Projects/Internships/Weekly Report 02 28 2014

Project and Program Intern Weekly Report

=Currently Working On=
 * 2013 Project Summit Report Wikification:
 * This week I finished the wikification of the 2013 Project Summit. This was a rather long document to finish with many charts and images that I had to extract from the original PDF.
 * Since the images from the report were not saved as individual files, I had to manually extract them using Gimp editor and creating JPGs from the PDF files.


 * Lulu Books:
 * I created two books on Lulu this week; the 2014 Leaders Handbook and the 2013 Project Summit Report.
 * Both were a bit of challenge in dealing with Lulu, mostly due to cover incompatibility. Covers were already designed for both books and to put them on Lulu, I first had to extract them from the PDF file that contained the book and upload them to Lulu. The problem I faced when uploading them was that Lulu did not like their sizing and kept popping up a warning message. I managed to resize the covers to fit Lulu.


 * Finding an alternative to Lulu:
 * Since Lulu is such a headache for creating books, I began looking into alternatives to Lulu. I came across CreateSpace from Amazon. I put together a proposal that I presented at the Wednesday staff meeting.
 * CreateSpace seems like it will be a better program to use than Lulu. Pricing wise, they are about the same, but CreateSpace has a lot more usability and had a few more options that were free to use.


 * Staff Meeting:
 * This week I got to attend my first in-person staff meeting in Tiburon, CA. It was fascinating to experience how planning really goes within OWASP.
 * Not sound like I'm sucking up, but the staff of OWASP are an awesome group and I could learn a lot from them.

=Lessons Learned=
 * The best way to get straight information about a program is to just call their customer support line. In gathering information about CreateSpace, their website was not very forthcoming, which required me to call. I got more information from that call than hours going through their online community.


 * Always leave early when it rains. On a normal day, I live an hour or so from Tiburon, but because of the rain and rush hour, it took nearly 3 hours and I was late for the staff meeting.

=Additional Comments=
 * I heard they sent the OWASP staff to Alcatraz. They must be tough criminals.