And Me Without My Sherpa... Alas!

No, i've never climbed Mt. Everest. Truthfully, i never plan to do so. However, i DO so like to say the word "Sherpa" (say it with me, "Sherpa!"), and one finds so few opportunities to do so when NOT referring to Himalayan mountain climbing expeditions...

UNTIL NOW!!!

That's right, folks, we in the Life Mission Department (at least those of us who are currently using Basecamp... if you're not using Basecamp, don't feel left out... you'll be hiking with the rest of us VERY soon!) have just figured out how to recruit our very own SHERPA (say it with me: "Sherpa!"). What's a Sherpa, you ask (say it with me, "Sherpa!")? Well, in Nepal, a Sherpa (say it with me, "Sherpa!") is a guy who carries all your stuff, cooks your food, and generally takes care of you. For us in the Life Mission Department, however, it's a nifty little digital assistant to our Basecamp software that will make "hiking" all of our projects a WHOLE lot easier.

"But Jack, how WILL such a feat be accomplished, even with the aid of our new Sherpa (c'mon, now, i can't hear you... say it with me, "Sherpa!")? Well, let me tell you!

Mozilla (go to http://www.mozilla.com), our close personal friends (well... we know them well and they don't know us at all... so they're KIND OF close personal friends) and the manufacturers of such quality products as the new "Firefox" web browser, have recently released a calendar program which integrates seamlessly with both Basecamp and Firefox. What does that mean? Baseically, it means that we will be able to operate a general and comprehensive Life Mission Department calendar for everyone to see, and it will automatically update with everything that is currently recorded as a Milestone in Basecamp!!!

So... let's say i enter a Milestone into "Project X" in Basecamp. Then let's say "Leader X" (that's one of you guys) goes into the calendar to see what's going on in the Life Mission Department for the month. EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO MY "PROJECT X", YOU WILL STILL SEE THE MILESTONES FOR "PROJECT X", AND THUS BE ABLE TO PLAN ACCORDINGLY. This should help us all to do the following sorts of things:

1) Track activity in the Life Mission Department.
2) Avoid scheduling activities at the same time or place off campus when something else is already going on.

In addition, you'll also be able to track your own calendar(s) in addition to the departments, so it could very well replace whatever calendar software you're using now as well.

Here's the catch, however (you even have to pay Sherpas something!):

1) You must be using Mozilla Firefox in order to benefit from the Sherpa (say it with me: "Sherpa!") because the calendar (i.e. Sherpa!!!) is a Mozilla feature that uses Firefox for its foundation. If you're not using Firefox already, we'll need to get you up to speed on that, or you can go to Mozilla's web-site and download it yourself (go to http://www.mozilla.org). For those of you who have never tried Firefox, just suffice to say that it's a kick-butt web-browser that will replace your Internet Explorer feature and allow you to surf as many sites as you want to simultaneously, without ever closing a window, ever getting a pop-up add, and at about 4x the speed of Explorer. It ROCKS!!! We'll hook you up if you need us to.

2) We will need to conduct some training on how to actually log in to "tap" the Basecamp data. There's really not an easy 1-2-3 set-up for this, unfortunately, but i believe that once you're set up, it will be worth the effort. We'll probably do this like we've been doing the Basecamp training (i.e. once a month or so, we'll do a collective training session at the volunteer computers to introduce the Sherpa --- you guessed it, say it with me: "Sherpa!").

So, i'm pretty excited about the Mozilla calendar Sherpa (we're almost done, so make it a good one: "Sherpa!!!") and think that it will be a huge help to us.

And if none of what i've said above makes ANY sense to you, don't worry! We'll do more implementation, augmentation, and training along the way. I just mainly wanted to let you know it was out there and that rather than having to learn some whole new software feature or program, it will work nicely with what we're already doing! Woo-hoo!!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, i have to go load some things onto my Sherpa (i HAD to get one more in there! "Sherpa!") before i hike to Basecamp!

Sherpaken!
-samurai jack