And thus begins a new page.
The Rainbow project has come a long way. When I first started using ASP.NET, I was impressed by a Microsoft issued project called "IBuySpy Portal". IBS was the first of the publicly available open source .NET portals. I had a choice at one point to look to either DNN ( derived from the VB.NET version of IBS) or Rainbow ( derived from the C# version of IBS). The choice wasn't hard for me. In my career, I have dealt with and researched hundreds of CMS systems and the bitter taste of "PHPNuke" really made me think twice about DotNetNuke. All "Nuke" clones suck in my opinion and I have stayed away from them. Rainbow appealed to me because of its simplicity and basic architecture. It also happened to implement a fairly robust localization engine known as Esperantus. In the past, I have used Rainbow as part of my consulting and have taught it to groups of people.
This year, I decided to take a more active part in the Project to take this software to where it can go. I am currently working on a big project map which includes plans for management, marketing, support, and software development. Specific teams will be created to handle
the full work load in an organized manner.
After the initial organization and planning, I am going to start transforming the User Experience for System Admins, Users, and Developers.
These people are our customers and having put on these hats, I know how frustrating it is to get stuff done when things aren't always at their best. I will be using what I have learned from the Cooper school of thought and my experience of designing front facing sites to help create good looking interfaces.
Although I am highly technical, I am going to leave the technical management to others and will drop in every now and then to suggest things
that I know will help improve the project drastically. If you have ever wanted to work on a commercial grade software and have experience in
marketing, design, development, software release, system administration, please get on the the project. We specifically need talented designers to create stunning skins.
I am going to oversee this project from the top level as Project Admin. It's my duty in the next 6 months to transform Rainbow into a product that people WANT to use. I will be planning the project from the top and prioritizing actions to meet goals.
My responsibilities:
1. Create a viable Project Structure. Setup Teams, Set goals and priorities for each.
2. Direct respective team leaders to accomplish set goals.
3. Transform the User Experience on the Public Website, Software, and Support Site
4. Create competitive Strategies with our currently available tactics to combat the Competition
At the end of this six months, Rainbow will not suck and will the first choice for people that want to download a .NET CMS. The project will be better organized and operate smoother than most software companies.
Rahul Singh
CEO, Anant Systems, Inc.