May 02 LAONA Software Progress Report May 2013 Version

LAONA Web Application Development
Progress Status Report
Revision number: 2
Prepared by
Caesar Ogole
05/04/2013
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Highlights of new additions and revisions
1. Section 3: - The ‘Projects Tab’, ‘Leadership Tab’ and ‘Other Utilities Tab’ has been added.
2. Section 5: -Instant messaging has been introduced in Section 5.10
5.1.1 Informal one-on-one online chats
5.1.2 Using the chat facility as a real-time collaboration tool for development activities
5.1.3 LAONA WALL
5.2 Storytelling and talent discovery
5.3 Homework
3. Section 7: - Introducing Mobility
7.1 Posting SMS/text on LAONA Wall from a mobile phone
7.2 Sending SMS from within the software application to cell phones
7.3 Instant chats (between user on Computer) and user on cell phone
7.4 LAONA Teleconference
4. Section 8: -Projects
8.1 What is a ‘Project’? Creating a new project proposal using our software application
8.3 Viewing past, ongoing and newly created projects
8.5 Homework
5. Section 9: Leadership hierarchy and organizational chart
9.1 Taking discussion outside the comfort zone: Leadership, Educational Qualifications,
Misconceptions and Attitudes
6. Section 10: The Problem of Selecting Venue for LAONA General Meetings
10.1 Background
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10.2 Why bother?
10.3 My take
10.4 Proposed Solution to the Problem of Venue Selection: Fundamentals
10.5 The Complexity of the Real Problem
10.5.1 Lessons learned
10.5.2 Fairness Continued: LAONA Membership fees
7. Section 12: Getting ready for launch
8. Biographical sketch of the author has been removed to reduce on the bulk of this document.
Anyone interested in reading the biographical sketch is referred to Document Revision 1.
Alternatively, a request can be made to this author.
Note: The author is still addressing the feedback that was given by a section of LAONA
regarding the first progress report. That should not stop you from submitting your feedback to
this revision. You do not have to submit the same items you sent in that last feedback.
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Contents
Highlights of new additions and revisions ................................................................................................ 2
Summary ...................................................................................................................................................... 7
1 Background and objectives ..................................................................................................................... 8
2 Member Registration and Security Features ....................................................................................... 10
2. 1 Accessing the Application ............................................................................................................... 10
2. 2 The Login Page ................................................................................................................................ 10
2. 3 New Member Registration Page ...................................................................................................... 11
3 Application Functionality in a Glimpse................................................................................................. 12
3. 1 Member Profile Tab ......................................................................................................................... 12
3. 2 Communication Tab ......................................................................................................................... 12
3. 3 Surveys and Polls Tab ....................................................................................................................... 13
3. 4 Projects............................................................................................................................................. 13
3. 5 Leadership ........................................................................................................................................ 13
3. 6 Other Utilities Tabs .......................................................................................................................... 13
4 Member Profiles ..................................................................................................................................... 14
4. 1 Viewing member profiles ................................................................................................................. 14
4. 2 Editing own profile ........................................................................................................................... 16
5 Communication: Emails, Announcements, etc ..................................................................................... 19
5. 1 Composing and Sending Emails ....................................................................................................... 20
5. 2 Reading emails from personal email inbox ...................................................................................... 23
5. 3 Viewing new and archived (old) emails from the Applications Inbox ............................................. 23
5. 4 Reading email message .................................................................................................................... 25
5. 6 Responding to emails from within the application .......................................................................... 26
5. 7 The “thumbs up”, “thumbs down” and “irrelevant” buttons .......................................................... 32
5. 8 One member, one vote rule ............................................................................................................. 33
5. 9 Other response features .................................................................................................................. 35
5. 9. 1 Responding to a particular email in the thread ..................................................... 35
5. 9. 2 Translating a message from Leb Lango to English and vice-versa ...................... 37
5. 10 Instant Messaging .......................................................................................................................... 40
5. 11 Informal One-on-One Conversation ......................................................................... 40
5. 12 A typical LAONA Collaboration: Brainstorming development ideas in real-time ........ 44
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5. 13 LAONA-wide Wall ......................................................................................................... 48
5. 2 Storytelling ....................................................................................................................................... 49
5. 3 Homework ........................................................................................................................................ 49
5. 13 Story-telling .................................................................................................................. 50
6 Surveys and Polls ................................................................................................................................... 51
6. 1 Creating and dispatching surveys .................................................................................................... 51
6. 1. 2 Setting survey closing dates and automatic reminders ............................................. 62
6. 1. 3 Submitting surveys ..................................................................................................... 65
6. 2 Active and Past surveys .................................................................................................................... 66
6. 2. 1 Active surveys............................................................................................................. 66
6. 2. 1 Completing and submitting responses ...................................................................... 67
6. 2. 1 Survey results ............................................................................................................. 68
6. 2. 1 Text Question Type .................................................................................................... 72
7 Introducing Mobility .............................................................................................................................. 73
7. 1 Posting Text (SMS) on LAONA Wall from a Cell Phone .................................................................... 73
7. 2 Sending SMS from LAONA Application to a mobile phone .............................................................. 75
7. 3 Instant chats ..................................................................................................................................... 76
7. 4 LAONA Teleconference .................................................................................................................... 76
8 Projects ................................................................................................................................................... 78
8. 1 Proposing a new project .................................................................................................................. 78
8. 2 Preview a proposal before submitting ............................................................................................ 85
8. 3 View past, ongoing and newly created project ideas ...................................................................... 88
8. 4 What do I do with the project listing? ............................................................................................. 90
8. 5 Homework ........................................................................................................................................ 91
9 Leadership and Organizational Chart ................................................................................................... 93
9. 1 Taking discussion outside the comfort zone: Leadership, Educational Qualifications,
Misconceptions and Attitude.................................................................................................................. 95
10 Other utilities: The problem of selecting venue for LAONA General Meetings ............................... 97
10. 1 Background .................................................................................................................................... 97
10. 2 Why bother? .................................................................................................................................. 98
10. 3 My take .......................................................................................................................................... 98
10. 4 Proposed solution to the problem of venue selection: Fundamentals ....................................... 102
10. 5 The complexity of the real problem............................................................................................. 103
10. 5. 1 Lessons learned ...................................................................................................... 106
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10. 5. 1 Fairness continued: LAONA Membership fees ...................................................... 107
10. 6 Software implementation of the venue selection solution ......................................................... 107
10. 7 Still not clear enough? ................................................................................................................. 114
11 Back Home .......................................................................................................................................... 115
11. 1 Navigating back to Home Screen: The Symbolic Head of Amuka.............................................. 115
11. 2 News, Announcements and Active Polls ...................................................................................... 115
11. 3 Recent updates and trending stories ........................................................................................... 117
11. 3. 1 Most liked ideas ..................................................................................................... 118
12 Getting ready for launch .................................................................................................................... 127
12. 1 Where it will NOT work ................................................................................................................ 127
12.2 What to do .................................................................................................................................... 127
Appendices............................................................................................................................................... 129
Anticipated FAQs .................................................................................................................................. 129
Document Change History .................................................................................................................... 129
Disclaimer, Terms and Conditions ........................................................................................................ 130
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Summary
This report provides an update on the progress of the ongoing effort to develop a Web accessible
software application to facilitate communication and seamless flow of information among the
Lango Association of North America (LAONA) community. The main motivation behind this
development is the idea that once a community is empowered by way of having in place an
effective means of internal communication, then, community members can leverage this
provision and devote resources to tackle other developmental projects.
The main goal of this version of the report is to highlight some of the key features and
functionality that target users should expect to see when the final product is made available for
use. By making this progress report available to the target audience ahead of time, it is hoped
that readers will start to develop mental pictures of some of the ways in which the application
will be put to use once it is deployed. This will save a great deal of time, and reduce the potential
burden placed on the developer to answer common questions.
It is important to note that this report is dominated by illustrations (screenshots) captured from
the current version of the software application. (The goal is to demonstrate that the completed
aspects of the application are working perfectly! However, development of other features is
ongoing. To give a reader a rough idea, the development is 80 % complete, going by the
developer’s revised project scope. The scope was expanded based on the observed needs.) For
the purpose of providing clarity, some simple use-case scenarios have been created and
elaborated in this report in the form of examples. The examples try to mimic reality as much as
possible. As such, end user names used for purpose of illustration were chosen from the list of
names of members of this association, - just for developer’s convenience, - since he has to write
code and test the application at the same time. A name is picked from the list using a random
function (criterion). Note: Do not attach any examples provided here to a real person, unless it is
explicitly stated otherwise.
This development was made from scratch (in software engineering context), starting with one
line of code in February- to (now) a few tens of thousands of lines of code. The underlying
“tricks” were implemented in the same manner based on standard computer algorithms,
heuristics or a combination of the two. For the general community of readers, this report has
been heavily trimmed to exclude confusing jargons. This is a free format report.
Credit is given to all members of LAONA for their contributions in one-way or another. The
Facilitator and members of the Task Force, as well as the former Secretary General and all the
members of the defunct Interim Executive Board are highly commended for doing good job in
their respective positions.
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1 Background and objectives
Objective:
Based on the needs of the Association, this project aims to:
1. Develop a software application that is accessible to members through the Web. This is
different from the website.
Functionalities:
Listed below is a summary of the functionality to be provided by the application. Details and
demos are provided in subsequent sections.
1. The application will provide a secure environment for enlisting member profiles so that
(authorized) members can learn more about each other. The Association members
generally agree that knowing each other will help unlock the potential to face challenges
together. We cannot work together when we do not know one another pretty well.
Members, initially, have the option of not including certain pieces of information when
they register. At a minimum, though, a real name and an email address must be provided.
It is expected that a newly registered member will, in a not-so-long run develop the trust
of the membership and begin to include details that will make it easier for the Association
to pool resources together to take the Association to the next level. Demonstration of how
this aspect of the application actually works is provided in Section 4 of this report.
2. The application will provide a capability for creating and administering surveys and polls
with minimal effort. The Association has, time and again, valued contributions in the
form of ideas and opinions, from its membership. Collecting and analyzing ideas and
opinion has been a time-consuming effort – requiring volunteers to manually create tables
and charts to summarize basic statistics. The ‘Survey/Polls’ component of the software
application addresses this problem by automatically collecting and analyzing survey/poll
responses, and disseminating the results to members in timely fashion- with little or no
intervention from a survey administrator. See section 6 for a demo.
3. The application will provide an interactive arena where members can initiate or make
follow-up contributions to discussions that are deemed relevant to the Association affairs,
and that conform to the ethical codes. Regular interaction among members is important
for sustained healthy relationships among members. The application supports both formal
and informal interaction. (There is an emerging discipline called “social media” that has
seen its practitioners, or activists, made an almost complete rationalization of this kind of
interactions. It is to be noted that the ethical issues is slippery). A demo of this aspect of
the application is provided in Section 5 of this report.
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4. Another functionality to be provided is the arena to post project ideas. In the recent past,
we have seen members come up with a wide range of incredibly good ideas - which were
potential candidates for the Association’s development projects. Unfortunately, some, if
not all of these ideas came at a time when the Association is still at its formative stage.
Such development ideas seemed irrelevant at infancy simply because priorities are
(rightly) placed elsewhere. As such, the member contributions get forgotten too soon.
What if there existed a repository (for storage), complete with a set of tools that facilitates
easy retrieval when the time for follow up actions materialize?! The answer is obvious: it
would be good idea to have storage for this kind of member input, even if the idea sounds
rather futuristic, - after all, (positively) disruptive ideas are known to carry elements of
strangeness (to an average person). Perhaps, what LAONA needs to cultivate from the
onset is a culture of “bring a good idea, own and lead its implementation” because, in
most cases, it is easier said than done. A demo is provided in Section 8.
5. The application will provide a simple component to display organizational chart,
including leadership hierarchy. Time will come when there will be an influx of
membership. New members should “join and learn on the fly”- without causing
unnecessary impedance due to lack of up to date and readily accessible organizational
information (See Section 9).
6. Other utilities: Some of these utilities will facilitate such decision-making. An example is
a utility to aid decision-makers in making intelligent decisions about selection of venues
for LAONA General Meetings. (See Section 10).
7. From raw data to knowledge (and perhaps wisdom, or rather – collective intelligence!):
This functionality has already been implemented and a demo is provided in Section 11.
Some enhancements may be made before the actual release is made.
The next sections will offer detailed discussion of these aspects of the project.
 In addition to the two questions that were given in the first progress update, there two
more homework questions, readers are expected to treat these assignments seriously.
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2 Member Registration and Security Features
2. 1 Accessing the Application
The application is web-based much in the same way as are contemporary networks such as
Facebook. A user can access the application via the Web browser of a computer with a
connection to the Internet. A URL (web address) will be provided to users when the application
is launched. (It is important to set it straight that this application is very different from Facebook,
as described in Section 1 “Background and Objectives”.
2. 2 The Login Page

The first page (Figure 1) will prompt the user to enter user name and password for authentication
purpose. The application is hosted on a Google Server. Google provides another layer of even
more robust digital security solutions to sophisticated attacks such as cross site scripting (XSS)
using so-called Caja sanitization that detects and blocks malicious content that could come from
user input.
Figure 1
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Returning users (members that have already registered) will be able to login by entering valid
user name (which will be unique email address) and a password (Figure 1).
2. 3 New Member Registration Page

As shown in Figure 1, there is a button labeled “Are you a new member? Click to register” .
By clicking that button, a user is presented with the new member registration form shown in
Figure 2, below. Most of the fields are optional. The First Name, Last Name, valid email address
and password are required. How do we know the email address is valid? Upon entering the
required information, a message is sent to the email address with additional information to
complete registration. A user is expected to use the information sent to the email inbox to
complete registration accordingly.
Note: A user can leave most or all the optional fields blank and complete them afterwards.
Figure 2
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3 Application Functionality in a Glimpse
A user will be able to access and make use of the functionality provided by the application upon
completing registration. Section 1 “Background and Objectives” provides an overview of the
rationale behind this design. A user is advised to revisit Section 1 to get the ideas driving design
and implementation of this set of functionality. Six (6) main functionality provided are Member
Profile Editing and Viewing, Communication, Surveys/Polls, Projects, Leadership and Other
Utilities.
3. 1 Member Profile Tab

Shown in green (Figure 3), a click on this tab (button) allows a user to access listing of registered
members and details of their profiles. (Exactly what this looks like will be tackled in more detail
in Section 4). This tab also offers additional functionality in that clicking it also displays the
“Home Screen”. A home screen is the default page displayed to the user every time he/she logs
in. The content of the home screen is rather special and will be discussed towards the end of this
report.
Note: An active tab is displayed in green and its size appears larger than the rest of the inactive
tabs.
Figure 3
3. 2 Communication Tab
Clicking the “Communication” Tab (which then turns to have a green label as shown in Figure 4)
will display user interaction mechanisms (interfaces) for composing and sending email messages,
reading inbox messages, posting stories, and the like. This functionality is dealt with in detail in
Section 5.
Figure 4
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3. 3 Surveys and Polls Tab
The “Survey and Polls” Tab (Figure 5) provides access to mechanisms for creating and
dispatching surveys, displaying listing of active surveys as well as that of the survey/poll results.
Details of how to make use of this functionality are described in detail in Section 6.
Figure 5
3. 4 Projects
Clicking on the Projects Tabs displays interfaces that allow a user to create new projects, and
view a listing of proposed projects (Figure 6). Users can volunteer to participate in executing
project tasks, or provide other resources that are needed to accomplish the project goals.
Figure 6
3. 5 Leadership
The organizational chart and leadership hierarchy can found under the Leadership Tab (Figure
7). The “green star” appears when a page is loading it’s contents.
Figure 7
3. 6 Other Utilities Tabs

The only utility at this time is the aimed at aiding decision makers make informed decisions
about meeting venues, taking into consideration fairness in member contributions (Figure 8).
Figure 8
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4 Member Profiles
As mentioned before, a user can register and log into the system by supplying only basic
information (first name, last name, email address and password). When logged in, a listing of
registered members is displayed on the side panel (See bottom left panel labeled “Member List”
right below the logo).
4. 1 Viewing member profiles

A user can view profile information of a fellow member by clicking on the name of the person in
question. For example, this user logged in and displayed “Hudson Ayo’s” profile information
(Figure 9) by clicking on Hudson Ayo’s name on the side panel. In this example illustrating
display of member profile, Hudson Ayo chose not to include a middle name, or perhaps, he
doesn’t have one. He has not uploaded his profile picture, either. He could opt to make changes
by uploading his picture the next time he logs in. He could also introduce his pet name “Ojee” or
nickname “Olel” or “Ninja” as a “middle name” once he feels he is comfortable with taking that
kind step. For now, he can choose to leave some of the fields blank.
Figure 9
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(If you see any features that haven’t been talked about yet, do not worry. It will be discussed at
some point – later).
For a record, profile information include:
1) First name*
2) Middle name
3) Last Name*
4) Telephone number, for example, +1 423 000 000
5) Email address*, for example, atinlango@laona.com
6) Location (in North America) – City and/or State or province, for example, Missouri
7) Lango village of origin, for example, Olelpek
8) Lango District of Origin, for example, Lira
9) Lango Clan, for example, Ogora imato mot
10) Member Occupation (or what others call “profession”) for example, Apur or Farmer
11) Lango Favorite quote(s), for example, otino logu momot
12) Bio Sketch: This can be a description as long as two pages if you like. For example, as
that provided in the Appendix Section.
Note:
1. *Required for registration.
2. A user who has questions pertaining why LAONA needs such profile information is
advised to revisit Section 1 “Background and Objectives”.
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4. 2 Editing own profile
A user can make updates or changes to own profile.
 Click on (“Update my profile”), shown underlined in Figure 10 to make changes to

profile.
Figure 10
 A button labeled “Change profile photo” will appear (shown enclosed in oval brick red
circle in Figure 11, below). Encircled in the green elliptical shape is the members
favorite quote, - extracted automatically from the profile information. It is filled with an
empty string “” if a user has not provided this piece information in the profile. (Note:
circles are shown simply to highlight the features. They do not exist in the actual screen).
Figure 11
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A user can opt to upload profile picture from his/her local disk by following the straightforward
instructions after clicking “Change profile photo”, as illustrated in Figure 12. Here, this user is
shown uploading his profile picture resident on his/her “Desktop”.
Figure 12
And presto! Uploading a picture done! (Lango kobo ni “yot bala agwede”, right?  ). (Figure
12).
Figure 13
Note: The picture used in the demo (Figure 12 and figure 13) is Caesar Ogole’s, the author of
this document. It is used with his permission.
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 Scroll down, and make additional changes as you desire. When done, click “Save All”
(Figure 14 a and b)
Figure 14 (a)
Figure 14 (b): Additional profile information
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5 Communication: Emails, Announcements, etc
Let’s switch gears and look into “Communication” in detail. Clicking on this tab (Figure 15
below) places, at a user’s disposal, interfaces to, - well, communicate! Here, a user can create
and send emails to other members. A user can also read new messages and/or make references to
old email messages, - or a user can post and/or read stories!
Introduction of the feature to post stories is aimed at separating regular messages from stories. A
story created (written) by a member, say on a bi-weekly basis, could be a lengthy body of text (of
pages long) that the storyteller wishes to share with the rest of the people. Sharing stories, be it
fiction (icina) or real-life narratives could be a good way of fostering healthy relationship among
members while also encouraging knowledge sharing as long as the stories are kept within the
confines (ethical, legal, etc) of the Association. Important to note is that the story section will be
separate from the regular email communication. Members will have the option of choosing (not)
to receive stories in their personal email inbox, or a member can choose to receive only the title
of the story in their personal inbox, or a member can choose the option of just reading the story
from the “story board” of the application, or a combination of some of the above. From the past
interactions, it appears LAONA is blessed with a sizable number of gifted storytellers! (How do
we sieve or filter a “story” when routed via a regular email? Well, when the body of text is “long
enough”, a user is asked to confirm if it is “not a story”. If a user insists the message is not a
story yet it is, or if it qualifies to be, - based on readers’ judgment, then we will see (in the
subsequent sections) how this adamant behavior will backfire on the message sender. Similarly,
proposed projects will have their own slots – sometimes, requiring approval before they can be
displayed to the general community.
OK, enough of the background story. (You bet I will be one of the regular storytellers at this
rate.) Let’s delve into the software and see how this idea has been implemented. (And by the
way, we have to give our application a name! We will vote on that in a near future, but you may
regard this as an assignment to you. You, who is reading all these is probably in better vantage
point to start thinking of a name now than someone who is just looking at the pictures.
Personally, I was thinking of calling the application kabat- the Lango word for “cupboard”,
Remember? - but I am terrible at naming things.
Figure 15
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5. 1 Composing and Sending Emails
Figure 16
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To send (an email-type of) message to all registered members, simply click on “Compose new
email” as shown in Figure 17 below:
Figure 17
Note: there will be an option to send email only to a sub-group; for example, the Facilitator may
wish to communicate only with the Task Force members.
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Example of sending an email from within the application
In the example below, a user “Caesar Ogole” logged in and decided to send an email with the
message title and body as shown in Figure 18 below. (Note: The message text was copied from
Prof. Omara Alwala’s earlier communication; it is used here only for illustration)
Figure 18
Click “Send” and at least two main things will happen:
1. The message is sent to (recipient) members’ personal email inboxes
2. The message is added to the application’s own “Inbox”, which we will look at shortly.
3. A confirmation that the message has been sent is displayed (Figure 19)
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Figure 19
5. 2 Reading emails from personal email inbox

 A member can read the message instantly from own personal inbox as illustrated in
Figure 20.
Figure 20
5. 3 Viewing new and archived (old) emails from the Applications Inbox
Alternatively, users can also log in and read new and archived messages from the Application’s
built-in Inbox, as shown in Figure 21. To view a list of emails, a user clicks on “Inbox” on the
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side panel at the bottom left just below the logo. Take time and acquaint yourself with the
message attributes: sender’s name, message subject, time elapsed since it was sent, etc.
Note 1: This list (archive) and its message content are available to all members, including those
that will join in the future! This provision is a timesaving strategy for facilitating new members’
“learning on the fly” and bringing them up to speed with Association affairs or culture as and
when they join the association, without causing unnecessary disruption that often come with new
member orientation. The burden is placed on the new member to comb through the message
archive as part of the assimilation exercise.
Note 2: Needless to mention, members will have to be mindful about ethics since even future
generation (including, perhaps, own children who are not yet be of membership age today) may
look at these messages.
Figure 21
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5. 4 Reading email message
Suppose a user wants to read the message (marked with a check mark in Figure 22).
 Simply click on the subject bar (button) “LAONA BEAKING NEWS!” The message
details will be displayed as illustrated in Figure 23.
Figure 22
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Figure 23
Note: The message recipients at the time are listed in the “To” field (Figure 23).
5. 6 Responding to emails from within the application

 When a user scrolls down, there is a “Respond” option displayed underneath the
message. See Figure 24.
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Figure 24
 Click on the radio button labeled “Respond” (Figure 24) to compose and submit a
response to the message. A text input field will be displayed, as shown in Figure 25
(below).
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Figure 25
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An example of a screen of a logged in user composing a response to the “original response” is
provided in Figure 26 (below).
Figure 26
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On clicking “Submit”, the message response is sent to “all”, and it is appended to the original
message in the Application’s built-in Inbox, under the sub-heading “Responses”. Figure 27
(below)
Figure 27
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Figure 28
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5. 7 The “thumbs up”, “thumbs down” and “irrelevant” buttons
You probably thought that you saw some thumbs up, thumbs down and some “guy” dumping
something in a trash bin (Figure 29). This is no different from what you probably have
encountered in contemporary social media sites. The thumbs up and thumbs down probably need
no introduction. That guy throwing things in the dustbin is perhaps new to you. Well, it is our
own creation! We think that certain responses can be distractive (or sideshows, going by the
catchword). Such messages have the characteristic of not conforming to the topic to which the
response is provided. Such responses do nothing but cause annoyance and perhaps, divert
attention from the real issue– at least momentarily. We think responding to such messages is not
worth the effort. Yet keep mum is not an option either, for, the sender may not learn without
recipients’ (constructive) feedback. The trash guy doing his/her thing is meant to tell the “off-
topic” message sender that the message is irrelevant, in just a button click.
Figure 29
Besides the usual voting applications supported by the tiny things (Figure 30), we will see how
this software has taken this concept to another level by using the raw data to mine (from data
mining) LAONA’s collective intelligence. This seemingly simple idea could also extended to
even more advanced applications to automatically detect emergence of cliques (or clusters, as
they are called) among the Association. We will save this for another time. Some of these ideas
are simply this author’s imagination – which, fortunately could be implemented as well!
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 Let’s get started again. The sender of a message has to like his/her own idea; otherwise
he/she would not submit/broadcast it, in the first place. As such, every message response
has its sender giving thumbs up to own message, by default. That is one “like” vote, so
far. You can click on the vote counter (underneath the green thumbs up) to display the list
of “likers”. (See Figure 30, below – enclosed in green ellipse).
Figure 30
5. 8 One member, one vote rule

The application enforces one person, one vote rule. Once a member clicks a “like”, “dislike” or
“irrelevant” button, the vote is recorded and all the three buttons associated with that message
response is disabled once and for good for that voter– even in subsequent logins. (Figure 31
illustrates this scenario where user “Alex Atim” likes “Hellen’s” response, causing the buttons to
get greyed out (disabled). Now, there are two thumbs up. No thumbs down yet, and no one yet
thinks “Hellen’s”’ message is irrelevant.
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Figure 31
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Figure 32 captures a scenario where a couple more people get to “like” the idea; the little purple
panel shows a list of the voters. This aspect of the application could be used to carry out quick
surveys among membership, right? (Note: how to administer formal surveys will be discussed in
a later section).
Figure 32
 The “thumbs down” and “irrelevant” buttons operate in a similar manner.
5. 9 Other response features

When responding to a message, a user is presented with some options that can be leveraged to
enhance user experience. (The term “user experience” is a rather technical term that refers to
“how a person feels about using a system”). Let’s look at how our system does some of these
things.
5. 9. 1 Responding to a particular email in the thread
Note that every message response is numbered. The first response is numbered “1”, the second
response “2”, and so on.
Utilizing this feature, a user can point exactly to which email in the thread of previous responses
he/she is responding to, as illustrated in the encircled region of Figure 33.
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Figure 33
 In the example below (Figure 34), a user has chosen to respond to the original message.
Figure 34
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The idea of concatenating (appending) responses allows for arrangement of messages in time
order, as illustrated in Figure 35.
Figure 35
5. 9. 2 Translating a message from Leb Lango to English and vice-versa
Well, as we all probably know, LAONA is blessed to have people who were born and raised in
the Eastern Hemisphere as well as members of Lango descent born and raised in the Western
Hemisphere. (And, perhaps, some members could have been born and raised along the Prime
Meridian – let’s not forget!) There is a wealth of diversity – and language is no exception. Some
members can speak and write both languages very well, while others are not multi-lingual. This
is not an issue, for it is not uncommon to find a society that thrives on a diversity of sort.
Our software application provides a simple feature to encourage voluntary translation of

messages, by highlighting a translated text. A member can offer to translate a message that is
sent in Leb Lango to English, and vice-versa. To provide a translation, simply specify the email
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to which a translation is being made and check the checkbox “Check me if this is a
translation…”
Any member can make a request that a translation to a previously posted message be made if he
or she has a problem comprehending it. The idea is that everyone should be on the same page,
without language acting as a barrier. In some cases, a member can ask that a message originally
written in English be translated again into English itself if the original message happens to be
incomprehensible, for any reason. (Of course, anyone who has a “reputation” of writing
enigmatic messages is likely to suffer the wrath of the “irrelevant” button – Refer to Section 5.7).
Figure 36 illustrates a scenario where a volunteer is providing a translation to “Email 2”.
Figure 36
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Figure 37 shows the look and feel of the translated text. And, a translated message is not exempt
from the “thumbs up”, and the like. That is, the quality of a translation matters!
Figure 37
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5. 10 Instant Messaging
This feature needs no introduction, as everyone is familiar with online chats. We will talk about
two modes of instant messaging provided by LAONA software application.
5. 11 Informal One-on-One Conversation
At any given time, a member can engage in online chat with one other member through the
chatting facility. Note: It is important to note that the chat conversations are not stored/recorded.
This is for technical reasons. A member can initiate a chat session with any other member who is
“online”. A member who is logged into the application is said to be “online”, and the little green
leaf-like icon shows the “is online” status (Figure 38). The little leaf-like icon turns gray once a
user goes “offline”. For simplicity, the system will not support any other online statuses such as
“busy”, “idle”, etc.
Figure 38 also shows user “Arao” logged in, and the right-most panel is display, indicating that
“Arao” has initiated a chat with another member who is “online”. That member is “Edisa”.
Figure 38
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On the side of the chat mate (“Edisa”), the chat panel is displayed with a yellow top bar,
signaling an incoming message from “Arao” (Figure 39).
Figure 39
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The conversation begins, with “Edisa” typing back a reply (Figure 40).
Figure 40
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The conversation continues (Figure 41).
Figure 41
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The conversation gets hotter - rather, cooler (Figure 41).
Figure 42
5. 12 A typical LAONA Collaboration: Brainstorming development ideas in real-time
Beyond the usual one-on-one informal conversation, LAONA members could (and will be
expected) to use this tool to collaborate and discuss LAONA development issues – taking
advantage of the integrated platform to juxtapose features (information) pertinent to the ongoing
discussion (Figure 43).
Figure 43
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Figure 44 illustrates LAONA members making use of the chat facility and leveraging the
integrated platform/capability to discuss issue that concern LAONA development. In this
scenario, the results of a poll could have just come in and the two mates are discussing the
outcome of the exercise.
Figure 44
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Figure 45
Figure 45 is another illustration where LAONA members “Alex” and “Patrick” are discussing
LAONA development project time lines (display by the system generated Gantt chart as part of
the project proposal.) (Ignore the actual details in the Gantt chart. The details were fabricated
just for illustration. Details about “Projects” are treated in Section 8).
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Like in Figure 45, Figure 46 illustrates a brainstorming session between “Alex” and “Patrick” in
progress. The submission closing date is probably drawing nearer, so they are working hard to
polish the project proposal, before they go back to playing hard again! (Ignore the actual details
in the Gantt chart. The details were fabricated just for illustration. Details about “Projects” are
treated in Section 8).
Figure 46
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5. 13 LAONA-wide Wall
Do you see the panel with the subtitle “LAONA WALL”? (Figure 47) Yes! The next time you
feel like sending a quick and short update to all LAONA members, that’s the place your message
will be displayed (instantly). You could say “Happy New Year!”, “Happy Easter”, etc. Or, you
could share anything with the rest of the members. For example, you may have been going
fishing (for leisure, etc) for the past year, and for the first time, you catch a fish today! You can
post instantly on LAONA WALL “This is it! Fishing has never been fun!” OR, “Happy Birthday
to BBBB!” Formality is not an issue here. You could also tell people what you are eating,
“bojo”, “kwon”, etc. The boundary is limited only by what is generally accepted as “not
disgusting, not illegal”. You don’t have to write an email! Just post an update from anywhere,
anytime! If you are having a slight headache, send an instant request to members to pray for you!
(I am sure we have some LAONA Pastors whose input could accelerate the miracle healing
process. To be clear, I am not sure. Of course, you still need to go and see your Doctor!).
Members may or may not respond to messages posted on the wall, but it doesn’t matter. This
kind of update is not subject to the “like”, “dislike”, or “irrelevant” treatments. Members could
subscribe (of course free) to receive such updates in their email inbox and/or as phone SMS text.
Wait a minute – did you say we could post updates from anywhere, anytime? Yes! Even from
your mobile gadgets (phones) while you are fishing at the riverfront! (More about mobility in
Section 7)
Figure 47
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5. 2 Storytelling
Read about storytelling (Figure 48)
Figure 48
5. 3 Homework
Start composing your interesting stories now! The first 10 people to post on LAONA storyboard
(upon launch) may win some candies!
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5. 13 Story-telling
This feature allows a registered member to compose and disseminate a story to all the members
of LAONA (Figure 49). As you (hopefully) noted in the previous page, storytelling is very
highly encouraged since the practice does not only entertain the community members, but it also
promotes knowledge sharing among the members. From this seemingly simple feature, we could
discover that LAONA has got talents that could further enhance our visibility on the world map!
Do not take anything for granted at this rate! Little things could make huge differences in the
least unexpected ways. For the beginning, a story could typically range from one to two pages (in
length). Because of the length of the story text, the body of the text is not disseminated to
member's personal email inboxes; only the titles of the stories are relayed instantly. Members
can sign in to the application (as usual) and read stories from the Story Board. A story could be a
fiction or a real life narrative that must be ethically and legally sound. A story should not attack
character of another person, directly or implied. A story could be written in either English or Leb
Lango, or a combination of the two.
Figure 49
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6 Surveys and Polls
Time for the fun part! Elections, votes, polls and democracy –or, call it anything, - transparency
or participatory governance, if you like - in LAONA!
6. 1 Creating and dispatching surveys

Let’s kick off this section by setting the scene using a real-world example. Not so long ago, a
renowned LAONA’s pollster administered a poll that required members to vote on a theme for
the up-coming LAONA Inaugural Event.
Listed below were the options from which members were expected to make one selection per
person. (Well, this example contains all the original 14 options that were proposed by the Task
force members. We are using the entire list just to illustrate that our software is robust enough to
handle any number of options).
1. Sharing Our Dreams

2. Beating Our Odds
3. Building Together
4. Lango Reconstruction (Resilience). Moving a head
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5. Note kede Woro (Unity and Respect)
6. Our Voyage to the Next Frontier of Promise & Abundance
7. LAONA: Looking A Head
8. LAONA: Unlocking the Potential
9. Facing the Challenges Together
10. Together Anything is Possible
11. Better Together
12. Lango for Development, Progress (Growth), Productivity, and Sustenance
13. Unity is Strength (Note En Teko)
14. Our Strength, Our Possibilities!
We will walk through the process of creating and dispatching a survey to members (who are
assumed to be registered). We will then look at how the system automatically relays results in a
split second after the survey closing date is hit.
1. On hitting the “Surveys and Polls” Tab (button with green font label) and then pressing a
button “Create new survey” (not shown here), a user will be presented with the following
screen (Figure 50). [A user in this case will have to be an authorized member. This
functionality will not be available to everyone, lest everyone could potentially go on
‘rampage’ creating their own polls – a practice that could turn out to be
counterproductive].
(i) The screen consists of a Survey Title input field, and “Question 1”. Note that the
there are two input fields for “Question 1”. The design is not an accident. The first
input box for the question is the main prompt to the user. For example, the main
prompt could run as follows:
“Who should serve as the three signatories for the Association in all Association
purchases and transactions?”
With the following options:
A. Treasurer, Secretary General and Secretary
B. Treasurer, Secretary General and General Counsel*
C. Treasurer, General Counsel* and Secretary
And a foot-note such as:
*General Counsel will be nominated (or elected) soon.
Think of the second field of the Question/prompt as a footnote or a hint field. This feature will be
available for every question.
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Note: The example provided above was picked from one of our earlier surveys. Credit goes to
Dr. Gloria Ameny-Dixon for formulating this question. Dr. Ameny-Dixon served as Interim
Secretary General of the Association during its formative period. Credit also goes to members of
the Interim Committee for reviewing this set of survey questions before they were dispatched to
the target respondents.
Figure 50
Back to our example of choosing the inaugural theme:
i. Enter the title and
ii. Question/prompt 1
as illustrated in Figure 51
Figure 51
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To list the ”proposed themes”, the survey creator has to select the question type. The system
supports two question types:
(i) Multiple choice
(ii) Text input
As you may have already figured out, Question 1 is multiple-choice type. Go ahead and press the
button (well list-box choice) “Multiple choice”. [You need to roll your mouse, -or whatever
pointer device you are using to see the other choice(s).]
A radio button and associated (default) label “Option 11” will appear as shown below (Figure
52). You could interpret “Option 11” as “Option 1 of question 1”. The right-most “1” is the
option number. (Do not worry. It will become clearer later).
Figure 52
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Edit the text field by removing “Option 11”. In this case, we may change “Option 11” to
“Sharing Our Dreams” (Figure 53). Remember our options?

2. Beating Our Odds
etc?
Figure 53
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If this were the only option available for this question, then we would hit the “Done” button and
go to the next step. (Of course, it would make no sense to have a multiple type survey with only
one option). For our case, we need to add the remaining options.
 To add the next option, check/click the radio button and the next option label will appear,
as shown below (in Figure 54). Observe that the default label for the new radio button is
“Option 12” – meaning “Option 2 of question 1”. Is this now less confusing?
Our goal is to create the next option in our list:

2. Beating Our Odds
etc
Figure 54
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 Change “Option 12” to our next option, say “Beating Our Odds” (Figure 55)
Figure 55
In a similar manner, add the remaining options “Building Together”, “ Lango Reconstruction
(Resilience). Moving ahead”, “ Note kede Woro (Unity and Respect)”, “ Our Voyage to the Next
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Frontier of Promise & Abundance”, “LAONA: Looking A Head”, “LAONA: Unlocking the
Potential”, “ Facing the Challenges Together”, “ Together Anything is Possible”, Better
Together”, “Lango for Development, Progress (Growth), Productivity, and Sustenance “, “Unity
is Strength (Note En Teko)”, “Our Strength, Our Possibilities!” (Figure 56)
Figure 56
And yes, continue adding the options … (Figure 57). And the software keeps “growing”
endlessly, right? Yes, don’t judge a book by its cover!
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Figure 57
When done with creating all the options as exemplified in the previous steps, the survey creator
can then click on the long-awaited button “Done”! Pressing that button will take the user to the
next step where options are presented to, either:
(i) Add another question, or
(ii) Preview the survey and submit the question.
(See Figure 58)
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Figure 58
If there were more than one question in the questionnaire set, then the survey creator would click
on “Add a question” button and go through a similar exercise to create another question.
 In our case, that’s the only question, so the user would hit the button “Preview and
Submit Survey”. The survey preview mode is displayed as shown in Figure 59.
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Figure 59
 The list is long, so scroll down to see the remaining part of the question.
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6. 1. 2 Setting survey closing dates and automatic reminders
When you (survey creator) keep scrolling down long enough, you will be confronted with two
additional sub-tasks: setting up the survey response due dates and automatic reminders (Figure
60 and Figure 61). The goal of these sub-tasks is probably obvious, but it is important to recall
that the “state-of-the-art” is that a survey administrator has to constantly keep sending reminder
emails to members, imploring them to complete and submit their responses on time. It is a time-
consuming task on the side of the pollster when these tasks are performed “manually”. The
probable positive aspect of the traditional approach is that recipient members could possibly be
finding it cordial and enjoyable to keep receiving beautifully constructed messages (reminders)
that carry a characteristic touch of vitality of a nice human being (message sender). (I used to be
such big fan; I would drag to submit my survey responses just so I could be reminded). In
contrast, our automatic reminders will not sound that kind and lovely. Members will be greeted
with robotic messages such as “Ayo, you have only one day to submit your survey response!” –
as we will see shortly in a demo.
Figure 60
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Figure 61
 Go ahead with setting up survey submission deadline (Figure 62)
Figure 62
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 For this example, after the date selection, Figure 63 shows what the closing date fields
look like:
Figure 63
 Complete the second sub-task- (Figure 64) and the survey is ready to get sent to the
respondents!
Figure 64
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6. 1. 3 Submitting surveys
 Hit the “Submit survey to respondents!”
Figure 65
Clicking “Submit survey to respondents” button does at least the following things:
1. It sets up the new survey with associated parameters such as closing date and reminder
settings.
2. It adds the new survey to the list of active surveys. We will see what active survey list is
shortly.
3. It automatically sends email to all the intended respondents (LAONA members), and a
LAONA member can read the following notification from their personal email inboxes,
as illustrated in the Figure 66.
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Figure 66
6. 2 Active and Past surveys

6. 2. 1 Active surveys
The term “active survey” is coined to mean a survey for which responses are still being accepted.
“Past surveys” are archived surveys for which the response submission deadline has passed. A
member can log in to the application and complete and submit a response to an active survey. A
member can only view the results of a past survey by clicking on the survey name (on the past
survey list). Both of these lists are displayed on a side panel when the “Surveys/Polls” Tab is
“green”. The two lists look like that displayed in Figure 67.
Surveys are subject to the “one person, one response set” rule.
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 Every time a new survey is created, it is automatically added to the active list. In our case,
the new survey is the 15th on the list.
Figure 67
6. 2. 1 Completing and submitting responses
 Select the survey to complete from the active survey list by clicking on its label, and the
survey details (prompts) is displayed as shown in Figure 68.
 In this example, a user “Tom Opito” logged in and clicked on the active survey to which
he has not yet submitted a response. He is greeted with the message “Tom Opito, you
have not submitted a response to this questionnaire set…” He is reminded of the “fast
approaching” closing date. The “yellow traffic light” is a warning that things are about to
turn “red”.
 The user can complete the questionnaire and submit a response set there and then, before
the light goes red.
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Figure 68
6. 2. 1 Survey results
OK, let’s try to see how the results would be communicated to the registered members. We will
replicate the actual results below (Courtesy Ms. Florence Ocen – LAONA’s volunteer pollster).
Our Strength, Our Possibilities! - 2 votes (15.2%)
LAONA: Unlocking the Potential - 2 (15.2%)
Our Voyage to the Next Frontier of Promise & Abundance - 2 votes (15.2%)
Unity is Strength (Note En Teko) - 1 vote (8%)
Note kede Woro (Unity and Respect) -1 vote (8%)
Note: For this illustration, the process was mimicked by logging in as 13 different users, each
time casting one vote to reproduce the results summarized above.
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At this point, there are 13 sets of responses from13 different members. As soon as the pre-set due
date clocks, the results are automatically sent to the members. A user can also log in and go to
the “Past Survey List” to view the results (Figure 69 and Figure 70)
Figure 69
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Figure 70
 Compare this with Florence’s results.
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 Scroll down, and underneath the results (of the last question), you can view the list of
respondents/voters under the sub-heading “Contributors”.
Figure 71
 You can tell that the Facilitator did not vote since there is no “Omara Alwala” on the list
of contributors. “Ogole”, too, is a culprit, just as are any persons whose names do not
appear on the list of “contributors”. This is critical because, in the real settings, these
results will remain on the archive list so even future members will see them. Potential
implications are left to a reader’s imagination. (The list above and associated example
given in this paragraph is all imaginary, of course. It is provided only to drive a reader to
engage in deeper thoughts.)
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6. 2. 1 Text Question Type
The previous example focused on multiple-type questions. Creating a question that requires
respondents to input textual input is several times easier! When prompted to “Select question
type”, select “Text” and a large text input field will appear as illustrated in Figure 72.
Figure 72
Note: A survey creator can create (theoretically any) number and combination of types of
questions by hitting “Add Next Question” whenever a new question needs to be added, and
selecting the appropriate type of question.
This is probably enough for this section, for now. The Robert’s Order of Rule will be discussed
in the next release.
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7 Introducing Mobility
7. 1 Posting Text (SMS) on LAONA Wall from a Cell Phone

We talked briefly about the feature to post short text messages to LAONA WALL from mobile
phones. The phone does not have to be a smart phone. It can be any phone, any carrier. However,
the phone must be registered with LAONA software application. Registration of a phone means
a user subscribes to receive and/or send text messages from/to LAONA software application.
The first step towards registration of a phone number is inclusion of the telephone number in the
member profile information. See Section 4: “Member Profiles”.
The second and last step will be to confirm that “I want to send/receive SMS”. This will require
the owner of the phone to use a short system-generated code sent to the phone in question to
complete the registration. Specific details will be given to end-users when the application is
launched. And yes, it applies to USA, Canada. You could also “ post updates” while in
Guatemala, if you happen to be there for some reason.
Look at the LAONA WALL again (Figure 74). Do you see the tiny phone-like icon? Those
messages were sent from a cell phone. It is no different from the “Sent from my jPad” story, if
you recall the joke. Again, details of how to send texts to LAONA Wall will be provided when
the application is launched.
Figure 73
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Ignore the gibberish on the wall; this is how it would look like (Figure 74). Some short messages
were sent from the Web, and those messages with the cell phone icon were sent from the phone.
A short message will be limited to 150 characters, including spaces.
Figure 74
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7. 2 Sending SMS from LAONA Application to a mobile phone
It is easy to send an SMS from within an application to a phone. Just compose and send the text
message from the interface that will be provided. For example, a message could be sent from
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profile member info page. That will become clearer once the application is made available for
use.
7. 3 Instant chats
What the last two subsections (Sections 7.1 and 7.2) mean is that one user could be on the
conventional PC and another on a cell phone at remote sites, but they could exchange messages
(chat) instantly.
7. 4 LAONA Teleconference
Cisco defines the Internet of Everything (IoE) as “bringing together people, process, data, and
things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before - turning
information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented
economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries”.
Big high-tech Research and Development (R&D) Laboratories are championing these advances
that will literally change the world in less than a decade to come. IBM and General Electric
R&D Labs are working round the clock to realize the same goal. They have dubbed their projects
the “Internet of Things”, not much different from Cisco’s. Gadgets will communicate in ways
that we have never seen before. How? Nearly every device – including humans will carry
embedded sensors. These sensors will transmit some form of data to high performance
computational nodes (located at remote locations) that will process the potentially large amounts
of data in real-time. To get a process the data, there is need for hardware and software. That’s
what the projects are all about. Software is more critical than ever. Impressive progress has been
made despite lots of challenges that come with the quest.
At LAONA, we start ours with humility, - commensurate with our size. LAONA software
application provides a limited capability to connect gadgets – allowing end user devices to
communicate with one another. In addition to the capabilities described in the last three sub-
sections, LAONA members will be able to hold tele-conference using telephones, PCs and other
such devices (Figure 75). For the start, up to forty (40) gadgets will be able to participate in a
teleconference at a given time.
Figure 75
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8 Projects
8. 1 Proposing a new project

A user may propose a new development project by clicking on “Propose a new project” (Figure
76). The business dictionary defines a 'project' as a planned set of interrelated tasks to be
executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations. To propose a new
project, click on 'Propose a project' label (below the logo) to provide a description of your idea.
The description must include the basic features of a project (as defined above). Note that this
submission will be only a basic development project plan. A proposer may, subsequent to
submission of the basic plan (proposal), find it necessary to continue developing the plan further
'offline'. When a person preparing the proposal clicks on 'Submit my project idea', an email
notification is sent to LAONA members informing them that a new project has been proposed.
The details of the proposal, save for the project title, is not sent to the personal email inboxes.
The details can be found in the 'Project Repository' of this application.
Members can then login and view the details of the proposed project (idea). Members may (and
will often be expected to) volunteer to provide any resources that the proposer has identified as
'needed'. The person who created and submitted the project is identified by this system as the
Project Lead, although assignment of role may be different on the ground. Project proposals are
very important formal undertakings, and hence should be treated as such by everyone. A project
idea must be carefully thought out and its description well written before it is submitted to
members. Preparation could be done collaboratively. Teamwork is highly encouraged. The team
could leverage the integrated chatting platform and online conferencing tools to work together
real-time. The person submitting the project proposal is identified as the Project Lead.
While proposing a project idea using this tool, note that the editable fields in which a user is
expected to input texts may contain some default instructional materials. Users are advised to
make use of this guide as checklist for creating the project plans. The fields are editable so the
default texts can be erased.
For a record, the seven basic components of a project proposal are:
1) Project title
2) Project summary intro
3) Project description / objective
4) References cited /plan of work/methodology
5) Resources available/expected results/outcome
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6) Resources needed /budget
7) Project tasks and timeline
The Figures 76 - 88 illustrates the project creation and submission process. (By “submission”, we
mean sending it to all the LAONA members through the mechanism provided by the system)
Figure 76
 replace development,…. / “project idea form” PI/PD = * principal investing…

budget
 funded projects
 Expected results / outcome
 Proposed budget
 Duration
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Figure 77
The Figures 76 - 88 illustrates a new project creation and submission process. (By “submission”,
we mean sending it to all the LAONA members through the mechanism provided by the system)
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Figure 78
Figure 79
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Add project tasks (Figure 80)
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Figure 80
Define additional project tasks (Figure 81)
Figure 81
Figure 82
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Figure 83
Figure 84
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Figure 85
8. 2 Preview a proposal before submitting

Preview the proposal before you submit (Figure 86)
Figure 86
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Preview the proposal before you submit (Figure 87). Note that the simple Gantt chart is created
automatically.
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Figure 87
Preview the proposal before you submit (Figure 88).
Figure 88
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And then you can submit! (Or you can make any necessary changes before clicking on “Submit
Project!”
8. 3 View past, ongoing and newly created project ideas

View past, ongoing projects or newly proposed project ideas. (Figure 89)
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Figure 89
Figure 90
In the full screen mode, project listing looks this (Figure 90)
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While under the 'Projects' Tab, a user can return to this basic instructional screen by clicking on
‘Help’. For details, see Section 7 of the user manual.
8. 4 What do I do with the project listing?

 Read and understand and know that LAONA is about growth and development. Growth
and development will be realized through projects.
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 Volunteer to execute project tasks
 Provide other resources that are needed to realize the project goals
8. 5 Homework
 This is the moment everyone has been waiting for! Development! Development!
Development! Stop talking and talking and talking. (Of course we can talk! We can post
instant updates on any interesting topics on LOANA WALL. We can share stories, etc).
But Let’s do developmental stuff also: education, build LAONA stadium, etc. Here we go!
 Question:
If you, as an individual or a sub-group, already had a developmental (project) idea that

has been burning in your heart(s), start drafting the idea (following the discussion of
“Projects” in this Section 8. While formalizing your project ideas, you may notice that the
features provided by this tool might not contain everything that you would like (for your
specific project needs). Did we miss any serious project attributes? Well, bear in mind
that this tool is only meant to be elementary, and is intended only to get the projects
started in an organized way! Yes, homework question is: start creating your project
proposals now so that by the time we launch the application, you will just copy and paste
your project ideas into the system. As you may have noted, creating a new project idea
requires careful thinking, research and adequate amount time. Get started now!
If you didn’t yet have a project idea, start thinking of one now. Go ahead and draft it.
Seek help, if need be. Collaborate!
Do you need an example? Fortunately, I have one on top of my head right now – adapted
from Ms. Sylvia Nyana’s contribution on LAONA forum (Jan 2013). [And this is simply
an example. No bias, whatsoever. And I assume Ms. Nyana has no problem with her idea
adapted for this purpose on this (same) forum]. Other ideas are given in Section 10.3.
Here is the example:
Suppose it concerns you that LAONA might not promote the right usage of the name/term
“Lango” in this venue. “Wan Lango, Yin Lango, An Lango, Lango District, Lango Association,
Lango Diaspora, etc. Langi is not the plural of Lango. Lango is a race, and is both plural and
singular, just like LUO is LUO, LANGO is LANGO because there are several groups under
LANGO, and several groups under LUO. You may add Jo Luo (Luo people) or Jo Lango (Lango
people). The "Langi" is a new creation (read Tosh 1979 "Clan Leaders and Colonial Chiefs in
Lango: The Political History of an East African Stateless Society 1800-1939"), and now widely
used (incorrectly) by Lango and non-Lango, but no record of "Langi" in Lango history…
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That’s the basic idea, expressed rather informally in terms of a concern by an individual. It could
be reworked into a comprehensive project (proposal)! If the original thinker, in concert with
other members could formalize the idea into a project proposal, then, chances are that the
proposal could very well meet the criteria for the solicitation given below. (I underlined chances
because these things are very competitive, and requires a lot of hard work!)
Source: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12816
Before everyone else get to learn to know of what LAONA is, we would be converting
“problems” into opportunities for growth and development! It is left to the reader to imagine how
far this kind of projects would take us - LAONA!
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9 Leadership and Organizational Chart
Click “Leadership Tab”. Read more about this Tab in Figure 91. (Some text in this section was
taken from an external source. You will find the reference provided at the bottom when you
scroll down long enough).
Figure 91
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The chart looks like that displayed in the Figure 92. (Never mind about the same person’s
picture. This was just used for illustration, and for convenience).
A couple of things to note:
1) An authorized member will be able to modify or define the hierarchy.
2) For users’ convenience, the chart incorporates the capability to send an SMS and make a
call from within the chart. Look at the “Send SMS” and “Call” links carefully. It works
perfect now. This feature has already been implemented and tested!
3) From here, a teleconference moderator (an authorized person) will be able to initiate and
moderate a teleconference. He will be able to control which speakers should be allowed
airtime when a teleconference is in session.
Figure 92
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Note : everyone is featured in the chart at some level. At the bottom of the pyramidal hierarchy
are the ‘Members’. (Figure 93 – ‘Members’ not shown)
Figure 93
9. 1 Taking discussion outside the comfort zone: Leadership, Educational

Qualifications, Misconceptions and Attitude
 It is almost impossible to create these application features without putting in serious, but
sometimes wandering thoughts. Here are some observations made about LAONA
leadership, in connection with the pyramid of power:
1. It seems it is widely believed that it is only the ‘leaders’ who must be doing things. Not
true. While we place high expectations on leaders, we, individually or collectively as
members can also actively make significant contributions to move the Association
forward – of course, through, the leaders.
2. It is misconception that any person with some (minimum) level of education can be a
good leader. This misconception has seen LAONA wasting a lot of time expecting PhD
holders or Master’s degree holders to lead us forward. Let’s get it straight: it is a very
high honor to attain these high levels of education, and the higher degree holders should
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be accorded special respect for such an achievement. However, we must not forget that
the higher degrees (PhDs, Masters, etc) are usually not anything different from a depth
(and yes, breadth) of knowledge in a specific field. It is therefore misleading and
unrealistic to place high expectations on people having specialized knowledge to be able
to deliver equally (well) outside their domains (of professional expertise). The point in
question is that everyone should be ready to step forward to lead, and not hold back with
the expectation that the highly educated fellows will make a miracle; they will disappoint,
on occasions.
3. Because of the reservations held by a cross-section of the Community on the issue

regarding who are the most qualified to lead the Association, some of the people with
higher levels of education often develop an attitude of grandeur. This is a threat to
LAONA development. (Unfortunately, I have observed this kind of behavior only within
LAONA – or Lango, for that matter.) It would help anyone to think of LAONA as a
(still) weak organization, and therefore showing one’s might among the weak should be a
shame, in some way.
4. So, what should a truly powerful person do? Lay back and watch people struggle? No!
Do what you do best. In addition to all else, bring the best in you, - for LAONA
development. Specific examples are given in Section 10 (See Section 10.3). We can’t all
be Chairpersons at the same time! And, one doesn’t have to be a Chairperson, Secretary
General, etc in order to make a difference!
5. Above all, we should support and respect our leaders. Today the leader may be him or
her, tomorrow, the leader might be you! “Do to others as you would have them do to
you.”
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10 Other utilities: The problem of selecting venue for LAONA General
Meetings
10. 1 Background
In this section, we will discuss one utility that could be used to resolve the problem of selecting
venues for LAONA General Meetings. Let’s start by putting the problem in context.
 LAONA, in a poll conducted in early 2013, agreed that General Meetings be held once
every year.
 Article 2 of the proposed LAONA Association states, “The territorial jurisdiction of the
Lango Association of North America shall extend northward from the Colombia-Panama
border to Central America, Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean Sea, the United States,
Canada, the Arctic Archipelago, and Greenland.”
So, the immediate question that comes into mind is: given the large expanse of land that defines
the geographical scope of the Association, what criteria does the Association employ to select
the venue for the LAONA Annual General Meeting? Should the members converge at Hawaii
because it is widely known for its beautiful sceneries?
The answer to the last question is: “may be”. Let’s see how LAONA has handled this problem –
so far.
In the (recent) past, a few individual members made suggestions for the venue of the LAONA
Inaugural Convention. In most cases, a member’s suggestion would bend towards making the
proposer’s home state/region a favorable venue (host) for the General Meeting. States such as
Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C were mentioned quite regularly.
Justifications by supporters would run as follows, (Citation 1) “… the venue sounded good to
me, after all, the land of Abraham Lincoln wouldn't be a bad place for making history for the
great people of Lango” – accompanied by a statement that implied some reservations: “Don't let
me create bias in your minds”. That justification, and others that accompanied it turned out to be
a hard sell. That was the state of Illinois.
Then, amid of the confusion, came another well-articulated input: (Citation 2) “If I may, I would
like to throw in my suggestion for Maryland as some members have already mentioned. This is
because Maryland is close to so many of our dignitaries representing Uganda on official duties
here in Washington D.C and New York. I would suggest that we do not make these important
ladies and gentlemen travel so far away and rather bring the venue nearer to them. It is a sign of
respect to all those representing the Republic of Uganda on official duties. On the other hand, I
think that it is also appropriate to organize a venue where the majority of the members resides”.
A critically sound response followed, (Citation 3) “The cities that I am very familiar with- New
York, Chicago, and Washington DC all have advantages and disadvantages- with the
disadvantages almost out-weighing the advantages. I am not familiar with enough cities in the
US to make a suggestion. I am therefore going to leave this for the Americans to decide but here
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is my thinking:
I agree with accessibility, hustle free, appeal etc., as deciding factors however the number of
people attending the conference from a city should not be one of those factors. It would be
embarrassing for a host city to have only residents at the conference and a handful or no one
from out of town as a result of members boycotting. We have to acknowledge that some cities
will become a lightning rod and may create more divisions within the community. It would be
nice if the choice of city ends up uniting us than dividing us. I think that logistics for the
conference organizers and affordability and accessibility for out of towners should be on top of
the list of deciding factors. I also hope that the choice of city won't be just to accommodate
diplomats and government representatives as was suggested by a member a week ago.”
Others started invoking memories of long ago when they had a rendezvous somewhere around
“Bronze Springs”, “Silver Springs”, etc. I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought
they were from another planet.
I snapped.
In the end, a Facilitator for LAONA Task Force was elected. Recognizing that the problem of
“venue” was an unresolved problem, the Facilitator, in his acceptance letter, explicitly stated:
(Citation 4) “Finally, let me be clear about the possible venues of our Association’s meetings,
including of its Inauguration later this year. The Lango Association of North America is free to
hold its meetings anywhere and everywhere at the discretion of its leadership, period.” The
facilitator echoed the same thing, underlining anywhere and everywhere in his progress report a
week later.
When Philadelphia was finally chosen as the venue for the Inaugural Convention (by a majority
vote), (Citation 5) - further justification to affirm the choice came in the form of Wikipedia links
– in oblivion of the fact that the very reference material (Wikipedia) had earlier generated a
controversy among a cross-section of the same community. (Like in the case of (1) above, the
Wikipedia web pages contained history of Philadelphia).
10. 2 Why bother?

It is imperative that LAONA tackles this problem once and for all, and in a rigorous manner
because the problem will keep coming every year (and I don’t wanna snap again), since
LAONA will hold General Meetings every year! Although some of the suggestions cited above
are convincingly sound, there is no evidence that they will be implemented on the ground. And
yet, without taking it personal, other suggestions (some not cited here) reflect utter shallow
perspectives held by some of our members.
10. 3 My take
Going through the suggestions presented in Section 10.1 above, this is what I think:
(1) Citation 1: History or appeal of a place constitutes only a minute weight to the overall
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decision in selecting a particular city or region as a venue for LAONA meeting. Every
place has a history. To merely quote a history of a specific place without considering the
“weight” of the history of alternative locations, is a case of incomplete reasoning –
without a question.
(2) Citation 2: All the talk about government representatives, etc – to me, is almost
completely irrelevant. LAONA is a cultural organization, registered as a not-for-profit
(and therefore, non-governmental) organization in North America. Every member who
attends LAONA meetings comes as a member of the Association, not anything else–
save, perhaps, for the possibility of having a representative of the local authority of the
host State/Province. The leaders of the Association (as defined by the LAONA
Leadership Hierarchy) are the most important at all the functions. To suggest otherwise
would be a display of lack of understanding of the underlying cause or drive to form this
association. Everyone else is a member, and, is important in his or her own rights. I
cannot explain this better. (See 3 below, -for more).
(3) Citation 3: If I had the authority to assign who should be a (chief) guest speaker at the
LAONA Convention (based on this topic alone), I would call on the person quoted in (3)-
without hesitation. That person displayed a high level of well-intentioned and
independent critical thinking- not to mention intelligence. LAONA has to be self-reliant,
and for that to happen, priorities should be accorded to members who generate their own
ideas – not people who preach externally generated ideologies (which could end up being
political). (Before you quote me out of context, read through again).
Let’s go deeper:
 Apply your skills, education, expertise and/or any other resources at your disposal to
solve LAONA problems. (This does not mean you do not understand politics –,
which, ideally, should mean the art and science of management of a society. Not
being ‘active in politics’ could mean that one knows beyond politics. Do not go
masquerading as a politician, when you have better things you could do to help
transform society. Do not just chant: “Lango Must Rise and Shine Again”. Do it!
How?
(i) If you are a Research Scientist in Artificial Intelligence, apply your skills and/or
background/training and education in that area to solve LAONA problems- like
Mr. Caesar Ogole is doing. (Again, this does not mean he does not understand
politics. He wrote speeches for “high profile politicians” when he was only 16!
He formulated policies at the same age on behalf of Northern Ugandan children,
etc. He moved on - beyond politics.)
(ii) If you are an Educationist, bring educational opportunities to LAONA – like our
Dr. Gloria Ameny-Dixon did – by offering scholarship opportunities to LAONA
members!
(iii) If you have great interpersonal and communication skills and amiable personality
(in addition to all else), volunteer and help bring people together – like our Ms.
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Florence Ocen is doing! Do not wait for Convention Meetings to display your
oratory skills in the form of a speech. There will simply be no so much luxury of
time for members to listen to long speeches! A speech is not an action, in any
case. (You could argue otherwise).
(iv) If you are a Food and Nutrition Scientist, bring healthy foods to LAONA table -
literally, or otherwise, say, through “LAONA Monthly Healthy Eating Training
Program” – whatever jargon you choose to use. You do not have to waste your
hard-earned training disguising as a politician, or General Secretary – whatever
fancy titles people choose to refer to it. It doesn’t make you prouder to carry a big
(empty) title when LAONA members are feeding on junk foods!
(v) If you are a real-estate entrepreneur, help solve the problem of lack of physical
address among LAONA! (Save members the burden of praying for colleagues
who are reported to be in that situation).
(vi) If you an Economist, help LAONA use the limited resources optimally! Don’t
masquerade as a seasoned political advisor or anything. Sit down on your desk,
think critically and apply quantitative methods to help LAONA save the costs of
members converging at meeting venues, while at the same time helping eliminate
petty disagreements among members.
(vii) If you are a Physical Training Expert, volunteer to lead a session when and where
Convention participants will take time off to go out for a fitness exercise (short
hikes, etc) – and, come up with a sustainable plan to encourage LAONA members
lead a healthy lifestyle!
(viii) If you are a lawyer/attorney, help LAONA draft or refine its Constitution, etc. Do
not just sit back hoping the Association will create some fancy position such as
“General Counsel”, etc.
(ix) If you are keen on new technologies, help make critical reviews on emerging
technologies that are relevant to LAONA!
(x) If you are a counselor of sort, (volunteer and) reach out to specific LAONA
individuals who are going through tough times – psychologically, or otherwise.
Do not wait to render your service in the form of a speech at a Convention; - after
all, not everyone (in the audience) may be in need of such a service at such an
occasion. And, after all, counseling is better done in private – or not?
(xi) If you are a medical doctor/nurse, be a LAONA doctor/nurse in some way. Be a
LAONA medical correspondent, etc.
(xii) If you have expertise in agriculture, teach LAONA members how to make our
North American gardens conducive for growing the “malakwang” or “olel” – the
thing that everyone is talking about nostalgically
(xiii) If you are a writer, help do the writing. Volunteer to help some of our aspiring
storytellers piece up their stories together. Help write or edit grant proposals, etc.
(xiv) If you are an accountant, help create and maintain a LAONA balance sheet, etc.
(xv) If you are an inventor (with patents, etc), use the same cutting edge ideas to
transform LAONA. Do not just talk ‘high-level’ talks. Apply the fundamentals, if
need be!
(xvi) And so on. And, it doesn’t have to be PhD, Master or Bachelor’s degrees. A
person without a degree can produce an idea that can have the greatest impact on
a society – for the better! We have seen living examples in other societies.
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=> All ordinary folks working together, with no person masquerading as a
“reserved opinion leader”. Everything else will just fall into place, eventually.
Ask yourself: If everybody were to choose to be this ‘high-profile’ person, who,

then, would perform the fundamental low-level tasks cited above?
(4) Citation 4: “The Lango Association of North America is free to hold its meetings
anywhere and everywhere at the discretion of its leadership, period.” That does not sound
like a solution. Though, it is fair to say that it was fuzzy enough to quell the
pandemonium that surrounded the venue selection process that was threatening to
swallow the Association at the time. The phrase “anywhere and everywhere” is very
vague. The same description applies to “… at the discretion of its leadership, period”.
The latter, in fact, sounds like we are trying to avoid confronting the daunting problem
(head-on). We should be reminded that postponing (solving) a problem is not a solution
to the problem. What discretion or wisdom would the leadership apply, if the members
would be left largely unsatisfied?
(5) Citation 5: This is similar to Citation 1. Every place has a history, and therefore using
“history” of a place as a deciding factor is a hard sell. The difference between Citation 1
and Citation 5 is that the latter was used simply to affirm a choice already made through
a voting process, while the former was used prior to the selection process.
=> One more thing about Citation 5: the use of the Wikipedia link. Use of Wikipedia had
earlier drawn the community into an awkward situation– that went unresolved. For one,
this was an old issue because I was already sick and tired of it as I used to engage in
similar debates at a place of work (R&D Center). My understanding is that everyone is
right, depending on the context. In the case of the LAONA episode, debaters refused to
take context into consideration causing the discussion to degenerate into an embarrassing
experience. People use Wikipedia a lot and for various purposes. The smartest machine
“IBM Watson” that beat the World’s human champion in the game of Jeopardy relies
heavily on Wikipedia (among others) as a source of its intelligence. On the other side,
fine-grained researchers and academicians almost loathe anything to do with Wikipedia-
preferring their peer-reviewed avenues for publishing their research findings. (And don’t
forget that the research scientists and engineers who created IBM Watson are in this
category. I had a chance to meet the IBM lead scientists face to face at a Conference two
years ago). Even within the publishing industry itself, there is an ongoing tension
catapulted by the emergence of “open access” journals, as an addition (or, to some, an
alternative) to the traditional peer reviewed journals. It is almost political, or rather-
business-driven. Every side seems to have a point – when you get to listen carefully.
My point is: LAONA should not be finding itself plunged into issues that do not move us
forward. If we do not have ready (conclusive) solutions to problems, there is absolutely
no need to take things personal. Rather, we should look at such a problem as a
development (learning) opportunity. And, there is a very important concept called
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Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Experts say EQ is just as important as IQ. A person with
high EQ is more socially aware, in addition to having other great personality traits. If we
can’t arrive at solution collectively, let’s make use of our EQs to avoid getting into
unnecessary conflicts.
10. 4 Proposed solution to the problem of venue selection: Fundamentals

Let’s start with the fundamentals.
Suppose there were only two members of LAONA, one located in the United States State of
Hawaii, and another in New York. (Figure 95)
Figure 95
The two members would probably come to a variant of the following agreements regarding the
venue for their LAONA General Meetings:
(i) “We agree to have meeting venues rotated. In 2013, we will have the Inaugural
meeting in Hawaii. In 2014, we will have the meeting venue in New York. In 2015, the
meeting will come back to Hawaii, and then in NY in 2016, and so on. The guest
coming from out of town takes care of his/her own travel and accommodation costs.”
or
(ii) “Since our Association is just starting out with no resources, and no money in
LAONA Account, our first meetings (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016) will operate as
follows:
- In 2013, the meeting will be held in Hawaii. The member in New York will have to
travel all the distance from New York to Hawaii. However, for fairness, the cost
of travel and hotel accommodation for the member coming from New York to
Hawaii would be split equally between the two members. If the cost of air travel
for the member travelling from New York to Hawaii were $1000, then the Hawaii
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host would make a contribution of $500. If the total cost of hotel accommodation
for the visitor from New York were $200, then the Hawaii host would make a
contribution of $100 towards the expenses incurred by the out-of-town guest. If
the costs (expenses) related to preparing the meeting venue were $100, then, the
Hawaii host and the guest from New York would split the cost, each contributing
$50 towards the venue preparation costs.
- The summary table would look like this (Table 1):
Table 1
Expense Amount to be Amount to be Total cost
contributed by the contributed by the host
guest from New York in Hawaii
Travel $500 $500 $1000
Accommodation $100 $100 $200
Venue preparation $50 $50 $100
TOTAL $650 $650 $1300
(The kind of cost sharing described in (ii) reminds me of the Dutch. In the Netherlands, if a man
takes a girl out for a date, the girl typically contributes equally towards the restaurant bills. The
last time I checked in Uganda, a man had to foot all the bills, and a girl’s portfolio on such an
occasion would be void of anything else, but a machine that would order anything she felt like
eating or drinking. Worrying about the costs would be far from her business).
- For agreement (ii) above, the two LAONA members would operate using the
same criterion until the Association gets off the ground, to a point where it is able
to finance or subsidize the annual convention travel costs through grants, and the
like. That’s why they initially agreed on cost sharing up to 2016, hoping that the
Association will have gained self-sustaining financial strength by that time.
- Agreement (i) would also work fine, assuming that the two persons were in
equally good shape to finance own costs.
10. 5 The complexity of the real problem

Section 10.5 above describes the simplest case, where we assumed that there were only two
members, and therefore computing the costs to be shared between the two members would be
no-brainer. In the real world (like that of LAONA) where there are a growing number of
members, the problem becomes hard to imagine- for the following reasons:
(i) For a case where there are many members distributed across the entire North America, where
do we start? Where do we hold our first Inaugural meeting? Decide through voting? OK. If a
decision has to be made through votes, then the state or region where the majority of the
members reside will most likely win. Sounds reasonable for 2013. How about 2014? The
majority will win again. The meeting probably goes back to the same region. The poor guy from
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Hawaii will have to pay all the hefty (travel and accommodation) costs again in 2014, to travel to
Pennsylvania to attend General Meeting – where the winners reside. Does it sound reasonable?
“No, 2014 will be based on rotation-“. What rotation? The first runner-up wins! Well, the first
runner-up- could turn out to be the very 2013 winners again because some members who were
resident in PA could have moved to another state just before the 2014 polls were conducted. Or,
the majority could disagree to agree with the “discretion”, insisting that the majority rule (or
“democracy”) “worked pretty well last year”– no need to change the rule (inconsistently).
Regardless of the discretion or method used to resolve the 2014 problem, the problem will come
up again in 2015, 2016, 2017, etc. There is little chance that the lone member from Hawaii will
ever win through the majority vote rule. Three years down the road, the once loyal member and
ardent supporter of LAONA from Hawaii begins to feel like he is being treated like a second-
class member.
Another member from Vancouver starts developing the same feeling as the Hawaiian
counterpart. Other members from Oregon, Alaska and Arctic Achipelago soon join the growing
list that feel they are being excluded by the majority group whom they now start referring to as a
clique. LAONA membership base dwindles to one or two neighboring (family) clusters. It
becomes meaningless. LAONA collapses.
(ii) Doesn’t sound so good, does it? Well, let’s use the idea (Dutch daters’ model) suggested in
Section 10.4 (ii). Yes! That’s the gist of this Section 10. If that’s all you wanted to say, why do
you go about beating around the bush – all along? (Read Section 10.2 “Why bother?” In fact,
read through everything again. It might help).
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The problem with model in Section 10.4 (ii) is that it is difficult to visualize the problem. Here is
a simple example (Figure 96), with A, B, C, D, E, F and G denoting cities where LAONA
members are situated:
Figure 96
Case 1: LAONA General Meeting held at location C Case 2: LAONA General Meeting held at location A
(Arrow means “road leads to C”) (Arrow means “road leads to A”)
Cost of LAONA General Meeting held at location C = Cost of LAONA General Meeting held at location C =
5+3+4+3+5+9 = 29 miles 3+5+3+8+9+5 = 41 miles
If the number of members at locations A, B, C, D, E, F If the number of members at locations A, B, C, D, E, F
and G were 3, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3 and 2, respectively, then the and G were 3, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3 and 2, respectively, then the
adjusted (weighted) cost = adjusted (weighted) cost = 0x3+3x2 + 5x1 + 3x4 + 11x2
5x3+3x2+0x1+4x4+3x2+5x3+9x2 + 11x3 + 5x2
= 76 miles = 88 miles
Number of LAONA members at C = 1 Number of LAONA members at A = 3
If the average gas price were at $4.0 per mile, the total If the average gas price were at $4.0 per mile, the total
travel cost to C would be $4x 76=$304.00 travel cost to A would be $4x88=$352.00
If the average rate of hotel accommodation at C were If the average rate of hotel accommodation at C were
$10.0 person, the adjusted weighted cost would be $9.0 person, the adjusted weighted cost would be
304+10*16 = $464 $352+9.0*14 = $478
* If anyone had a metric to quantify the appeal (history, * If anyone had a metric to quantify the appeal (history,
etc) of C (relative to A), then we would adjust the cost etc) of A (relative to C), then we would adjust the cost
accordingly. Assume J.F. Kennedy was born at location accordingly. Assume J.F. Kennedy was born at location
C, and Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace were location A. (I C, and Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace were location A. (I
wouldn’t know how to determine whether J.F Kennedy wouldn’t know how to determine whether J.F Kennedy
were greater than Abraham Lincoln, for example.) And were greater than Abraham Lincoln, for example.) And
while a politically-minded person could be thinking of while a politically-minded person could be thinking of
such names (from political revolutions), a cross-section such names (from political revolutions), a cross-section
of LAONA community could be thinking of A and C in of LAONA community could be thinking of A and C in
terms of birth place of Steve Jobs (as a technological terms of birth place of Steve Jobs (as a technological
revolutionary), Michael Jackson (King of Pop), etc. It revolutionary), Michael Jackson (King of Pop), etc. It
just becomes a mess – overly complex, rather. Anything just becomes a mess – overly complex, rather. Anything
along this direction is likely to become a hard sell. along this direction is likely to become a hard sell.
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10. 5. 1 Lessons learned
The example above shows that:
(i) the overall cost is what matters. The number of people at a given location might be
large, but the overall cost of holding a General Meeting at their location might be
larger as well. In the illustration above, LAONA would save $(478-464) = $14 by
holding a meeting at location C, instead of location A (even though there is only one
member at C, compared to 3 members at A). Superficially, one could (also) be led to
think that the accommodation cost of $9.0 at A would make it a more favorable
(cheaper) venue compared with hotel rates of $10 at C. Not necessarily.
(ii) Cost splitting, as discussed in Section 10.4 (ii) would ensure fairness. If the total
costs were split equally among the 17 members, then every member would make a
contribution of ($464/17)= $27.29 (for location C). In the absence of cost splitting,
the lone member who lives in the host city C would pay nothing (assuming no
preparation costs were incurred), and the rest of the members would pay an average
($464/16)= $29.00. If the venue were at location A, - with no cost splitting, the
majority (3 members at location A) would pay nothing (0.00$) while the members
coming from E and F would, each, have to pay 4*11 + 10 = $54. Lango kobo ni mano
punu jo! Fair complaint, not so? In the real life, the figure “$54” could be a few
thousands of dollars (taking into consideration accommodation costs, etc) if one
member had to travel the 4800 miles from Honolulu (Hawaii) to
Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), and the cost would still be $0.00 for the majority
members who reside in and around Philadelphia.
Now it makes sense why everyone wanted to be a host, right? It is not necessarily
politics. It is economics, I guess. What do you think?
The solution is: even if you are chosen to be a host for a General Meeting, you have
to pay members (through cost splitting) to come to your city.
Question: how much would I have to contribute if members were to converge at my

location?
Answer: We have to do the arithmetic. That’s where our software will come in
handy!
And our example above considered only locations A and C. We have to compute the
costs associated with all the locations, before we can know which location would be
the most cost-effective.
(iii) It is a win-win situation. Next year, the majority will also benefit from contributions
made by the minority members when they (majority) travel to another location.
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10. 5. 1 Fairness continued: LAONA Membership fees
Another related issue is the membership rate. Currently, the individual membership fee is $50.0.
The family membership rate is $60.0. This is not fair. First off, families usually have many
members, meaning that – going by the majority rule, members who are part of families are likely
to win the majority-based votes for hosting General Meetings (See Section 10.5). What this
means is that an adult member on a family rate pays less than half of the amount an individual
would pay in membership fee. Yet chances are that they may contribute almost nothing towards
the General Meeting costs if they end up becoming the hosts.
The suggestion is that going forward, the family rate package be scrapped. All adult members
will have to pay the $50. If that amount is too high, it could be reduced. Members could be
offered the option of making the payments in installments.
Note: Remember that these are not blames being heaped on anyone. These are just suggestions
for improvements, going forward. We could not have started if we had to optimize everyone.
10. 6 Software implementation of the venue selection solution

Realize the proposed solution introduced in Section 10.7 would require sets of long tedious
calculations. Manual calculations would be prohibitively daunting- if not impossible.
Fortunately, we now have the ideas (algorithms) implemented in our software application! Lots
of ideas and intricacies, but we will not discuss the details here. Enhancements and tests are
ongoing. Because of the complexity of the problem (in terms of computational overheads),
access to this utility will be rate-limited. A user may access the tool only once a day. A user can
access the utility by going to the ‘Utility Tab’ (Figure 97).
Figure 97
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Pay attention to this illustration, taken from our currently partially working software.
In this illustration (Figure 98), for simplicity, we are considering only two places: New York and
Massachusetts.
1. The software automatically calculates and displays the distance from New York to
Massachusetts (in miles). This is the driving distance, just like the GPS operates. Options are
available to display bicycling distance and walking distance, for the instances where the routes
exist. (Of course, there would be no walking, bicycling or driving routes from Hawaii to the
mainland). The distances are technically called the geodesic distances. Computing the distance
takes into consideration of fact that the earth planet is spherical in shape, and also that some
places along a selected route could be hills and valleys (tuur and luung, in Leb Lango) – using
digital elevation models. Therefore, the resulting distance values are not often equivalent to the
standard straight (Euclidean) distance between the points in space.
2. The travel/driving time (in hours) is also displayed. One could also modify our model for
venue selection to use travel time as the criteria for creating a triage (based on travel times)
instead of the travel distance. The differences should turn out to be about the same.
Figure 98
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Figure 99
Other details include walking distance, cycling distance, etc. (Figure 99)
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Other details are shown in Figure 100.
Figure 100
Figure 101 illustrates an important point that a reader should take note of. It is important for
members to enter their exact location (city) in the system if the distance values are to be
computed to a higher degree of accuracy. In Figure 101, the user/member simply entered New
York as the location. In this case, the system automatically picks some point (usually a well
known spot) within the region and assumes it is the origin. This would make a big difference, to
say the least. In this particular example, the system tells the user how much distance he has to
travel from New York to New York – if the meeting venue were New York itself.
Figure 101
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In the example illustrated in Figure 102, the system tells the user how much distance he has to
travel from New York to Massachusetts – if the meeting venue were in Massachusetts. Again,
there is need to specify which city in Massachusetts, lest the system chooses its favorite spot in
Massachusetts and uses it as the destination point. That could make a big difference.
Figure 102
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The system is capable of handling all the N locations where LAONA members are located.
Things will become clearer when the system is launched. This illustration was intended only to
introduce the idea. A reader can ignore things that are not clear at this point. Alternatively, ask
questions and the answers will be provided.
Figure 103
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Figure 104: Further impressions
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10. 7 Still not clear enough?
OK, suppose that we did the calculations illustrated in Figure 96 for all the locations A, B, C, D,
E, F and G. Suppose Table 2 below captured the summary of the calculations, sorted in the
increasing order of grand total costs.
Location Total cost ($) of holding Average cost per person

General Meeting at a (if cost splitting were
specified location employed)
F 432 432/17
B 453 453/17
C 464 464/17
A 478 478/17
E 550 550/17
D 600 600/17
G 710 710/17
Then, based on the table above,
(1) LAONA could choose to hold its first (Inaugural Meeting) at location A, since the choice
minimizes the costs. This could make perfect sense “in 2013” since LAONA has no
money in its account, anyway, etc.
(2) In 2014, LAONA could choose to rotate (for fairness) to the second “most affordable”
location. That location would be B. It must be noted that these (cost) values might change
from year to year due to the dynamics taking place in membership enrollment and
changes in locations of members. This is not a problem, because our software yields the
most up-to-date “table” at any time. New locations will be added because new members
from hitherto ‘unknown’ locations get to join the Association. On the other hand, some
locations get ‘deleted’ from the table as members move (to live) at other locations.
(3) In 2015, all roads would lead to location C. And so on.
(4) If the members adopted cost sharing, everyone would expend equally every year –
regardless of the location.
Still not clear? Do not worry! The ‘computer’ will do it for us!
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11 Back Home
The home page is what the user sees when he/she logs into the system. So far, we have not yet
talked much about the home page. Besides having the member list as a side panel, the home
page contains a selection of dynamic and important analytical and statistical summary obtained
from the ever-changing user interactions.
11. 1 Navigating back to Home Screen: The Symbolic Head of Amuka

To display “Home Screen” at any time, simply click on the tab “Membership (Home)”.
Alternatively, click on the big logo (head of Rhino). Professor Omara Alwala, the designer of
the LAONA logo, who doubles as the current Facilitator of LAONA writes of his artifact:
".... The Rhino (Amuka) is our Lango mascot back home in Uganda. ... The close-up only of the
head region of the animal highlights the very features that make Amuka unique, fierce and, at the
same time, majestic and one of the most marveled at creatures on earth”.
It is therefore no accident that a consideration was made by the software designer to make
Amuka a prominent and non-passive feature of the application. Amuka will probably be one of
the most “greeted” (clicked) components of this application – and it does deserve that status!
Again, to go back to home screen at any time, simply click on the Amuka!
11. 2 News, Announcements and Active Polls

The left column of the screen will list current announcements, news and active polls (Figure 54).
An announcement or news posted by a member may require approval before the item is listed on
the home page. Details will be provided the next report. In this illustration, “Survey 16” is the
only item listed on the left column as an active survey.
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Figure 105
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11. 3 Recent updates and trending stories
The column to the right is somewhat interesting (Figure 55). Take a look at it carefully!
Figure 106
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11. 3. 1 Most liked ideas
Did you take a look at Figure 106? Let’s go under the hood and see how these values are
computed. An understanding of the underlying idea might help a reader appreciate more the
functionality provided by this feature. (Referring to Figure 106), if a user clicks on the link/label
for the “I am volunteering to cook malakwang…” which is listed as the most liked idea,
he/she will be able to view the details (Figure 107).
First off, notice that these details are retrieved from the regular Application’s built-in message
inbox. (See “Communication”, Section 5). However, the message comes with additional
attributes that stand out noticeably. For example, the green thumbs up and the congratulatory
message that displays right on top of the message subject line. These additional features appear if
the system (automatically) determines that the message in question is “trending” among the top
most liked ideas at the time a user views the message. [At some point we will discard the word
“trending”. In fact, a group of people in some American University voted to knock it out of the
English Dictionary because it is not only overused, but it is also misused]. This feature is not
permanent to any message in the inbox, because another message (or set of ideas) may beat the
record just in a matter of seconds. What are we talking about? Well, to put it another way, each
time a user clicks on the fierce Amuka head (that takes a user “Home”), a set of fairly
sophisticated computations is triggered to determine an up-to-date votes on all the messages in
the archive. The final result is that the top “most liked” (thumbs up), “most unpopular” (thumbs
down) and “most out-of-touch” (irrelevant) of all times is displayed to the user on the homepage!
I guess this is fun, but not for everyone!
In a nutshell, the quality of an idea (“original message” in the context of Section 5) is measured
by the total number of “like”, “dislike” and “irrelevant” votes over all the responses appended to
that message.
Homework:
It is left to the reader to look through figures 56 through 64 over the next several pages to figure
out how “Sarah” garnered “44 likes in total” – making her idea the most liked.
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This is yet another example of a heuristically motivated idea, originating from this author for this
particular application. The idea is applied in a similar manner to the other categories of trending
information.
Figure 107
Don’t understand why this is here? Read Section 9.2.1
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Figure 108
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Figure 109
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Figure 110
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Figure 111
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Figure 112
Page 124
Figure 113
Page 125
Figure 114
Figure 115
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12 Getting ready for launch
12. 1 Where it will NOT work

The application will NOT work on Windows Internet Explorer.
12.2 What to do
If you still don’t have it yet, go ahead and install at least one of the following Web browsers-
available for free!
1. Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ )
2. Google Chrome (https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ )
3. Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/ )
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Look and feel on Safari web browser
Figure 116
Look and feel on Firefox web browser
Figure 117
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Appendices
Anticipated FAQs
1. So, when will the application be released?
The short answer is: as soon as it is ready. This is the last update. Enhancements are ongoing. It
may take a while. Once in a while, brief updates will be sent via emails to keep members of
LAONA informed of the progress.
2. What kind of enhancements needs to be made?
Enhancements are made to heighten so-called quality attributes: performance (in terms of
response time), usability (user-friendliness, availability, etc), maintainability, scalability, and so
on. These are very important considerations.
3. So what do you want us to do with this document?
Read through the document, and understand it. Send feedback. And, importantly, do the
homework that has been assigned to you!
Document Change History

This is revision 2. See Page 2 for summary.
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Disclaimer, Terms and Conditions
1. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in
any way represent the views of the LAONA. At this point, it should be noted that LAONA has
not approved, endorsed, embraced or authorized adoption of the ideas or solutions proposed here
for its operations. The ideas are expressed to elicit member feedback for the sole purpose of
developing a software solution tailored for the Association needs. Some ideas are expressed in
the form of suggestions for improvement of LAONA. The final solution would be provided free
of charge to LAONA as a contribution by this author, who happens to be a member of the
Association.
2. With the exception of the logo and related trademarks (including the name ‘LAONA’ that
belong to LAONA), other intellectual property resulting from this development is the property of
the author and his private Company and cannot be used prior written permission of the author.
Although the author is part of LAONA, any input by LAONA members to this project is
regarded as merely a participation in requirements elicitation exercise (in Software Engineering
context), and NOT a contribution towards the potential Intellectual Property, which, in the event
that it materializes, would be retained by the document author. For this purpose, the document
author is Mr. Caesar Ogole.
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2. Section 5: -Instant messaging has been introduced in Section 5.10

5.1.1 Informal one-on-one online chats

5.1.3 LAONA WALL

5.2 Storytelling and talent discovery

3. Section 7: - Introducing Mobility

7.1 Posting SMS/text on LAONA Wall from a mobile phone

7.4 LAONA Teleconference

8.3 Viewing past, ongoing and newly created projects

5. Section 9: Leadership hierarchy and organizational chart

10.4 Proposed Solution to the Problem of Venue Selection: Fundamentals

10.5 The Complexity of the Real Problem

10.5.1 Lessons learned

10.5.2 Fairness Continued: LAONA Membership fees

7. Section 12: Getting ready for launch

Based on the needs of the Association, this project aims to:

Some enhancements may be made before the actual release is made.

2. 1 Accessing the Application

2. 2 The Login Page

2. 3 New Member Registration Page

3. 1 Member Profile Tab

3. 6 Other Utilities Tabs

4. 1 Viewing member profiles

For a record, profile information include:

4) Telephone number, for example, +1 423 000 000

5) Email address*, for example, atinlango@laona.com

7) Lango village of origin, for example, Olelpek

8) Lango District of Origin, for example, Lira

9) Lango Clan, for example, Ogora imato mot

11) Lango Favorite quote(s), for example, otino logu momot

1. *Required for registration.

 Click on (“Update my profile”), shown underlined in Figure 10 to make changes to

Figure 14 (b): Additional profile information

Click “Send” and at least two main things will happen:

1. The message is sent to (recipient) members’ personal email inboxes

5. 2 Reading emails from personal email inbox

5. 6 Responding to emails from within the application

5. 8 One member, one vote rule

 The “thumbs down” and “irrelevant” buttons operate in a similar manner.

5. 9 Other response features

5. 9. 1 Responding to a particular email in the thread

5. 9. 2 Translating a message from Leb Lango to English and vice-versa

Our software application provides a simple feature to encourage voluntary translation of

5. 11 Informal One-on-One Conversation

5. 12 A typical LAONA Collaboration: Brainstorming development ideas in real-time

6. 1 Creating and dispatching surveys

1. Sharing Our Dreams

With the following options:

A. Treasurer, Secretary General and Secretary

B. Treasurer, Secretary General and General Counsel*

C. Treasurer, General Counsel* and Secretary

And a foot-note such as:

*General Counsel will be nominated (or elected) soon.

Back to our example of choosing the inaugural theme:

i. Enter the title and

(i) Multiple choice

(ii) Text input

1. Sharing Our Dreams

Our goal is to create the next option in our list:

1. Sharing Our Dreams

(i) Add another question, or

(ii) Preview the survey and submit the question.