Wednesday 15 October 2008

www.samaaj.com.au - a platform for students !!


One night while half asleep, I had a dream and in my dreams I saw a website. WoW!! People have such cool dreams and I just saw a website. But in my dream, the website was not just a website, it was a cool thing, a platform for students to get together and help each other, a helpline for students. It was something that I had to act upon.

Having been an International student myself, I understood the problems that some students faced and this was the main motivation behind www.samaaj.com.au. I got up from my sleep and shot of an email to a few friends who I hoped would share my enthusiasm of giving up their free time and instead spend time building a web-site. Well, my faith wasn't misplaced. My pals responded and we slogged through the weeks and months. Yes, there were periods of inactivity and procrastination but finally on the 13th of October, 2008 we made a BETA version of our website LIVE and available to the general public. 

While the initial version was BETA and I expected several refinements and fixes over the coming months but overall, it was a fine effort and when I look back at the year that we spent in refining and developing the application, I am happy that we acted on our impulse. Even though at times it appeared as if we were hardly moving, we persisted and today that dream is a reality. The web-app has been built in what I know best - Java. Over the next few years, we refined our user interface, added several bug fixes and changed our hosting from a home run server to Amazon Web Services's cloud infrastructure and released a brand new look of the Student Helpline version 2.1.1 in September 2012.


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