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22 November 2000

The SBL meetings are now behind us. We actually gave our presentation two more times than we originally planned. There was much interest by manuscript scholars, publishers and others interested in XML. The presentation slides are now up and available. Just click on the side bar selection SBL Presentations. Inactive sidebar links are now unclickable. A Milestones page was added. Our next update will include our white papers and initial design specification documents.

6 November 2000

This project has been two years in the making. Presently we are at what might be called "Proof of Concept," meaning we have demonstrated to our own satisfaction that the project objectives have a practical hope of realization. Now we move into the first public phase of the project where we introduce the project to the community for feedback.

SBL Workshop

To that end, we are presenting the Project at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in Nashville, TN, at a special all-day pre conference workshop, Friday, 17 November 2000 (Opryland Hotel, Madison room). The morning sessions will concentrate on the goals and "front-end" of the project from a user's point of view. The afternoon will be devoted to the "back-end" nuts-and-bolts of implementation and other technical details. We have also prepared a CDROM of over 100MB of software, data andemonstrationsns which will be given to workshop participants. After the seminar we will be putting the slides from our presentations as well asweb pageage of hyperlinks to the CDROM software on this web site for those unable to attend the presentation. Look for this right after Thanksgiving.

Short-term Tasks

After the Nov 17-21 meetings, the next six months will see the following:

• Bring up the remainder of the web site content
• Begin non-profit incorporation
• Approach funders and write grants
• Bring up the alpha versions of the data-entry and data-merging software
• Complete the design of the back-end database

Medium-term Tasks

The next stage of the project is dependent upon funding. If that is successful, then the hardware can be bought and higher bandwidth ISP service can be secured for the following targets:

• Begin programming of the public participation user interface
• Commission a UNICODE Hebrew font by a professional typographer

Long-term Tasks

These are the general phases of Project "eL" as we currently see them:

• Conceptualization [Nov 98 - Sept 99] -- completed
• Proof of Concept [Sept 99 - Nov 00] -- completed
• Design the back-end (database & adminstrative programs)
• Implement the public interface

The pieces are:

• Web-based "users" newsgroup (a la the Slashdot interface)
• User client (network-aware UNICODE editor) for processing workunits
• Software for associate editors to evaluate and process uploaded workunits
• Implement the database and administrative infrastructure
• Public beta testing of the system
• Fund raising
• Formal inauguration of the Project's public participation phase