It must be Monday... We started out on the morning meeting and only Steve and I were on at first. We chatted about the transition over to the AWS (amazon) stuff. We have a number of questions and aren't really sure which way to turn. Steve needs to provide some of our clients with an answer, can we service them or not, and we need to know how long it will take to get the AWS stuff fully up and running. Lots of unknowns, but some great potential. Part of us wants to return to what we know (older stable ground) and the other part of us wants to keep pushing forward (new and uncharted but promising ground). It creates an emotional battle of sorts.

We switched gears and Steve had some questions about a project where he is tying in balance sheet numbers to vendors. As part of his project, he was trying to come up with a switch that we could flip to help us know if a vendor was an inventory (parts or items) vendor or just a normal vendor. As we talked about it, we decided to take it out to an app type level (the 12 main system players). We talked about that and Steve liked that idea. I got him some code to help him get started. It is amazing how much, as we keep going, that the system keeps organizing itself into main player groups and what kind of relationships are needed per system or main player group. Very interesting. Almost like it likes to be organized into groups and related functions. We sure have learned a lot along the way.

Alan joined the meeting and we were talking about some of his projects. He is still working on automating some of the reoccurring invoice stuff. We also talked about having Bryan work on the dynamic field names and settings per main player group. That is pretty deep and we may keep it tabled for now. Also, as we were talking about it, we were talking about how an object oriented programming approach may be a better solution for some of these new settings and defaults. Currently, we build and break, build and break (speaking about pulling and accessing settings). It may be nice to keep and hold some of the persistent or permanent settings and features. An object oriented model may be better equipped for that type of transaction. Currently, we look things up just in time. In the future, we may need to catch and hold those settings and maintain them in the user's session (stored in memory) options.

Eric popped in and we did some check in and follow-up with his code review on the sub special account tracking project. This project is a sub of the balance sheet and deals with special accounts (mini bank account type objects) like customer loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc. That project is promised by next Monday. I will be trying to focus on the code sign-off this week.

After that, Eric and Steve and I started talking about some of the new look and feel, CSS, and user interface stuff that Eric is wanting to help with. Both Steve and Eric were talking about a virtual "Adilas Cafe" or a global landing spot for the adilas users. This all goes back to separating the users from the main application code. There will still be a tie-in, but we are seeing a bigger need to keep users on the outside as a single entity and then allow them to go in and work or be a part of a corporation. We have many users that  have and/or will need access to multiple corporations, and even be able to bridge across physical servers. Currently, our model is based on users per server and then tied to corporations based on active permissions to those corporations. We are seeing a need to break that down even further and have a master or global user id (virtual pool of users) and then allow them to be bridged to different corporations on a more global scale vs just per server (physical box) vs the possibilities of dynamic cloud networks.

As we got deeper into the conversation about the potential of the Adilas café type model, we were talking about doing mock-ups, flow charts, etc. Eric had some questions about authentication servers and how that would all roll into the mix. We told him that he would need to get with Wayne to get more details. As we talked, we decided that Eric and Wayne should work together in a mini team type environment. As we explored the options, some of Steve and I's concerns (listed at the top of this entry) started to go away. We ended up somewhat asking Eric to be a project manager type role for this transition project between Newtek and AWS. That little tweak in the plan and how the developers were paired up, made a ton of difference and some of the anxiety started to go away.

We need to crate a list of specs for Wayne and what we want the application to do. Plan and play as if for years. We also talked about in-house coordination and communication. That is a huge key and helps all parties involved. Steve was talking about skating to where the puck (pretend we are playing hockey) is going to be. He and Eric were talking about the existing login pages and the corporation chooser page as being the beginning of the adilas café (landing spot or centralized common ground area). Good discussion.

We would really like to keep pushing the ball forward and making each system its own entity. This means having a centralized database controlling users and access to different corporations and/or entities and then having the individual entities having their own database or system for just their stuff. Currently, there are a number of tables that are shared between parties. For speed and efficiency, we really need to split things up more. This may also affect how we are able to bill for storage and processing vs a set monthly system fee. Anyways, as the conversation progresses, Steve and Eric were talking about using the choose corporation page as the starting common spot or commons area. Steve was also saying that he would like the users to be able to go to work (assigned or authorized corporations) as well as go play (demo sites, play grounds, or play sites). Basically, anybody could have an adilas account, and then they could either go into a real site (aka work) or a play site (aka play and testing). Fun ideas.

One of Eric's and Wayne's first item of business will be to do a virtual inventory check of where things are at on the project and what will still be needed and/or stands in the way. That will be awesome. It really was an mini answer to prayers that we decided to team up Eric and Wayne. It helped us let go and be willing to embrace some of the unknowns. As part of that, we are hoping that having the guys work together in mini teams helps us prioritize what really needs to be done and when. Sometimes, by yourself, it is hard to know what needs attention first, especially if it feels like everything is vying or trying to get the input, attention, and/or priority. Crazy stuff, I'm been there before and will be back again.

Steve and I talked about cycling through hardware and how that is just part of the line of work we are in. Later this year, we will need to buy some new laptops and upgrade some of our development environments.

One of the breakthroughs for today was the mini team concept. We have Steve and I, Steve and Dustin and Josh, Brandon and Alan, Wayne and Eric, Shari O. and Pat and Drea, etc. There are starting to be all kinds of little teams. That is awesome.

Shawn popped in and reported on some payroll updates and changes. We scheduled a time to meet again tomorrow. He is also willing to help me out with some of my projects and such. After that, I spent the rest of the session recording notes and trying to get caught up (as good as I could).