Forum OpenACS Q&A: Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world?

1: Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world?

Posted by Carl Coryell-Martin on 02/21/02 08:33 PM

This isn't really news, but the first question my largest client asked me after the demize of aD was: "Without aD Bootcamps, how will the community attract and train new developers?"

Of course many people came from other places, but Philip's evangalism brought many new people into our fold, and that has ended for the forseeable future.

Here are some ideas, I would like to see more:

Make presentations/show demos at local geek user-groups. (this would be fun, especially if the demo material was online for volunteers to use) This is something that I can see myself doing this spring.
An online tour of the toolkit linked to from the project homepage.
List of successful projects/case studies.
Comparison of the major open source projects in this space. Ideally I would like to see a wiki-format. I would be willing to help with this also.

So, how else can we grow the developer community and keep new blood in the project. Tcl and Aolserver aren't very sexy right now and we are going to have to do some work to overcome that.

cheers,

2: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 02/21/02 09:05 PM

I'm tentatively scheduled to give a talk to PLUG (the Portland Linux User's Group) this summer, it's fairly active (the home of the K-12 Linux project, among other things).

I'd encourage others to do similar things, as Carl suggests above.

An online tour of the toolkit would be very cool, especially after we clean up a bunch of the less aesthetic aspects of [Open]ACS 4.x. Now that we're about to go to beta then our first release (hoo-ray!) we can start thinking about the future path for project, product and propaganda - the three Ps!

We're getting a wimpy-point presentation on "how I saved a million dollars using OpenACS" before long, that will be our first "white paper" (well, slide show at least). You're right, we need more. Any volunteers?

The competitive analysis you mention would be really useful. PHP Nuke, Zope, what else is out there? Competitive analysis is one way to pick up ideas to emulate, as well as evaluate how we stack up compared to other projects. It would be great if you were willing to take this on or at least help with it.

3: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Stephen . on 02/21/02 09:49 PM

It was mentioned that the problem sets needed to be re-written for OpenACS4. When .LRN is released maybe we could create an online bootcamp and turn the problem sets into course material. Reviving the psets and showcasing .LRN would be killing two birds with one stone.

4: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 02/21/02 09:52 PM

Hey, that's a *great* idea!

5: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Carl Coryell-Martin on 02/22/02 12:58 AM

I would like to start a competitive analysis section of this site. Is there and openACS4.x wiki module that I could use to build it on?

-ccm

6: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 02/22/02 02:29 AM

No, there's not, the closest we come are files in new-file-storage and comments at the moment.

When we can move to 4.x then I assume someone can easily write an ETP template to act wiki-ish.

7: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Peter Vessenes on 02/22/02 05:34 PM

At the risk of incurring major flamage, Carl, on your wiki question, 4.X has the page module which would do just fine for what you'd like. The owner of a 4.X site would have to give you admin on, say, the /comparison node, and then you'd be able to create and mount pages as you preferred. I know this site is still OACS 3.2, so that wouldn't work here.

Flame inducing part coming: If you're interested, ybos could host that section for you now, and let you get it up. When openacs.org is ready to re-host it, we'd happily send it back, and just link over to your version.

8: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Talli Somekh on 02/22/02 05:38 PM

Peter, no flamage coming here, but if you're willing to help host this site, then maybe you'd be willing to help build out the new openacs site (http://openacs.museatech.net)?

This site is all ready to go save for a few improvements and porting the content. I'll be posting a list of what needs to be done by volunteers later today.

talli

9: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 02/22/02 05:47 PM

I really don't want content pertinent to our work scattered hither-and-thither, it's hard enough to find pieces stored here as it is .

Talli - yes, a task list would be very useful.

10: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Hwang on 02/23/02 12:09 AM

How about an "OpenACS Systems Journal" to replace ASJ as a repository of useful and educational information?

11: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 02/23/02 02:51 AM

That would be fine but we need an editor/gatekeeper kind of person to keep it organized. Any volunteers?

12: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Talli Somekh on 02/23/02 02:55 AM

I'm willing to volunteer for the OpenACS Systems Journal. My original idea for the features part of the new OpenACS website would be similar to this.

talli

13: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 02/23/02 07:44 AM

Yes, great idea to have a OpenACS Systems Journal, so we can start with a competitive analysis on the Journal and I would like to start working on this with Carl and others, I have done a some presentations about openacs to our clients so I guess that material will be very helpful. It will be nice if I can be part of the gatekeepers of the OSJ.

14: Few small White Papers (response to 1)

Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 02/26/02 05:07 AM

Hi, we have a few and nice White Paper that are around the OpenACS stuff, it will be nice if they found some place to be here at openacs.org!

15: Response to Bringing new people into the fold in a post bootcamp world? (response to 1)

Posted by David Burch on 02/28/02 04:08 AM

Proper documentation to include problem sets. Keep website pages up-to-date with current status--the current status was done in October--so that people take this project seriously.