CNM Tech Board 2023-12-14

CNM Tech Board 2023-12-14 is the meeting of CNM Technology Board‎ that occurred on December 14th, 2023. The predecessor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-11-02; the successor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-12-21.

Critical priority

All of "old" businesses are related to launch of iDosvid in Kenya in order to make iDosvid pitch real.

Elementor to retire

• Task (critical): To retire Elementor by April 2024
• Situation: In order to save costs, we would like to retire Elementor that we barely use. Our primary websites that deploy Elementor are https://vebka.theeconomicgroup.com/ and https://scheje.com/ . The current subscriptions expire in April of 2024.
• Action decisions:
  1. Gary will move the movable contents to other CNM WordPress instances.
  2. Gary will assess whether we need to hire any contractors to move the unmovable parts.

Farms to optimize

• Task (critical): To review Opplet Infrastructure in order to suggest optimization paths.
• Situation: We have been developing CNM Farms for many years, but have never really optimized it. Over the years, we generated many DNS records that are no longer in use and just generate security vulnerabilities. We also created a few resources that require payments, but no longer produce any value. Kevin proposed forming a Finance Board or Financial Oversight Committee that would table, say, any new purchase or payment for discussion and expected returns from this investment, budgeting, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and any other matter that involves purchase and payment. Gary feels like those tasks can be done within the existing board. At the same time, Gary has published expense reports in Bureau Infrastructure, Lab Infrastructure, Campus Infrastructure, and Fed Infrastructure to compare against DNS records, web server files, actual resources, and business needs.
• Action decisions:
  1. Natalia will summarize actual resources to compare against the expenses.
  2. Gary will copy DNS records to analyze.
  3. Natalia will copy web server files to analyze.
  4. We will restructure Campus Infrastructure
  5. We will move Fed Infrastructure into Bureau Infrastructure
  6. We will bring experts aboard to review Bureau Infrastructure
  7. Kevin will suggest the action plan for cost savings

GitLab to collaborate

• Task (critical): To create the single platform for technology collaborations
• Situation: Over the last years, unstructured onboarding of new technology contractors and collaboration of existing developers significantly slowed the development. Plus, we use no specialized tool to report bugs and issues, while relying on emails mostly. A couple of years ago, Natalia and Gary used Redmine, but later decided to switch to CNM GitLab. GitLab features software repository and, therefore, allows for file upload and version control; we don't plan to get rid of that software. The discussion is about its extension. GitLab features its own modules such as GitLab Issues (to manage and track tasks, bugs, and other project-related activities) and GitLab Boards (to visualize and manage our project tasks in a board format), as well as several integrations with standalone project management software such as Taiga or Redmine.
• Action decisions:
  1. Natalia will evaluate the alternatives and report her findings.

HumHub to plan

• Task (critical): To deliver CNM HumHub as the primary tool for initial engagement with the students.
• Situation: Traditionally, a pair of CNM Moodle and CNM MediaWiki was used for initial engagement with the students. However, both of those tools lack social interaction, particularly, in meeting organizing. CNM HumHub looks like a way better tool. For CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects practice specifically, we have added the "Meetings" module. Kevin planned to suggest the action plan, but he lacks power-user permissions.
• Action decisions:
  1. Natalia will grant power-user permissions to Kevin
  2. Natalia will create an experimental HumHub instance on CNM Lab Farm and grant Kevin administrator-level permissions, so he can experiment without worrying about CNM Social

Money talks

Revenue plan

• It can be done fast if you have a plan. The simpler the plan, the faster the sales. From Gary's experience, short training sessions were sold the fastest. To offer them, we need to have (a) the stuff for sale -- built, stolen, or partner training, (b) marketing to bring customers aboard, so called ToFu, (c) website and events to educate customers, so called MoFu, and (d) payment option and sales folk to charge and serve .
• Until Kevin doesn't offer his shorter plan, Gary proposes to act on a longer one -- to build the core of the stuff first. For that,
  1. Three of us agree on the Educaship pitch as the best depiction of what we want to create,
  2. We try to bring a school tech lady on the board to get her feedback,
  3. We (with the tech lady or without) agree on the scope of its MVP to be created,
  4. Kevin (and, possibly, the tech lady) test what we have and assess the scope of the development,
  5. We evaluate the options and choose the path. We will either try to hire testers/developers or launch what we have in hopes that student contributions will boost our productivity,
  6. Based on the decision, we will plan and execute MVP,
  7. When we have MVP, we consider its monetization.
• When we have the core, we can add paid features or can package it with travels or whatever. Gary envisions that sales of African American families' trips to have cultural experiences of living in Africa are absolutely real. Religious affiliations can be attractive sales points.
• Now, I see that Kevin started building the course and Gary sees no big value or urgency in that. We have old courses in English, we have tested courses in Russian, we have new courses in Ukrainian. None of them brought partners or money so far. We can rebuild it on the fly when we have a partner. So, Gary would like Kevin to concentrate on partner search, specifically, on Educaship pitch -- check everything, simplify, delete, or whatever. We will use the text as website content. Without a good website, it is difficult to sell anything.

Recording to launch

• Task (critical): To make recording tools available to the students
• Situation: We have been trying to find a safe way of meeting recording for a while. Initially, we recorded CNM Jitsi sessions using own device software and, later, published it. That way came with multiple drawbacks such as (a) it depends on the recording person's connectivity. If the recording person is disconnected, the recording is interrupted; (b) it consumes the recording person's data transfer, which can be costly; (c) it depends on the recording person's device and makes impossible to record the sessions using smartphones for instance. While trying to record the sessions via VMs on CNM Lab Farm, we encountered two issues: (1) the recordings had some interruptions and (2) VMs went into sleeping modes. To make the newly-developed recording practical, we plan to use it for meetings of CNM Technology Board.
• Action decisions:
  1. Kevin will propose the action plan.

Sandbox to MVP

• Task (critical): To define MVP of sandboxes that shall emulate workplaces for the students.
• Situation: We have developed a range of technologies that we can offer our students for practice. However, we don't know at this moment what we shall offer initially and, therefore, what we are missing. Gary developed an initial draft on the Educaship pitch wikipage, but this draft needs reviews.
• Action decisions:
  1. Kevin will review Gary's draft.
  2. Natalia will review Kevin's draft.
  3. If we bring a school tech lady aboard, she may review Natalia's draft.
  4. Based on the latest draft, we will decide the scope of the sandbox MVP.

Wiki to public

• Task (critical): To move public contents from CNM MediaWiki.
• Situation: CNM MediaWiki no longer satisfies us because of its (a) lack of CNM LDAP integration, so new students cannot access the wiki, and (b) weak mobile-friendly design. We assessed several wiki engines and are ready to make decisions.
• Action decisions:
  1. We shall use CNM Social/CNM HumHub's wiki as our primary vehicle to deliver public contents.
  2. We shall keep XWiki in mind for its possible applications to our development and/or advanced training.
  3. We shall keep Wiki.js in mind for its possible applications to our website development training.
  4. We shall use BookStack as our marketing vehicle for EmployableU Concepts.
  5. We shall continue deploying CNM MediaWiki as our legacy system.
  6. If we build demonstrations for wiki engines, we may utilize BlueSpice.

WordPress to populate

• Task (critical): To position our services on the market.
• Situation: We are getting closer to our MVP, so we can start positioning our services on the market. This may help attract both potential customers and staffers. Natalia set up several CNM WordPress instances.
• Action decisions:
  1. Gary will start populating the setup instances.

Non-critical priority

Advisory committee

Educaship pitch sprint is complete and it is now in beta testing.

Community board

Meetings of CNMCyber Community Board were postponed, but we can re-start them to connect with a school teacher. Updates: CNMCyber Community Board, Careerprise bizopp, Educaship pitch, iDosvid pitch, CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects

Email fields

I failed to find the coder who initially rewrote my raw code, but Natalia is leading our effort to reconnect with its last developer. If that effort fails, we will look for new freelancers.

Help desk

We need to have a help desk, Kevin is right, it is available at Odoo at any rate. Gary sees that one help desk, probably, delivered by Odoo, should serve volunteers and another, delivered by GitLab/Redmine/something-else, should serve technical needs of our staffers.

Proxmox cluster

• Updates: CNM Bureau Farm, Jitsi/Odoo/HumHub, DNS, CNM pfSense, monitoring -- Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana, Uptime Kuma, Passbolt, mail server, LDAP, DNS zone, IPv4, what else to do? HA test, alpha testing, DNS
• Discussions: Muhammed, next steps
• Plans:

Non-priority backlog

• Mail server: mail.opplet.net, mail.bskol.com, mail.cnmcyber.com,
• CNM Tube, livestreaming
• PHP tasks such as CNM MediaWiki beyond CNM LDAP
• CNM LDAP, LDAP-C contractor
• Cloudflare

LMS

• Task (not critical): To provide the learners with a lightweight LMS instance, so they can practice with that, while populating it with the courses. For MVP, we plan to use the wiki as the content delivery platform.
• Situation: CNM Moodle looks like well-suited for CNMCyber Bootcamps, but less appropriate for the first two courses than Canvas LMS. So, Natalia was trying to install it. OpenEdX is, probably, too complex for us for now and, most importantly, for MVP too.
• Actions: Get back to the project when critical tasks are resolved.

VM

Non-clustered Proxmox; for VM project -- Ansible; time tracking

VPN and proxy

• Task (solved): To set up Shadowsocks before the trip.
• Situation: Gary is going to a country with restricted Internet. We practiced with OpenVPN and Outline VPN. At one place, OpenVPN was blocked. Natalia changed the port and the block was lifted. However, at least expedia.com refuses to accept VPN, so we should take a look at Shadowsocks? It is regarded as the best solution to our needs at least here -- https://www.howtogeek.com/802198/vpn-alternatives-what-can-you-use-besides-a-vpn/
• Actions: No additional actions, Gary missed that Shadowsocks works with Outline VPN.

WSO2 IS

• Updates: Natalia to install WSO2 IS on the CNM Lab Farm and try to plug to Opplet, "A" record
• Discussions:
• Plans: After CNM WordPress integration, we will look for contractors to plug in other applications.