THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
Attendees:
Jacopo Capellato, Olivier Heintz, Nicolas Malin, Gil Portenseigne, Youssef Khaye,julien Nicolas, Sharan Foga, Leila Mekika, Catherine Heintz, Bilgin Ibryam, Anahita Goljahani, Taher Alkhateeb,
Location:
Melia Hotel, Seville
Time: 18.30 - 20.15 ???
Workshop Objectives
- No fixed agenda
General brainstorming
Encouraging people in the community to participate and give their feedback
Sometimes when a thread is posted or proposal made on the mailing list, there is no community feedback at all. Lack of feedback makes it very difficult for the person making the proposal or starting the discussion because they dont know whether the community are not interested, think it's a bad idea or silent because they agree. Over the last few months with all the work that has been done, lots of ideas and proposals have been made.
One response was that perhaps people are not responding because they dont think that they have the technical knowledge or expertise to respond or give an opinion.
Another response was that all communities have a 'silent group' (i.e a group of people who monitor the mailing lists but don't actively participate on the list or the discussions). There are more people subscribed to our lists than participate on a regular basis in the mailing list discussions.
What can we do as a community to encourage people to participate more on the mailing lists and in the discussions.?
Perhaps people Make sure that the tone of the discussions is friendly, open and welcoming of other opinions.
Be more patient.
Take the time to explain things in a friendly way to others that don't understand.
Use social media more (blogs, twitter) - some people prefer other communication methods to mailing lists.
OFBiz Meetups
Meeting at Apachecon is a great way to strengthen relationships and also collaborate. What about making use of meetups (real and virtual) to bring the community together. Many other ASF project have meetups but OFBiz doesnt - we tend to meetup at Apachecon and that's it. Could we look at organising some meetups, hackathons, traininng etc. We have a lot of work so the meetups could be a way for a group of people to work together on a specific topic. Could also be used to do some outreach (recruit new members) as well as providing some valueable info for existing community members.
Find out if there is community interest in doing a specific OFBiz related event in India and /or Europe.
Work
There is a lot of work happening at the moment and there is work at every level. You dont need to be an expert - there are tasks ranging from beginner / newcomer to experienced expert. If we could break down the tasks into the levels then it would be easier for people to pick. The original refactor list had easy / intemediate / expert ratings. Might be good to use the JIRA labels to flag certain JIRA as newcomer / beginner. (NEed to make sure that the experienced developers dont pick these up so there is nothing left for a real newcomer....)
Project Strategy and Roadmap
The project desperately needs at clear strategy and roadmap. Attempts have been made to draft one in the past but we need to formalise this in a better way and also have people willing to drive it forward.
Strategy will provide a clear path for people to follow
Will allow us to set goals / milestones and metrics about progress
In past maybe we have tried to do too much (tried to do it all at once - which is why we find it hard to focus). Suggestion was to set a maximum of 3 goals and then work only on these. To define these goals we need to look at what is the most important thing that we want to achieve - and base them on that.
Suggestion was that the most important thing for the project is driving adoption. If this is true then what are the key blockers that stop user adoption of OFBiz? (the UI!)
Organise / setup teams from the community that focus on specific areas (e.g. workgroups) - this could really help progress
Strategy Ideas
If the UI was the main focus - what could the strategy look like
User Interface - have 2 versions of the UI, one very clean and simple, the other more advanced. (Our current UI could be the advanced one....?
Separate the webpart from the widgets
We have too many fields on one screen (many of them are not mandatory and are just included as optional). What if we slimmed down all the screens to have a sensible default UI for users. The UI could also be modifiable by service providers. Simplify the screens with defaults
Use Bootstrap / CSS / Angular
Isolate web related
Define a graphics charter to be used for the screens
Have a CSS convention
Remove web from the framework - it shouldnt be there!
Role of PMC
Discussion - re misconception of the role of PMC. Many people talk about 'the PMC should do something about....' or ' why hasnt the PMC put together a roadmap etc..' but it is the community that controls the direction of the project. Main role of PMC is to manage the release process, vote for committers / pmc members, handle security issues and manage the project brand. All other areas are community driven.
The community dont always realise or understand that PMC members mainly participate on the mailing lists as individuals and OFBiz contributors (and not as PMC members). The main area where being a PMC role is used or acknowledged is a formal vote. Individual PMC members (wearing the hat of an OFBiz contributor / committer and not as a PMC member) can and are encouraged to work / support other areas.
Mulitple Projects
OFBiz could deliver more than one product. We could have more than one project active at the same time e.g
Framework with applications
Advanced UI but without all features
Advanced UO but with the poor UI
If this is the way we want to go - do we have to start from scratch?
No, we can create new components
We can use the existing services in the new components, and while incorporating these services we could clean and refactor it. / Could also move it to a common place where it could be re-used?
Make new theme for this new start
move the theme material from framework to theme
User new web technologies (angularjs, etc)
Write specifications to get consensus
TO DO: WRITE UP NOTES FROM SECOND FLIPCHART SHEET,