But Ahn does not lose hope in continuingly fueling the website. “After my graduation from university, I am not sure whether there will be a person who can replace my work for Timetabl. I still have hope though, perhaps I can continue managing the website or a good mate will be luckily found,” Ahn said.

 

  Several weeks before the course registration period, students sweat over contemplating which classes to fill in their as of yet vacant schedules for the next semester. Scribbling on big, wide paper with several rectangular blocks the words and numbers of different classes seems to be toilsome. To solve all these burdens of planning for school schedules, Ahn Keon (Yonsei University , 4) established a website Timetabl (http://www.timetabl.com)that simplified the process with just a few click of a button.

  Being a computer science major, Ahn worked in a club named Yonsei Information Specialists that consists of students with computer specialties. When Ahn started to run the club’s website, he boldly decided to undergo several trials and errors in transforming functions of the website. He first made a table that looks like a scheduler in which students can write down their school schedule, and tell others about it. Ahn then added a post-it that floats around the site so that the memo can be seen regardless of which page one is on.

   The first trial was supplemented with links to the course schedules of universities and was opened online as a free service. A new function named noliteo (playground in Korean), where students can write down to any kind of memos they want to note on the webpage, was derived out from the second trial.

  For the fall semester of 2007, the Timetabl was temporarily combined with Rukie, which is another website that provides an Internet scheduling system for 25 universities in . “As far as I can say, the vision of the combined website was different between Rukie and Timetabl. So I decided to go independent without the help of Rukie.”

   Ahn focuses on the time schedules for the three universities in the Shinchon area – Yonsei, Ewha and Sogang. As the main page of Timetabl states, Ahn does not have any intention to “cheat on others or to conquer the timetables of all universities in .” Ahn stated that he humbly opened the website for his own school schedule and opened it to others who might be in the same agony.

 One of the most interesting aspects of this website is the fact that the language used is friendly and intimate rather than stiff and stern. “I thought that if I started to break the ice by using colloquial and friendly talks although at first people might feel awkward, they would drop by again because of its ease,” said Ahn. “It is just like trying to make a friend with a person who you see for the first time,” Ahn added.

 Although he maintains the website with such bright characteristics, Ahn is not always free from the anxiety he gets from managing the website. He pointed out two difficult circumstances that he has on running Timetabl: frequent management of the website and a financial burden. “Since I work for a company nowadays, I cannot instantly solve requests from users. Further, although at the current moment the management fee is not that large, since I have to fill up the fees by my own money I cannot easily upgrade the functions of the website,” Ahn said. “So I am a little worried when a lot of students overwhelmingly drop by the site during the period of course registration,” Ahn added.

 But Ahn does not lose hope in continuingly fueling the website. “After my graduation from university, I am not sure whether there will be a person who can replace my work for Timetabl. I still have hope though, perhaps I can continue managing the website or a good mate will be luckily found,” Ahn said.

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