Now that Stellarcon 30 (2-17~2-19) is over, I can announce my intentions towards the convention management system, ConTrak Systems.  Everything here is confirmed and will occur within this year.

ConTrak Systems v2  - An entirely new version of ConTrak will be released once work is complete.  A new version has been chosen for two reasons: I know and can do much more now than I could two years ago and I have chosen to organize the internal system structure and do things in a completely different way.  For now, I cannot say whether I will use .Net v1.1 or .Net v2, but I can confirm that I will make heavy use of JavaScript and AJAX (or "client callbacks") no matter which version of .Net is chosen.

Wording Changes  - The current version of ConTrak refers to "modules" whereas the new version will term these as "departments".  Accompanying each department will be a list of "actions".  Permissions will change as well.

Confirmed Departments  - At the very least, the new version of ConTrak will include departments for registration, art show, charity auction, and the gaming room.  The complete (hopeful) list of departments can be seen in the previously posted DevLog entries for ConTrak (the Rich Drop Down Menu).

New Department: Gaming Room  - Due to the Stellarcon gaming director retiring, hence taking his "War Horn" gamer registration system with him, ConTrak is forced to take on this role sooner than we would have liked.  This new department will be designed not only to allow the gaming director to create gaming slots and register attendees for slots, but allow Game Masters (GMs) to log in to create their own slots and attendees to pre-register for the games--both using a separate login process so user accounts do not have to be added by any convention personnel.  ConTrak will also generate the gaming schedule on demand, attempting to keep GMs running concurrent games at one table while also giving as many GMs as possible their requested table shape.  We have high hopes for the gaming registration system, but development for this and much of the registration department must be completed no later than October 2006.

Development Intent  - Development is intended to be, compared to what we are known for doing, very slow.  More emphasis than ever will be placed on the user interface and nothing will be done until the UI design is complete for either an action or most of a department (and no coding will be done until 100% of the database design work is complete).

Marketing Intent  - One convention did, in fact, contact me concerning using ConTrak Systems.  While I do not feel confident allowing others to use the current version of ConTrak, I am interested in conventions using this next version.  As always for PhoenixPo.com, I will not advertise ConTrak, nor will I advertise in ConTrak as I seriously do not condone the excessive misuse of advertising on today's web sites.  I have my eyes on two other conventions; if they ask to use the system, I intend to allow them free usage for an as of yet undecided length of time.  For other conventions, I will charge a yearly rate (as most conventions are a year long) based on the departments to which the convention subscribes.  Sales has never been my strong point because, after developing a large system, I just don't care; I want to see it used and appreciated far more than I want to benefit by it--the same thinking that got me into doing the Haunted Attraction Pictures.

Partnership/Employment Intent  - As mentioned above, I do not expect to gain monetarily by this.  Seeing that ConTrak has been entirely altruistic up to this point and will most likely continue to be so for the next two years, if not indefinitely, I do not believe I can find any such assistance without producing a financial loss on the project.  I will continue to think things over, but I will most likely go solo on this project because I have always done things alone and still cannot see ConTrak, PhoenixPo.com, or the Haunted Attraction Pictures as a business.

DevLog Update Intent  - I plan to update the Development Log every so often to show my progress.  Don't count on reading too much here until April 2006.