What were we busy doing?

• We found problems:

  • We didn't have CAT Goal clear.
    • The major eternal problem about believing that volunteering to improve community technical skills is as importance as charity work and may be more important ..
    • The scope we must target and focus on whether it's only students, engineers or even all computer interested humans
  • Participating in CAT Activities wasn't and easy-common- task.
    • Online
      • Majority of members are not used to the web style activity and it's already part of our mission to work on that problem.
      • Online activity -even for whom are familiar with it- are not practical enough.
    • Offline
      • It's always hard to manage to schedule a date on which people from different locations show off.
      • If  we managed to meet offline always there was resources challenge ie. hall reservation and permissions.
    • New members are lost.
  • Lack of financial resources.
  • Lack of strong media and marketing.
  • Weak communication between CAT members.There was also a common belief that only workers in CAT are the core members, and the rest of members are just listeners.

• We have solutions for the problems:

  • Management system must change to fit the current state,  as the foundation system is not -any more- compatible with the current team situation.
  • Online systems must be much more intuitive to normal members, and we will be more relying on the online community.
  • We must extend members from outside the current scope which is Mansoura University Faculty of engineering, again the online community will help in that.
  • Document the process, in order to avoid any further repetitive problem, and again online wiki will be nice for that task.
    • _Externally:_People should read and know clearly what's CAT, what are the CAT goals and plans and why they should join us and believe in our work.New members should know everything about CAT.Oral documentation is no more working.
    • _Internally:_As workers or managers inside CAT, people should know how is the system working and how can they resume the work and build upon the existing system to enhance it.We renew managers every year, and new managers should read what the previous did, and should know how can they lead CAT after the previous managers leaved.
  • There are now new policies in dealing with new members and juniors to enhance the communication with them and get them on trac.For example, we will launch a juniors course periodically.
  • We have to strengthen the relationship between CAT members themselves.All are CAT, and all works for CAT.They should feel more that they are CAT and CAT is them.All CAT members have to get their hands dirty and do efforts.So, we have created some groups, mailing lists, news letters and task management system-at least for now-to keep updated with all members and their work.We are working to remove the belief that states that CAT is only the core members.
  • Strong, creative marketing plans are set for short and long periods.
  • New channels of media are launched, such as CAT Radio and CAT videos channel.
  • Arabic will be more present in our documents and advertisements.

• And we have taken the following steps:

  • We started with our online existence
    • We are working on more unified member identity.
    • easier, popular and easy to use collaboration space for all members to share knowledge and experience.
    • More enterprise,mature,stable and easy to use and integrate project management system and CMS.
    • We are providing videos and documentation to illustrate how to benefit from these online systems.
  • To enhance the practical part:
    • We are working on involving members on contests in different fields.
    • Team will be grouped based on technical bases which will let the team as a one integrated unit work on all projects which is much powerful and integrated.