November 6-7

Thursday: 12:55-2:30
Friday: 12:55-2:30

   In preparation for the app development meeting on Friday, I took some more time to explore how we would scrape data from the more difficult school sites. I found some resources that would create an RSS feed of a site if said site had easily identifiable patterns in its source code. From this point, it would be relatively easy to add an RSS feed into an app. For the sites that took a little more creativity, I found a way to trace the source of data being displayed in a site's source code and will hopefully be able to use these origins to scrape necessary data to be stored and formatted in other areas of the app. So, not all of the data that the app will present will be kept in our database. Only the data that is difficult to create an RSS feed from will be stored in the database along with user info.
   After our meeting on Friday, I am pleased with the progress we have been making. Everyone has presented the outcomes of their research, and I think we now have a fairly good idea of what we need in order to accomplish our task. I am hoping to have another meeting next Friday to get our thoughts together and start working. We have some major decisions to make before we start, so I hope to get those out of the way soon and start breaking into coding groups for the finished product.
     This week was another lesson in leadership. Despite the fact that I haven't asked for it, I seem to have inherited the leadership role in our app development group. It is a bit of an odd feeling because others in the team are people I've always seen as on the same level, if not higher, than I am. However, now I am placed in a position to give them direction and they look to me for answers. It is difficult to find a balance between having your directions respected and allowing everyone to see that you don't have all of the answers. I still organize all of the meetings and nag people to get to work, but I don't have the authority to correct anyone on their work or research because I, too, have a lot to learn. Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to keep this balance due to the knowledge of its existence.