In our YWAM IT community there is very strong bias towards open source solutions (one that I share with you). We have looked at a number of potential solutions in both the open source community and the proprietary sector. Here I want to attempt to explain why we strongly believe MS SharePoint (MOSS 2007) is the best solution for YWAM at an enterprise level right now. (I also want to encourage you to take a look at MOSS 2007 if you have not already.)
There is no solution that will meet the needs of any enterprise straight out of the box; however MOSS 2007 does a pretty good job of covering many basics. At the core of what we would like to see developed as an intranet that will provide an environment for enterprise search, collaboration (blogging, wiki, team workspaces etc...), central repository for documents and teaching, security (user authentication, user groups, ssl etc...) and good user environment. MS has also done a lot to improve the .net programming environment and its security.
Another one of the problems that we experience in YWAM is the vast amount of information we have coming at us and finding a way to manage the information that is most critical to the ministries we are involved with. Currently we have the situation where each of us can easily have a dozen web sites we are trying to maintain, along with all the email and email forum mail we get. MOSS 2007 makes it possible to setup a “My Space” so that a user only has one page to go to and find any updates or make changes on relevant information to them.
(an aside : The German government is a prime example of the value of MOSS as they made a decision to go with Linux and open source about 8 years ago. They have been re-thinking this because they have found that in the long run it has cost them more to go with the “free” open source solution than with a proprietary solution.)
In Conclusion:
YWAM has a truly unique communications challenge. No system will perfectly address our needs. However, taking the long view, our projected growth and the complicity of our mission, we are convinced that MOSS 2007 is the most effective option we can choose.
questions....
Hi Jeff,
thanks for your update. But please allow me to ask some question.
What growth are you referring to? I was at the conferences in Thailand last year and it sounded different, at least in terms of staff numbers. The word was that we hadn't seen growth for the last 10 years or so but that we have now crossed the "Jordan" after getting some things right with God. Now we are at a place of circumcision but we can expect growth soon.
So, what growth are you referring to? Because these statements don't fit together if it's about the same topic. But at least for me staff numbers was my first thought when reading your comment.
I can fully support that statement. Plus I would like to add a online solution what so ever is probably the fastest way to get information out to as many YWAMers as possible, specially if that solution includes email and RSS rather than "only" having the information on a web page.
To say it up front. The problem is not the amount of money but what it's needed for. I have no problem to trust for $2mil for this project with you. But even if you would have asked for "only" 500 bucks I still don't know what it's needed for.
So, you are talking about not a simple web site but an enterprise solution. What exactly means "enterprise" for you here? You and I might know and understand that we are not talking about a simple web site. But does a non-techie know or understand? Do most YWAmers even know what is out there? Do I know or is it just a part I have heard of so far??
We already have a lot going on. E.g this site here or the communication site (Blogs), the Knowledge Base (Wiki), YWAMconnect (Social Network + many more options), YWAMpodcast, YWAMplanet, etc. I guess that if we would be able to connect them better that much of what you are looking for is already right before our eyes.
Since in the initial post you talk about linking to existing sites I assume that you don't want to re-invent the wheel and make a second YWAMIT, etc. I mean, most of what is listed in the initial post is already there.
Might be I haven't yet fully understood (in full depth!!) what the site is needed for. But I see a lot already existing.
I know that what ever you want to do, it does cost money. Money is not the issue. The issue is how the money is used, this is the point that I don't understand. I know very well that a server costs money and if you go for MS that it cost more. At least if you rent a server or web space it always costs more than with Linux.
Having said that I must add that there are still no details about the budget. All I know so far is that you want to use MS software and that this projects cost $75k plus what is already provided by the GLT, according to the Prayer Day email.
I'm not quite sure what to say about that. For sure MS puts a great effort into connectivity of their software. Even to the point that they are in trouble with the law. E.g. see the investigations about the monopoly miss-use law suit in Europe because of the extremely deep integration of IE into the OS. Everything from MS is very good connected, no doubt. However, mostly they exclude non MS software from full access. One way or another.
But security, redundancy and storage is not necessarily something that MS is good at. From my point of view at least. As you recommended I was looking around a bit for MOSS 2007. It requires 3GB HD space (I assume that doesn't include the needed OS? How much does MS server OS need??), recommended 2GB RAM and recommended 3GHz dual processor. WOW.... I'm impressed.... (Sorry, but I can't hold a little *grin* here) If that is storage and resource efficient then I'm doing something wrong. I know, I like to stir trouble, but honestly, 3GB? Including the OS, Web server, Database, a CMS including Forum, Blog, Wiki, etc. I don't come anywhere near 1GB.
Besides the fact that, according to the MS web site, you only get full functionality with Win2000 or newer and IE6 or newer. So, all Mac and Linux users plus those who rely on older Windows versions for what ever reason are locked out from full capability.
This is something I personally can not cheer at. Not because I use Linux, I have a XP with IE7. That would not be the issue. But MS repeatedly didn't follow standards but try to push their own ones and by that lock out 3rd-parties at least to some degree. This is a very exclusive in my eyes.
Says who? Other studies come to the exact opposite conclusion. Do you have an article somewhere that I can read? I'm honestly interested in that.
However, I want to say that a government or any other for-profit is hard to compare with a situation that we have within YWAM. While for-profits have cost for personnel we can not simply calculate that in the same way. Besides the fact that a good MS certified SysAdmin would probably have an annual salary that eats up all the money we are talking about. So, that can't really be part of the calculation, anyways.
While browsing around the MOSS pages another question came to my mind. I always read something about client licenses. So, do I understand that right that there is a license per client/user needed to access MOSS? If so, who would pay for that? Or is there something I'm miss-interpreting? I mean, I don't really know what a license costs but say we expect all 18k YWAMers to hop on board. The budget needed according to the email is $75k (I dunno how the $50k+ in the comment above came up all of a sudden) that would be ~$4.17/license. I can hardly believe that a MS license is that cheap. Besides that no Hardware cost or OS/MOSS would be included in that calculation.
No matter how I look at it I fail to see how the $75k are calculated. Please get me right. I'm not here to bash everyone and everything. But I want to understand what you are doing and so far I simply don't understand. Also, let me say that I guess you need to provide some in depth information when you try to get help from some folks who mostly vote for a FOSS solution. I believe that you did research and all, but so far I just can't see why MS is the best option. Specially when I see that it seems OK that some people are locked out from full functionality.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Are the right principles guiding us?
Thanks Jeff for your comments. I wholly share in Neo's response above. I want to outline a couple of particularly important points.
Of course we are speculating about a lot as there are so few concrete details here. Client licences are one very important issue. As are licences for MS Office and Windows that might need to be purchased. Plus solutions like this have a tendency towards vendor lock in where the cost of migrating to another solution is prohibitively expensive and/or also impossible to export important data to other systems. What might we do in 20 or 30 years if all our data is stuck in an MS product that is obsolete (there is a 3-5 year product cycle with many MS product and nothing after 10 years - Bye, Bye Windows 98)
However my main point is this: over the past few months I have been discovering that there are some important IT/communications principles floating around in YWAM that I think might be the beginnings of common values. Perhaps even this is God speaking to us? I have had to work a bit to find them, so I hope he speaks up a bit! But as the IT world is changing so quickly we need some value guidelines to keep us correctly-orientated.
1. Avoid proprietary solutions. The Genesis guys have long been on to something when they say that we should use systems that rely on open published standards. The GENESIS stuff is all based on open and ratified Teleconferencing standards - nothing more mystical than that. Those standards give huge flexibility. Some standards that really work: SMTP, HTTP etc. When it comes to any published standards Sharepoint is hugely proprietary. Same could be said for MS Exchange solutions.
As an aside, there is only one Office file format that is an ISO standard and it is not made by Microsoft! They wont even support it. The French government, Dutch government and more are mandating its use. It's the ODF format and native file format of Openoffice and an increasing number of other office suites.
2. "Mind the Gap". When I read the CRIT reports this really jumped out at me. If we consider ourselves a body in YWAM we need to watch for the cultural global differences and inequalities when seeking solutions. Can African and Asian YWAMers afford client licences? What about Right-to-Left language support? What about YWAMers using Windows 98 computers being able to use this system connecting over dial-up? Or Mac OS users? Or Linux users? (Some of us may have ethical reasons for not using MS software). Also most of us do not wish to spend all their time maintaining Windows solutuons.
3. Bottlenecks. This came to light in a Eurocom meeting recently but it is something we have all felt. We need to avoid solutions based on one or two people who, may not be always around, may become too busy or whom we can never recruit replacements for. Systems based on a specialists knowledge that we all come to depend on fall apart with the removal of the specialist. This means that perhaps we have to de-centralise systems rather than centralise.
4. Security. More and more we need to think through the security implications of what we are doing. So much information travels as plain text through the internet. Most of not all is filtered by Governments security agencies and perhaps other bodies. It is clear most YWAMers don't take any precautions with the data they hold that belongs to YWAM. Data that could be sensitive. One great danger in YWAM with a centralised system is that the centre is going to be pretty much unaware of the sensitivity that the grass roots require.
Due to the sketchiness of the proposed solution above it is really hard to comprehend anything and it clearly is causing some of us concern.
Cheers,
Kevin
interesting points
Hi Kevin,
you mention some interesting points here. I got 2 comments/question or how ever you wanna call it to that. Well, I admit that I always have a comment about something...
Anyways.
About the MS product cycle, I guess it's more of a question. I'm not familiar with Windows Server. But basically on the desktop if you want to upgrade you need to by new hardware. Unless you you already bought a fairly oversized machine and it's not too long until MS releases the next version of the OS. Just check the hardware requirements for Vista. Which XP machine actually can run Vista.
So, my question here is, besides the product cycle, when a new Server OS comes out is a up-to-date server actually able to run it? The new Server OS has most likely more hardware requirements then the current OS plus, at least I hope so, we will have more people on the planned site then we have at the beginning. Means, the server load will increase. Does that actually mean that new hardware is necessary with every new MS Server OS?
Also depending on how the site will really look like and how it will be used sooner or later it might mean that a second server is needed to handle the load. What would that mean with MS software, does it need a OS license then for every machine? I guess so.
Just a thought that came to my mind when reading your comment.
The second thing, security. I know what you mean, Kevin, but maybe we should also view it from another perspective. If there is a central point that would have security build in, couldn't that be an advantage? You are right that pretty much everything travels in plain text through the www but then on the other side I haven't seen a site that offers SSL connection. SSL can't be *that* bad since we all trust our credit card detail with that when we pay online.
So, if there would be a central site that has SSL plus addresses the issue of security I think it could help.
In addition this site could offer VPN, although that should be optional since I believe that not everyone knows how to set it up or even knows what it is, in the first place. Also, if for some reason you relay on an internet café there is no way to get a VPN. But SSL is always possible.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
an recent example for linux
To quote the quote and quote myself....
I didn't look for that on purpose but I came across an article today that talks about how they introduced Linux to the government and some schools in the Philippines. About the cost factor I wanna quote from that article:
Here is the link to the printer friendly article (easier to read, w/out the text adds):
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1163450117;fp;;fpid;;pf;1
Just for the reference, the actual article:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1163450117;pp;1
Interesting I think. MS offered XP + Office for 50 bucks US and offered free training. I don't know what the regular price is but I bet it's quite a discount. But at the end for 23000 machines it's still a lot of money. Hardware cost is the same since it's using the same platform. So, at the end of the day I guess they saved a few bucks.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo