Asalam Alikum,

According to people's requests about extending the contest's deadline because of exams and similar stuff, we have decided to extend the deadline to Tuesday 27th April, 2010, 11:59 PM (EET).

This will make people more relaxed an organized when they are working for the contest.CAT activities shouldn't interfere with people's study.

We hope to see more contributions!

Today, we had a great Google Summer of Code info session.The speaker, Dr.Mustafa Muhammed made it nice!

The session wasn't pretty heavy technical one, but it was good as it showed people the weakness points and common mistakes everyone does when he applys to GSoC.It gave people some advices and steps to follow when they are applying to GSoC.

We have uploaded some photos here And you can download the presentation from here .

We thank Dr.Mustafa for his efforts, actually he came from Cairo to give us this session..Thanks Dr.Mustafa!

Dear all,

We are now accepting podcasts to be broadcasted through our online radio.

To participate, just fill in the form here.

You can choose any topic to talk about, a topic related to Computer Science, IT, or Soft-skills and make it about 10 to 15 minutes maximum.

Then, send us the file to radio@catreloaded.net

You should then receive a confirmation mail that tells you whether your talk is accepted or not, and you will receive the details about the date and time when your talk will be broadcasted if it's accepted.

We are going to insert LIVE talks also.Don't worry!

Asalam A'lykum,

On Thursday 25th April 2010 Insh'Allah, there will be a session about "Testing with Junit" by "Mohammed Safwat ".

This is the first part of the topic, and there will be another session to complete this topic.

The session will be at 11:30 AM Block 1(Mechanical power block), Third floor, First room, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University.

Session contents:

• What's Unit Testing?
• How to do Unit Testing generally?
• Writing tests in JUnit
  • JUnit asserts
  • JUnit Framework
  • JUnit test composition
  • JUnit and exceptions
  • JUnit test skeleton
• What to test?
• CORRECT Boundary Conditions.

See you there!

Asalam A'lykum,

Tomorrow Insh'Allah, 6th April 2010 we will be having an infor session about GSoC 2010.

The speaker will be Dr.Mustafa Muhammed, an Egyptian who participated in GSoC 2008 and GSoC 2009 under the Joomla! project.

The session will be at 1:00 PM at 611 hall, faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University.

This session will tell you:

• What's GSoC
• How to participate
• How to be accepted
• How to find an idea
• Mistakes most of people do when they write proposals
• How to choose a mentor
• If you are accepted, how to start coding
• The GSoC phases

See you tomorrow Insh'Allah.

Alhamdolelah, today we have finished out support duo, with about 1500 CAT and contest documents distributed.

It  was a new and good experience, we interacted more with people, from all ages and cultures at our faculty.

We thank everyone who helped us in this support duo, and we thank everyone who asked us technical and non-technical questions!

We have uploaded some photos-not much-but can show you how the work was going.

Take a look at our Support Duo photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/48155067@N07/sets/72157623747170648/

See you in Support Duo 2 next Term insh'Allah!

Hello all,

We have started preparing for our semi-annual event, and the next Scope will be Scope 11.

How can you help us?

You can help us:

• If you have experience with graphics design.You will work with us in our marketing camps, designing posters, logos, brochures, etc.
• If you are a web developer, and can share us building and monitoring the event's website.
• If you are a volunteer who can help in sticking posters, and distributing flayers.
• If you are a printings guy, who understands how printing process works.
• If you can be a HR person.You will manage memberships issues, registration problems, etc.
• If you are willing to be an Event organizer.
• If you are marketing man.You will share us in setting marketing plans, and doing online/offline marketing.
• If you can be our camera man.
• If you can give any technical session.

If you find yourself able to do any of the above listed tasks, you have to contact us immediately at support@catreloaded.net, writing the word [Scope Volunteer] at the mail's subject, and writing clearly at the mail's content what role can you take.

We appreciate your efforts.

Hello all,

We have just launched our first graphics contest, which concentrates on designing stuff for CAT itself!

You can compete on 3 prizes each with $50.!

There  will be an orientation meeting on Tuesday 30 Mar, 2010 at 1:00 PM, faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, 612 hall.

Our speaker will be Mahmoud Metwally , graphics and web designer.

For more information about the contest, and if you want to register yourself, please visit http://catreloaded.net/contest

See you there!

Do you have any questions related to CAT about how to join, how to get involved, etc?

Do you have any technical problem and need help for that problem?

Meet us for 2 days, Wed 31, Mar and 1, April 2010 at the faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.We will be having about 4 booths around the faculty.

Don't forget to prepare your questions!

When we suggested the foundation system, the CAT status was completely different from today. We used to have too active/skilled members with no space for managing their own ideas and they had no clue how to create projects and small teams. CAT was huge and the management team had a burden of managing requests of merely 1000+ members.

The foundation system started to fade out and as people left college and moved to their professional life abandoning CAT behind their backs we started to think about how to get CAT back together into one piece.

We have been thinking about solutions and in the previous post mohammed illustrated what we were busy doing in the last period and how do we think things should look like. We hope to see you around and we will keep you posted with the updates going on in CAT as we go isA.

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.