I don't like making "a big deal of myself" or patting myself on the back, but I have to say, I'm very proud of my little team's accomplishments with this project for our Idaho State 4-H youth conference. Sure; not everything worked perfectly. Not everything was exactly what we wanted. But that's just how some of these things go, and overall, it was a phenominal success.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, let me point you at some of the other blogposts I've written on the subject...

• React.js, Python, Pictures, and 4-H!
• Using Python to Provide Simple Photo Connections for Youth
• Automagic Test Websites
• Error Pages for Education

Our Wins

Yeah! We did have some big wins this year. First and foremost was that we had a great conference. The youth all really seemed to enjoy themselves, and minor challenges and hiccups aside, all things were good.

You know, we even had more delegates than usual! Idaho invited Washington State to bring a small delegation of youth who are going to be involved in planning their own STAC-equivalent in Washington, next year. Pretty cool, huh?

Whats more, we had a successful first run of our Photo Uploader Site. Hmm... I think we still need a better name, don't we? Thoughts, anyone? Leave them in the comments. The site didn't crash, it didn't buckle, it didn't lose anything (that I didn't accidentally delete). And it didn't go haywire in some other way.

In total, we had more than 1200 photos uploaded to albums.idaho4h.com. Yeah, that's right. More than 1200 in less than 4 days. Whoop, whoop! Now, in reality, there's nothing terribly impressive about this. That's not really that many pictures in today's world, but for an app built on weekends by two people who were both learning all the way through, it's a big win!

Ok. Let me toot my own horn, one more time.

Our biggest win, is that we built this thing. I worked with a youth member who's involved (and super-clever, might I add) in some of these state events, and together we created this tool to help all of the adults, and all of his peers to engage in a pleasant and simpler way. If you ask me, THAT is the biggest win. We've definatively proven that the youth are more than capable of building their own infrastructure with guidance; and, after all, that's what 4-H is all about. The whole ethos really is "learn by doing."

Where's the Proof?

Oh! You want to see the uploader? The album-site? The photos? OK!

You can go browse all of the source code that our team (one of the Steering Committee youth members and myself) created, or you can go look at the finished product (the uploader), and even take a look at the album site. The album site has a single public album where all of the photos have been moved after they've been filtered and cleaned.

Ah! But before you ask; yes, that filtering and cleaning is a manual process. Someone has to go through all of them and look for anything that shouldn't be made public before the photos become viewable. And that sorta takes us into the next topic...

Our Losses

As much as I would LOVE to say that we had zero issues this year with our new tool, that just isn't the truth. We had some great failures, too. I mean, after all, just look at that guy on the right. Would you trust him to make something that didn't have at least one or two hiccups? Me neither.

So here are all the little things that went wrong...

1) Not all Districts Were Accounted For

Ok. Admittedly, this isn't exactly a failure, but I wanted to call it out, anyway, since there was some work to be done here, and it emphasized a point of contention in our system. You see, we've got a hard-coded mechanism for managing district validation for the district selection. That selection is this little section here...

In the code snippet below, you can see that there's a hard-coded number of options that are validated against. This isn't the only place though, the React.js frontend also has these values hard-coded. SO... We'll need to determine a way to make those selections more discrete, and customizable. Hmm...

def validate_district(district_name: str) -> ValidatedDistrict:
    """
    District Validation Function

    This function validates a string providing the name of the district which
    photos should be uploaded in association with. If the name is valid, it will
    return `True` and the sanitized name, should the name NOT be valid, `False`
    will be returned with an empty string.
    """
    count = 0
    district = ""
    if district_name.lower().find("eastern") != -1:
        district = "Eastern District"
        count += 1
    if district_name.lower().find("northern") != -1:
        district = "Northern District"
        count += 1
    if district_name.lower().find("central") != -1:
        district = "Central District"
        count += 1
    if district_name.lower().find("southern") != -1:
        district = "Southern District"
        count += 1
    if district_name.lower().find("washington") != -1:
        district = "Washington State"
        count += 1
    if count == 0:
        return(False, "This isn't a district!")
    elif count > 1:
        return(False, "This is a weirdly named district!")
    else:
        return True, district

Ultimately, this came up last minute (Sunday night before the delegation arrived) when we were discussing the Washington-State delegation's participation in the district competitions. Since they would be participating, we'd need them added to the list. Thankfully, due to our automated build system (thank goodness I spent the time to get that thing working), I was able to make the code changes, verify that my changes had some bugs, fix the bugs, and deploy - all within the time of about a half-an-hour.

So yeah, I'll call it a loss, but there was a hidden win, too!

2) Limited Number of Photos in an Upload Group

We've all heard that joke about assumptions, right?

You know, the one that says something about making an a$$ out of you and me? That one... Well, is it not the case that in engineering, we have to make a LOT of assumptions? Oh yeah. We do.

Well, we made an assumption about how many pictures people would want to upload at any given time. Guess we got those numbers a little wrong. We quickly learned that people wanted to upload a lot more than 10 pictures at any given time. Dang. Good thing GitLab has bug-tracking! So I went ahead and logged it already: https://gitlab.stanleysolutionsnw.com/idaho4h/4HPhotoUploader/-/issues/48 -- Love GitLab.

3) Limited Download Access

Unfortunately, another thing that we learned the hard way this year was that downloading an entire album as a zipped file isn't as easy when you're not the web-admin (coughs that's me). The teen officers (who are in charge of putting together a slide-show with all of these pictures), had one heck of a time trying to interact with the Lychee albums app to get the pictures that they need. Now, admittedly, this is partly a combination of lack of teaching from me, and partly general technical challenges, but in total, this application is supposed to make things easier for these youth, lowering the barrier to entry and making the process simpler, so they have more time to enjoy the conference.

There are learning points to take away from it, as a whole. There's the sentiment of:

There's no better time to learn something than the present.

Still, if it's easier, overall, it could give the teen officers a greater opportunity to enjoy their conference. So we'll need to figure out a better way to make those images available for download in a zip.

4) Manually Screening Pictures

You know me... I hate doing something that I think the computer can. That's why I consider myself an "automation engineer," I automate things; that's what I do.

So when we still have to manually screen pictures and make sure that they're appropriate, that makes a small part of me cry inside. There HAS to be a better way. I still think there is, but I don't know what it is yet.

I think I'd like to explore what those ever-present buzz-word technoligies might be able to provide. You know the ones; AI and ML. What can a little computer-learning bring to the table? Can it identify photos that would be considered explicit, or inappropriate? We're 4-H, so we shouldn't be seeing those, anyway. But, we're working with youth. So there's always the possibility. Right? So we should have some screening mechanism in place. Even if it's for nothing else than to remove photos that just aren't flattering.

Closing Thoughts and Special Thanks

Administrative note: We're diverging from the technical stuff, here, so if that's what you came for, you're free to take off at this point! However, if you like the 4-H memories, stick around and read on!

I truly love participating in this event. It excites me each year to watch these young people grow and find themselves, and become true leaders. They're going places, and I love seeing that. I'm so happy to work alongside some really cool people who make the event possible.

This isn't everyone, but it's a solid group! From left-to-right, Tara, Teresa, (yours truly), SheilAnne, and Kandee. Not pictured are Carrie and Mike who help to "round out" the remaining adults on the STAC Steering Committe. They're all a great group of folks to work with, and spend time with. I couldn't be happier to collaborate with them. Of course, I'd be remiss to ignore the fact that there's plenty of youth wha also make up the team. They all make it so much fun to work on.

Dr. Lindstrom

I'm a bit of a sap, so I want to end on this sappy note. Think of that what you will.

It's hard to believe that nine years ago was my first time attending this conference as a youth, myself. That year was a wild and wonderful ride; I learned so much. That was also Dr. Jim Lindstrom's first year as the Idaho State 4-H Director.

I don't want to spend too much time pounding on this point, but I want to leave a lasting "Thank You," right here. There's a lot that has gone on behind the scenes in the state. I'm glad to have been able to have seen some of these trials and tribulations, so that I might understand a small part of the process. It takes an army, not just a villiage, to keep a state 4-H program strong, and ours is. We have wonderful volunteers, leaders, parents youth, educators, and 4-H professionals. Many times, there are folks who wear several of those hats all at the same time.

Dr. Lindstrom has been behind this development for that entire time. He's worked diligently to keep the pipelines flowing and keep all of those folks engaged. I still remember sitting with Dr. Lindstrom at our formal banquet the first year at STAC and talking to him about what projects I was taking that year, and what I enjoyed about 4-H in the state. This is Dr. Lindstrom's last year, and it's been wonderful to reflect on all of the great things that the state has accomplished over these years, and I'm so thankful for Jim's leadership, care, and persistence. He's been a solid guide, and a true leader. The sort of person we all hope to "grow up to be."

Thank you, Dr. Lindstrom! May Idaho 4-H continue to reap the benefits of all the greatness you've sewn, and may you be able to look back on it with fond memories of all the youth who've seen tremendous growth.

Last thing...

Keep Making the Best Better.

~Joe