This may be my last post for a bit. I have a lot of things to do before I leave this weekend, and while it has been helpful documenting my trip in these blog posts, it is also takes a lot of time, so I'll take a pause from blogging and use the time to accomplish other tasks.

Yesterday Daniel, Freena, and I made a trip downtown, where I got to meet Daniel's grandmother, Beatriz, and uncle Augustus, with whom Daniel lived from the age of 12.

Now whenever Daniel tells me he's going to visit his grandmother, I'll be able to picture just where he is going.

After the visit we went to the bank, visited a few stores where both new and used computers are sold so we could learn about prices (and where I met Freena's sister and brother), and we stopped by a pharmacy and a grocery store.

Our last stop before heading back to the Jetro office was the Oporto Liberia restaurant next to the JFK Medical Center, where we had lunch and made arrangements for our end of sprint party this coming Friday.

Week 2 Sprint Planning Meeting

When we returned to the Jetro office, it was time for our Week 2 Sprint Planning Meeting. Jetro used this meeting to organize the three circles they will use to move forward with their business launch:

1. Django Circle: Thomas, Gabriel, and Jallah will focus on Django web application development. Thomas demonstrated this week that he is ready for business, and I watched him working with Jallah and Gabriel over the past two weeks, and feel confident they will soon have a team of three ready to take on new projects.
2. Front-end Circle: Derek, Janet, and Freena will focus on learning front-end web skills (HTML and CSS), and developing a plan to study for aquiring the skills they will need. While we have long been aware of the need, it wasn't until Jetro recruited Derek to join the co-op, bringing with him graphic design skills, that we made the first concrete moves toward addressing this crucial hole in our skill set. The circle could potentially provide these skills to both Jetro and NOVA Web, since the latter co-op doesn't have them either. I did some web searching before making this post and came up with the following list of things they need to learn, which I've included in the list that followings.
3. Business and Marketing Circle: Daniel, Shallon, and Jeff will work toward acquiring the skills they need to operate the co-op. This is a heavy lift, with a lot of things to learn! I prompted DeepSeek to ask about the skills we need to learn, and it responded with this session.

Web Design Skills

• Visual Hierarchy & Layout: Arranging elements so the user’s eye naturally flows to the most important actions first.
• Color Theory: Creating accessible, brand-aligned palettes (including dark/light modes) and understanding psychological color impacts.
• Typography: Pairing web-safe or custom fonts, setting responsive type scales, and ensuring readability across devices.
• Iconography & Illustration: Creating custom SVG icons, spot illustrations, and micro-interactions that match the app's tone.
• Branding & Design Systems: Extending the cooperative’s brand guidelines into a cohesive, reusable UI language.