Meeting Marathon Thursdays!

Whew!  Man, Thursday is always a looooongggg day… but a good one.  As I previously blogged, every other Thursday all the members of the 6 Community Teams meet.  But in the off week, each of those 6 Community Teams meet individually to discuss their own business.  Four of those teams meet on Thursday and since I facilitate the teams I get 4 (minimum) jam packed hours of team meetings each week.  This was a good week!

• Reference Team: Focused on two things right now, both early Q2 projects/deliverables.  (1) core API documentation which has been spearheaded by Ernst Peter Tamminga.  This involves the format and sustainable technique for generating core (CE) API documentation in multiple formats including VS, CHM and HTML help.  Joe Brinkman (and others) are working with Ernst Peter to refine the processes and include them in our continuous integration.  After that comes the job of catching up and getting ahead with the core and then eventually figuring out how to leverage the approach to the Forge. (2) Launching a public Wiki.  We’ve been talking about this for a long time and working with the folks at Canam Solutions on their offering based on Screwturn Wiki.  We’re working with permissions, features, policy (for things like moderation, files, etc), basic organization and impacts in staging now.  Many thanks go to Cathal Connolly who has invested in this previously and more will go to Chris Paterra who will be working with me to see this cross the goal line.  Lots to do yet, beginning with getting this in front of the team within the next week or so.
   
• Forge Team: Good discussion on several topics… this team has a lot within its scope.  Bill Serverance, Stefan Cullmann, Dave Buckner, Néstor Sánchez, Chris Paterra and Joe Brinkman are really going to make this team go.  (1) Bill has been working with Sanjay Mehrotra on the Feedback module which has been in limbo for a long time.  Sanjay had developed a very comprehensive update (long ago) but it was stuck in limbo because of architectural issues with the AJAX library.  Bill & Sanjay have agreed that the best jumpstart to the project is to upgrade with improvements that Bill has made which are more current.  Many thanks to Sanjay… he’d done a lot of work that will never see the light of day, but we all wind up swallowing our pride once in a while for the best possible community outcomes.  Thank you to both Sanjay and Bill for making it happen. (2) We’re talking about a Q3 project (which must start planning now) which is a development contest… this is VERY early in consideration, but after we knock out some Q2 items we’d like to see a little Community fun around Forge and recognition for dev folks like we just enjoyed with the Designer Challenge. (3) And the biggie… enhancing the DotNetNuke Forge!  This is a Q2 item that is of highest priority for this team… not finishing in Q2, but launching a phase I and having a plan for continuous improvement.  Its not the first time we’ve talked about it in the team, but Chris and I are on the hook for a first round of mockups two meetings from now (so in 4 weeks). We’ll be sharing those with the community as well and figuring out how to divide the work so more people can participate… a strong Forge ensures a strong Community Edition!
   
• Internationalization: Peter Donker, Vicenç Masanas, Benoit Sarton, Sebastian Leupold… these guys are really representing for the international audience.  Localization is a complex set of issues… it just is.  And we’re still figuring out how the team can best participate in producing the best possible solution.  (1) To that end Vicenç, a long time team member and Trustee, has volunteered to be the main guy to represent the use cases, proposals and feedback loop into product development.  The whole team will, of course, participate… but its necessary to streamline communication and establish a strong working rapport in order to have the most impact… especially when there’s more than one way to solve a problem.  (2) We’re looking at the Language Editor as a place where the team could have some immediate impact… though need to clear that (will know next week).  (3) Language Pack tools and distribution… Peter Donker has done a ton of work in this area and it got kind of sidetracked with the last couple of core localization updates, but its getting back on track.  Peter will be doing demos of current progress for the team and for Shaun as soon as we can schedule them.
   
• Experience: Also getting our “todo” list squared away as well as talking strategically about the team. (1) Cuong Dang has committed to representing the team to the product development process.  This is no small commitment because it moves quickly, has multiple interface points, has little wiggle room and will require both patience and tenacity to work with.  But the team is committed to making it work and helping out as much as possible.  We’re documenting candidate items for backlog which will be subject to the standard prioritization process.  Thankful to have Jenni Merrifield on board and committed to finding out the best way to support her in the User Experience area. (2) Lots of talk about all the other areas that need attention, from community areas of the website to individual module updates, to standards and guidelines for good DNN UX implementation.  Expect to see more from the team as plans come together.

I could go on, but my point when I started this was simply to give an idea of how much is going on.  This is the routine every other Thursday… and the Quality and Health teams meet on Monday & Wednesday respectively (though I have not included their updates here).  I’ll do my best to keep publishing for you.