[p2pu-dev] Tech call notes 2013-05-16

Jos Flores josmasflores at gmail.com
Thu May 16 19:21:09 UTC 2013


I agree that there is some low hanging fruit that could make things
easier for potential contributors, and should be done asap; think on
the lines of proper documentation, tasks (there used to be tasks
marked as 'easy contribution', not sure if that's still being done),
and stuff like that, but that's only step one. The good thing is that
it's very easy to fix, just needs a bit of work. But that alone will
not cut it (in my opinion).


This is going to sound bad, but there's a big difference between
attracting contributors and attracting the contributors that you need.
We've done some other stuff in the past, such as a VM to get started
with Lernanta for those that were having problems installing it...
but, if you cannot install it by yourself, or by asking for help in
the list, are you really going to contribute? I'd say that a small
percentage might, but it will be quite small. It's good for
non-technical people that want to contribute copy or stuff like that
(which is great!) but if we are talking about programming stuff, it
won't be of much help.

The 'reusability' issue is a big problem; a contributor will only get
deep into a project if it gets something out of it. If you need to
host Lernanta somewhere else, you are going to contribute for sure,
even if it's in the periphery and your contributions are simply bug
reports (as good a contribution as any other!). The old 'scratch your
own itch' idea is still the main motivational factor (other than
getting paid, of course). But then, there are more things that need to
happen, such as engaging with the dev community. With this I mean
spending a fair amount of time taking care of the community. Think
about Mozilla Evangelists or Google Developer Advocates; these
organisations have full teams of people working with the community as
their main responsibility. And that works quite well. That's the way
I'm trying to push things towards with App Inventor, but sadly, that's
only one task at the end of my TODO list. I believe that it would be
exactly the same with you guys. In small teams as ours, something's
gotta give, and the community gets neglected.

So anyway, let's do a hangout some time next week? would that suit? I
can go to the media lab and poke Philipp in the eye (if he's around!)
:P

Funnily enough, look what I got on the post while I was writing this
(attached). I've heard it's a bit outdated (2002), but let's see how
it goes!

cheers,
José


On 16 May 2013 13:34, Erika Pogorelc <erika at p2pu.org> wrote:
> I am totally up for it.
> I would still like to do something or at least share a thought or two with
> anyone else about it.
> It was mentioned today in a call tho, that there might be a problem with it,
> since we are not building something "reusable".
>
> My thought was that we could appeal to some people that have gained
> knowledge about how to build stuff, from us and ask them to contribute.
>
> Good point has been raised by Philipp and Dirk tho, that in order for us to
> attract people and ask them for help there have to be some tasks speced out
> which takes time.
>
> Erika
>
>
> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hey guys, great stuff as usual!
>>
>> I'm specially interested in the last two points (in the process
>> section); although, pedantically speaking, I don't think anyone can
>> 'build' a community, those two points are pretty much what I've been
>> thinking about (as a very low priority background thread in my brain)
>> for the last number of months. It would be cool to hangout and share
>> some thoughts. You guys up for it?
>>
>> cheers,
>> José
>>
>>
>> On 16 May 2013 12:47, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:
>> > Parking Lot:
>> >
>> > Hosting updates (Linode upgrade, MOOC hosting, heroku, AWS...)
>> >
>> > Progress
>> >
>> > Mechanical MOOC
>> >
>> > swapped in ckeditor for the WYSIHTML5 rich text editor we were using
>> > before
>> >
>> > email scheduler finished (you can now create an email and specify a date
>> > when it will get sent)
>> >
>> > also supports group emails (sent to the indivdiual groups) and community
>> > emails (to everyone)
>> >
>> > we now support running courses multiple times (sequences)
>> >
>> > emails and groups can be assigned to a particular sequence (=round) of a
>> > course
>> >
>> > setting up a new round, requires some shell magic
>> >
>> > imported the sign-up data from ruby MOOC
>> >
>> > Defines goals / planning for 3rd phase of badges (rolled out as they get
>> > completed)
>> >
>> > See details under priorities below...
>> >
>> > Priorities
>> >
>> > Mechanical MOOC
>> >
>> > set up regular backups for data to amazon S3
>> >
>> > handle unsubscribes (currently, users are in stored in two databases -
>> > mailgun, and heroku - need to sync)
>> >
>> > Badges
>> >
>> > [2 weeks] Allow partners to issue/ endorse badges (restrict who can
>> > issue
>> > the badge)
>> >
>> > The 2-step autorization for partner Badges
>> >
>> > We set out to be implemented until June 1st
>> >
>> > Dirk gave Erika task to make an wireframe to present to partners on how
>> > will
>> > we implwmwnt this
>> >
>> > [1 week] Integrate badges more closely with courses
>> >
>> > for a start this will be a IFrame that you can embed in a course (or
>> > anywhere else)
>> >
>> > [1-2 days] Add elemet to the top level navigation where you can see all
>> > the
>> > badges
>> >
>> > Some bug crushing tasks (Badge not yet awarded but project already
>> > published
>> > as a project which got the Badge, ...)
>> >
>> > Question: What is the benefits of converting id to uri and back trough
>> > out
>> > the system?
>> >
>> > not much within a system, but very usefull
>> >
>> > Setting up the integration servers on AWS for testing purposes
>> >
>> > Hosting
>> >
>> > DU to cancel stats.p2pu.org
>> >
>> > AWS API - PS and DU to go throught this next week
>> >
>> > Problems
>> >
>> > Running courses multiple times on p2pu.org
>> >
>> > We don't currently support "cloning" courses
>> >
>> > A few courses are running for the second time, and it's not clear to
>> > organizers what the best strategy is
>> >
>> > Easiest solution (right now) -> Create a new course, and copy&paste
>> > content
>> >
>> > DU to make sure this is one of the topics on our list of feature
>> > requests
>> >
>> > Process
>> >
>> > Keep better notes on the call so that we understand what we discussed
>> > afterwards
>> >
>> > We tried! Is it working?
>> >
>> > Talk about how do we build the community who would help us build the
>> > tools
>> >
>> > Erika  wants some advice on how to attract developers to contribute to
>> > badges  (or/and lernanta, mechanical mooc,...) as an open source
>> > projects
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > p2pu-dev mailing list
>> > p2pu-dev at lists.p2pu.org
>> > http://lists.p2pu.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pu-dev
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
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