[Planner Dev] Planner Development Assistance

[Mark Durrenberger <m durrenberger comcast net>]

> Hi All,

I'm new to this list. I just learned about Planner and am quite 
curious.  Let me tell you why.  For approximately 8 years now I've been 
consulting and training in project management and I run across a lot of 
unhappy MSproject users. So I undertook an effort to "bend" MS Project to 
do what I think it should do. I came up the VB (not VBA) learning curve and 
have written an add-in for Project that adds functionality and circumvents 
built in functionality. I give this add-in to my customers (version 3 will 
be released shortly).

When I learned about planner, I thought "finally, a tool that's not MS 
Project and in the public domain" -

I'd like to participate in the development of planner, however, I'm not a 
C++ programmer (VB has taught me a bit about OO programming but I still 
struggle with the ideas - unfortunately most of my programming was done 
in  FORTRAN (66 and 77) on a CDC mainframe or a VAX). I've done a tiny bit 
of C programming and expect over time to come up that learning curve...

Meanwhile, I'd like to help on the roadmap for Planner - I can speak from 
years of consulting and training in PM and relay lots of user experience 
plus I have a ready base of potential users (a mailing list of over 2000 
former students).

So, if you'll have me, I'd love to contribute.

Of course, my biggest fear is that Planner become the "free" version of MS 
Project. I don't feel that MSP is a good model for PM Software (an 
apparently it is a cash cow for MS - Lots of copies sold, but not lots of 
users thus low support costs)

To learn more about my company go to www.oakinc.com (I'm not doing this for 
advertising but for credibility).

Thanks
Mark Durrenberger

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

                                                 Eric Hoffer