[geeklog-devel] Random notes and thoughts from FOSDEM

[Tom]

Hey Dirk,

Thanks for representing us at FOSDEM.

>> 1) Open Advice, http://open-advice.org/

I will read up on Open Advice.

>> 2) Homepage redesign, especially a new theme.

I did start something on the wiki on ideas for the redesign a while ago. 

http://wiki.geeklog.net/index.php/Geeklog.net_Redesign

Theming isn't my strongest asset but I am willing to help with redesigning
the layout of the data and writing new information on Geeklog.net. Geeklog
1.9.0 should also help with this since it will allow us to better catalogue
our posts.

>> - Unused patches and GSoC projects. We have so many patches and
almost-finished GSoC projects sitting around and rotting

I agree. We should identify the patches and projects which are still
relevant and can be incorporated with relative ease.

>> To make it easier for people to contribute, Rouslan suggested to use
Bitbucket

I am a bit out of the loop on Bitbucket. So instead of patches we would want
contributors to fork the repository do their work and if we approve then
merge it back in. Is that how other open source projects are going?

>>3) Bounties ...

Sounds like something we should maybe drop then

>> We should embrace such volunteering and support it where possible.

I agree. We should invite people to submit posts on any such events

>> From Rouslan's email: I think that I mentioned something about the slogan
of "the secure CMS", being quite a bit to live up to

True.  Maybe we can revisit this once the redesign process gets underway.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: geeklog-devel-bounces at lists.geeklog.net
[mailto:geeklog-devel-bounces at lists.geeklog.net] On Behalf Of Dirk Haun
Sent: February-07-12 4:18 AM
To: geeklog-devel at lists.geeklog.net
Subject: [geeklog-devel] Random notes and thoughts from FOSDEM

Seeing that I have a busy second half of the week ahead, I thought I'd
rather post a random list of thoughts than wait until later, when I've
forgotten most of it already ...

1) Open Advice, http://open-advice.org/
If you haven't heard about it yet: Go there, download it, start reading.
Lydia Pintscher (of KDE) put together a collection of short articles from
all sorts of people involved in open source. The subtitle "What we wish we
had known when we started" about sums it up.  
Useful insights and advice, not only in the lights of the upcoming GSoC but
for open source contribution in general.

2) I had the pleasure of meeting Rouslan (Hi!). We only had time for a short
chat since I had to run and catch my train, but it's always nice to meet the
people behind the avatar (with or without wigs ;-) A few things I remember:
- Homepage redesign, especially a new theme. We really need to do this. We
need a nice theme and we need to unclutter the homepage. We should probably
throw some of our money towards a new theme (any ideas how to best approach
this? and any takers for someone taking care of that process?)
- Unused patches and GSoC projects. We have so many patches and
almost-finished GSoC projects sitting around and rotting, it's really
embarrassing. To make it easier for people to contribute, Rouslan suggested
to use Bitbucket (a service pretty much like GitHub, but using Mercurial
instead of Git). Okay, let's try this. I've cloned the Geeklog repository
here:

   https://bitbucket.org/geeklog/

My own account is here: https://bitbucket.org/dhaun/

I'll try and keep our own and the Bitbucket repositories in sync (maybe
there's a way to automate this - have to check). If you have a patch that
you want to contribute, please feel free to try out this route and send a
pull request.

Hmm, what else? I'm sure I've forgotten something. Rouslan?

3) Bounties ... I've attended a few sessions about communities, community
involvement, and the like. In one session (a round table discussion),
someone asked about experiences with bounties. Turns out that none of the
projects represented (all Linux distros in that case) are using bounties.
And I think it's safe to say that our own experiments with bounties have
failed (due to lack of rules for one thing, but there were also other
factors). So I guess we need other ways to encourage people to contribute.
Cleaning up our backlog (see
above) would be a start.

Thoughts?

4) In one session, the concept of "ambassadors" for a project was discussed.
I kind of like the idea: We should have more presence at open source events,
for example. Since I can't be anywhere, members of the community could
represent Geeklog elsewhere. For example, I know that Ivy gave presentations
about Geeklog in Japan. We should embrace such volunteering and support it
where possible. Note: These don't need to be developers. In fact, it may
even be better if they aren't ;-)

Of course, this would need rules (as has also been stressed in that
session). For example, an ambassador (or whatever we want to call it) should
lose his or her status if they are inactive for too long.

Fedora has some information about their ambassador program on their wiki:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors_FAQ

Thoughts, opinions on that idea?

bye, Dirk


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