Over the past couple days I’ve been working on what I’m now calling “west warner” instead of finishing this site (go figure.) This is in part due to some technical difficulties I’ve been having getting movable type to generate dynamic RSS feeds, and in part due to the fact that new things are way more fun to work on than things that are “just about done.”

The project was born when I became the secretary for our condo association. I decided right away that I would get us a website and create an application to keep track of all condo matters. Over the last couple of days I was able to get something up and running, thanks to the greatness that is Django. I don’t have a lot to show publicly right now (the people in our building won’t be seeing it till Wednesday or Thursday while I work out some bugs) but I thought I would at least talk a bit about the site.

The idea was to create an online application to keep meeting minutes, attachments (photos and whatnot,) announcements, building contacts (contractors etc,) and a building calendar all in one place. Everything is connected and anyone in the building can view, search, and edit where applicable. It came together really quickly, and I’m starting to think it could be so much more—Suffice it to say, I’m proud of it..

So I’ve decided that the next step is to clean up the code and post it as open source so anyone can use or work on it. I don’t think this is something I could ever realistically monetize based on the sensitive information being stored—plus I think open source could be so much more fun. This will be quite an experiment for me, as I’ve never worked on an open source project before, let alone start one. Over time I would like to turn west warner into something more versatile than a condo minute keeper, I’ll keep you updated as to where its heading.

The projects lives at http://www.westwarner.com head on over and check out Christy’s kick-ass illustration of our building (as thats all there is to see today, the project just got the keys and hasn’t unpacked yet.)