Day 11 - Making progress towards launch

Casey

It's really exciting to see the progress that Wokai has made over the past eleven days.

The Beijing team has undergone a pretty radical transformation. Three weeks ago, before I left for Vietnam, our office had fourteen people, all but three of which were under the age of 21. That week we had a mass exodus of college interns, and our office occupancy went down to Zhang Sheng and I. The Monday before last, Liz, a volunteer who just finished her law degree at UVA joined us for a month stint and Naomi, our new COO, started two days later. The college group that we had this summer was awesome, but it has also been refreshing to work with my peers who bring expertise and insights to the table that will take the organization to a new level and share the burden of stress and pressure.

Our developers are driving through the website. On Monday night we finished our first round of Alpha (bug) testing and reported all of the bugs and missing features that have to be finished for launch. All said, it totaled to two hundred and forty bugs and enhancements. Luckily, Dan and Shobhit, two recent Wokai volunteers who happen to do software and website testers for a living, are leading us through this stage of development. We're planning on first finishing all of the frontend by Tuesday, then moving on to the Field Partner related admin systems so that we'll be ready for Zhang Sheng's to head to Chifeng for training on the 18th, and finally adding the finishing touches in time for us to transfer the site onto our servers by the 1st of October.

As I mentioned before, Naomi stepped on as Wokai's COO last week. Even though she has only been with Wokai for a week, she has already added a huge amount of value, both in terms of actual work as well as adding a positive presence and strength to the Wokai team. It's exciting to bring on a fellow "Chief" and potentially double the impact that Wokai will have.

Wokai is on the verge of launching version 2.0 of our business plan. Liz started are redo of our original business plan that we had published back in May of 2007 which should be ready by next Friday. This is exciting both because it will provide a strong document that we can present to potential board members, donors and foundations as well as provide us with an added level of accountability for what we need to achieve over the next 1-3 years to meet our goals.

Courtney has launched our search and development of a long-term active board of directors. Thanks to the hard work of Michelle, Carlye, and Nicholas from Penn, who spent the summer developing Wokai's board structure, strategy, and recruitment materials, we're able to start the process of picking the right people for our board and creating a strong governance structure for Wokai.

Comments

[Michael Shepanski]

Hey Guys,

The idea of your project and reading about all your travels and ambitions is really exciting. I have only been following you for a few days, but you already won the heart of a friend of mine in NYC, and now you have another follower from Boston. I look forward to see how your project rolls out in the next few weeks and helping to spread the word! :)

Can't wait for the new site!

[Casey Wilson]

Thanks a lot Michael! I can't tell you how much we appreciate your support!