ruggio wrote:I am brand new to this forum.
This past year I decided to fill the void in our area to provide the 2010 La Verne Stake Directory. The past two printers had gone out of business and we will be providing Stake Directories to our members for at least the next 5 years.
I am semi-retired but very experienced in the electronic Pre-Press industry so I had the experience and the contacts to print the directory.
What surprised me was the amount of man-hours that was spent providing the data needed.
After my bid to the Stake was accepted I decided to contact other Stakes in my area to see how many of them had the same problem of finding a printer at a reasonable cost. I ended up doing 6 Stake Directories in my area. Working as a print broker I did make money on these directories both as a broker and in the Pre-Press area that is my area of expertise.
What surprised me was the amount of man-hours that each Stake spent providing me with the data files. The lowest was 20 hours by a very experienced software person. The most was 70 hours.
My background is software design going back for 42 years. As I talked to each member I decided that what they needed was a software program that could generate the data in a format that a printer understood.
My goal is to develop a C# program that will reduce the time spent to less than three hours.
My program will be developed in three stages. Stage 1 will reformat a CSV data file into a CSV data file with telephone, last name husband & wife, address, and a two digit zip code. Stage 2 will make the program interactive where the user can control, correct, and format the data into actual pages. Stage 3 will attack the calendar problem.
Those of you who are interested can contact me at stan_ruggio@yahoo.com.
Just one thought, although what you are suggesting sounds interesting, you may want to wait for the next version of the LUWS (local unit web site) to come out. It will include new software for both a calendar and directory and may have an influence on what direction you go.
You can review what's been done so far by going to
http://beta.lds.org and signing in with your LDS account (top right corner of the page).