PA2: We have liftoff!

Today the entire team gathered into the Kiva conference room to watch Kiva's Chief Technology Officer, Sam Mankiewicz, press the magic button to release Kiva website feature "PA2" unto the internet!

If you don't know what PA2 is, check out Roma's blog posting of October 23, which in fact is just the tip of the iceberg.

PA2 is a major feature which our engineering team has been working on for many months. The general theme is to enable greater detail regarding loan transactions to be stored in the Kiva system, allowing greater transparency - one of our key goals for 2008. We also did a lot of work on making the website easier to use for computers with a poor internet connection, which is the case for most of our Field Partners.

We've already seen the effects of one part of PA2 which was released in August, which allowed lenders to access repaid loan funds on partially repaid loans. Today the majority of the feature was released, and while lenders won't see many differences on the site (lender facing elements of PA2 were in the August release) our Field Partners will be seeing some exciting new changes today.

Congratulations to the entire engineering team for all of the hard work and long nights they've put into this release!