Forum OpenACS Development: New User Experience

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1: New User Experience
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/21/06 09:05 PM
I've been working as a package developer and system admin for OpenACS for about a year now. I've hit the usual bumps while dealing with this impressive toolkit: trouble installing, unmaintained packages... exasperation by fellow developers who prefer the quick and limited world of a LAMP site.

I've evaluated several other toolkits, and worked for clients that have selected OpenACS from hundreds of others. And the biggest of these wrote a PhD thesis on Internet Communities.

How can we improve the new user experience of OpenACS/.LRN?

My priorities include:

  • improved educational resources (wikis,presentations,guides)
  • better publicity to reduce FUD
  • better communication between OpenACS experts and novices.
  • enhanced documentation
  • an opportunity to practice using the API
  • multi-user (non-root) and postgres access to a development server

I have a background in computer education of children and teenagers, and enjoyed developing several install guides for the project. Now I'd like to expand my efforts to welcome new blood along with anyone else who is interested.

I am willing to donate a good VPS from openhosting.com to this project.

What do people think?

Cheers.

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2: Re: New User Experience (response to 1)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/21/06 10:14 PM
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5: Re: Mentorship Program : RFC (response to 3)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 05/22/06 12:47 PM
Ryan,

Is it possible you could give a little more background on your proposals. I don't mind that they are hosted off site, but someting to give me an idea what I will see when I click on the link would be helpful.

In general I use search as my memory, so a paragraph explaining where that link goes would be great!

(Sometimes I used openacs.org search, which generally gets me what I want, but not always. Also I get openacs.org email in gmail, so I use that to search forums posts sometimes as well.)

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6: Re: Re: Mentorship Program : RFC (response to 5)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/22/06 02:12 PM
I'd be happy to provide more information related to the Mentorship Program I have in mind.

By leveraging the experience of key developers in a way that will not be too onerous, I think we can enhance the new user experience to not only create renewed interest in the toolkit, but also to actually get some useful code put back into the community. Students will learn, but so will mentors.

With your feedback I will post my ideas on curriculum in the coming days.

Cheers.

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17: Mentorship Program Status (response to 6)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 06/14/06 06:21 PM
The Mentorship Program is coming along... we now have 5 mentors and 5 students. I am in the process of pairing people up. Please apply to be a mentor or student by filling out the approriate survey.

As these mentorships get rolling, I would like to start developing a curriculum for new developers. What do mentors, students and the community think students need to know to start learning OpenACS? Should we demand prerequisites?

I've also posted to the Wiki a description of the program and its status.

Cheers.

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18: Re: Mentorship Program Status (response to 17)
Posted by Jim Lynch on 07/22/07 02:45 AM
demand? no, I don't think so...

suggest? definitely (and this would include trying to support everything aduni.org did)

provide (or try to)? absolutely. each aduni course can have a wiki page and a q&a forum.

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4: Re: New User Experience (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 05/22/06 12:07 PM
What you have written so far sounds interesting. I will look forward to see the details, e.g about the mentoring and other issues.
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7: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 05/22/06 02:13 PM
Well, informally we have always had a mentorship program. Anyone who asks for help, gets it. Anyone who makes an effort to contribute to the the project is encouraged.

I think the main issue is no real "projects" occuring anymore. Much smaller pieces of development driven by whoever notices a need.

I originally got interested in OpenACS 3.x and became fully involved as a volunteer when the porting of ACS 4 to postgresql was done. Don was one of the people in charge back then, and I asked for an assignment. Given that I had to learn alot about OpenACS to complete the task, and I hope I asked intelligent questions to learn what I needed :)

So, if someone is willing to keep track of what type of things need to be done, and assign these to volunteers, that is great. From there, I don't think we need a speicifc relationship. If someone is willing to learn OpenACS and make some effort to understand the toolkit, and ask questions in the forums, they will get the help they need to contribute.

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8: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 7)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/22/06 02:47 PM
I agree completely, Dave. And I cast absolutely no aspersions on the help you and other experienced developers have given me and many others. I think someone to connect mentors with new developers is really necessary. Forum help is great. IRC help is great. But think of what new developers could accomplish if they had some direction from a semi-formal program. It's kind of like the difference between learning independently and going to school. The former is good, but, imo, the latter is best.

Mentors would suggest and guide new users in their projects according to their interests, supported by a developing body of helpful documentation, hints, suggestions, wikis, and examples.

I've also, as I said, setup a VPS hosting solution to allow novices to work even if they don't have a development server of their own. It would have these characteristics.

I'd also like to create more documentation aimed at the novice user (and client site admin). There is a very good presentation program called Wink that makes it easy to create flash presentations out of screenshots.

I'll be developing the program, with input, in the coming weeks.

Cheers.

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9: Re: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 8)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/24/06 03:01 AM
This is an open call to the community for mentors and new users who want to participate in the Mentorship Program.

Please post here or e-mail me if you are interested.

Cheers.

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10: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 9)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 05/24/06 03:06 AM
I'll participate in the Mentorship Program (I think I will participate as a mentor...)
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11: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 9)
Posted by Vinod Kurup on 05/24/06 04:21 AM
Hi Ryan,

I'd be interested in offering what little mentorship I can offer :)

Vinod

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12: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 9)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 05/24/06 07:32 AM
I participate as a mentor as well. Bring it on 😊
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13: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mentorship Program (response to 12)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/25/06 02:54 AM
Excellent. We have our first three mentors. Thanks for volunteering! If you can fill out this quick survey, I can try to place you with a suitable student.

http://demo.viscousmedia.com/oacs-mentorship/survey/

Cheers.

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14: Student Entry Form (response to 13)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/25/06 04:13 AM
Aspiring Students - please fill out the entry form at the link below to participate in the Mentorship program:

http://demo.viscousmedia.com/oacs-mentorship/survey/

Cheers.

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15: Mentorship Program Sign Up (response to 13)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 05/27/06 05:46 PM
We now have five mentors signed up! So far, three students have enrolled. New developers, please sign up here to be placed with one of our mentors.

Read more about the OpenACS Mentorship Program

I'm aiming for a June 5th start date.

Thanks to all five mentors who have volunteered their time and expertise.

Cheers.

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16: Re: Mentorship Program Sign Up (response to 15)
Posted by Iuri Sampaio on 05/29/06 09:22 AM
well since Dave Bauer "think" he will be a mentor, i guess I strongly believe i'm a new user :)
I'm very interested on it. I'm in!!
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19: Re: New User Experience (response to 1)
Posted by Torben Brosten on 08/22/08 08:24 PM
Ryan, mentors, and new users etc.,

Does anyone have a working version of the myfirstpackage developer tutorial ( https://openacs.org/doc/tutorial.html ) using the tcl API?

If so, please post to storage or something, so we can update the tutorial. Also maybe notify here and/or here:

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=1009320

much thanks,

Torben