Introductions

[Jesse Burns]

Hello everybody!

I'm starting this thread so we can introduce ourselves. I'll get this started.

***

Who I am:

My name is Jesse Burns, aka Burnsy aka jburns131. I'm 35yo at the time of this post.

I have a family, I've been playing guitar since I was 12yo and I attempt to sing. I have been playing the part time stay at home dad role, so I have a lot of time to work on my projects.

I can be best reached by using (in this order):

Google Chat (jburns131)
Skype (jburns131)

My background:

I am a self taught developer and I've been working on code for 10 years. I'm mainly a back end guy, but like most people in the web development world, I've dabbled with a little of everything.

PHP is my forte, but I'm familiar with html5, css, js, some asp (old school, not .net), some c/c++, some Java, python, and have been dabbling with go. I have experience with a few proprietary languages from working at a large company, and that experience has taught me how to be/think like a developer rather than just a <some language> programmer.

I'm comfortable in a linux environment, and am familiar with and comfortable configuring and maintaining apache/php/mysql servers.

I am the creator and lead developer of AllianceCMS (http://www.alliancecms.com), and I am an active contributor to PHP-RBAC (http://www.phprbac.net).

My personal development site/blog is at http://www.jbwebware.com.

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

• By keeping the intent of this software up front: Building communities that want to grow and strengthen it's members, which in turn will make the community a better community for it's member
• By sticking to the mantra "how can I make this as simple as possible"
• By automating everything I possibly can. If a user doesn't need to do something manually, then they shouldn't have to. Computers are designed to perform automated repetitive tasks, so let them.
  
• By maintaining complete transparency regarding every facet of AllianceCMS and the decisions made regarding it's design and development
  
• By keeping an open mind
• By making informed decisions
• By make the best decision rather than the easy decision
• By making an effort to be aware of all of my options
• By knowing I don't have all of the answers and knowing when to ask for and accept help, aka keeping a "fun size" ego
  
• By not jumping on the next band wagon or buzz word unless it actually addresses a real need
• By proposing code changes, working on those changes, testing those changes, and documenting those changes
• By making documentation and communication with the community as much of a priority as working on code

Closing comments:

I'm really passionate about what this project stands for, and I'm really passionate about being part of a team of co-developers that want to have fun while creating something really exciting that will make a difference in some people's lives.

[Colin McIllece]

Hello Everyone!

I'll just follow the general structure of Jesse's post in order to standardize and quicken the introduction process.

Who I am:

I'm Colin McIllece, and I'm currently a high school sophomore currently. I spend most of my time outside of school coding and learning new technologies. I'm also involved in DECA and I regularly attend hackathons, so I might know some of you.

Background:

My background is mainly in Front-End dev, with lots of HTML/CSS/JS experience, and I've also worked with (and love) Harpjs, a preprocessor for LESS, Jade, and Coffeescript. I have a profound love for startup culture as well.

Like Jesse, I've dabbled in a lot of things. Recently I've been learning D3.js, Angularjs, Vanilla Ruby, and MySQL. However, I'm interested in how PHP works, so I'd love to pick some up from a project created by those who know what they're doing in PHP.

I have experience in the Linux, Version Control with Git, and numeroud text editors, with sublime text being my favorite for a developing environment.

My personal website is at cmacca.github.io (it's a placeholder for my better site that's coming soon).

I'm also working on a men's fashion company called Verseux.com, where I have my most recent work.

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

The Github Repo or the resources area mentioned that the website could use more front-end work. I agree. I spend a lot of time working on personal projects, but I see a definite value in connecting people not just as people but as communities, which are the basic component of a society. I think I can bring a designer's eye to the project, and make the website "eye candy", or something that is so visually compelling that users cannot help to gape in awe at the UI.

As Jesse mentioned earlier, I agree that the mission of AllianceCMS should not be a revenue stream, but one of building and strengthening communities, which is all-important for networking.

If AllianceCMS grows big, I could see a logical option being creating a Non-profit for it in order to be able to dedicate more time to having servers and working on the project so that it does not just "gather dust" to quote Jesse.

Closing Comments:

I'm not really sure what else I have to add. I'm sure I'll be as passionate as Jesse about the project once I find out about its scope, but I love the idea of a full-on community CMS instead of simply using Wordpress, Joomla, or one of the "General-Purpose" CMS'.

[Colin McIllece]

Sorry for the errors in my post, I was on mobile.

*I have experience in the Linux, not THE Linux

*numerous, not numeroud

[Jesse Burns]

Great intro Colin, thank you!

And I have to tell you, I'm more of a back end guy and have been very eager to connect with a front end person and get some feedback regarding the Theme system for AllianceCMS. I think I'm doing a good job so far, but a true front end person is more familiar with the processes involved, and can make suggestions that will make Theme developers lives more pleasant :-)

I look forward to chatting with you, and welcome to the AllianceCMS community :-)

[Ryan Kazokas]

Who I am:  

Hello everyone. My name is Ryan Kazokas and I'm a college student, soon to be alumni in May, at Penn State University. My degree will be a Bachelors of Science in Information Sciences and Technologies with undergraduate research experience in my repertoire.  Currently I am involved with my main project with a college from school.  The project involves an android application, in conjunction with web services that make request to a web server to make real-time updates to a database.  I have a strong background working with LAMP configurations.  I am currently learning WordPress plugin development, so I do have some experience working with CMS's.

My background:

Like Jesse, all of my technical knowledge is mostly self-taught. I have been involved with development since my freshman year of college, and that was where I fell in love with it.  When I wrote my first 'Hello World!' application, was when I knew I had to be involved in any way possible.  So I might now know all of the technical skills, or the best way to implement them, I have a passion to learn the best way.  As I said above I am really into web development, with some background in Javascript, JQuery, HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL.  I am enrolled to take a Ruby on Rails Development class this summer, to learn a little bit Ruby Development.

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

I like for my software and websites, to be done in the most efficient way possible. It bothers me when I know something could be fixed to work more efficiently, or when something isn't fully tested.  So i hope to bring Quality Assurance to the project, as well as any way  possible to contribute and convey my idea, about the software design.  I am here to learn as much as possible because I realize I am young and most people  my age aren't as involved, so I expect to have tons of people here with more experience than my self, but will also give my input to try to make the best software possible.

[Jesse Burns]

Thanks Ryan, it's great to get to know you a little better.

I'm very interested in talking about your experience working on a droid app with web services and database interaction. I haven't dabbled in that area, other than to download Titanium and let it take up room on my hard drive :-)

I understand you when you say it bothers you when something can be done in a better way, and I'm a believer of tests, although that is something I continue to put on the back burner :-(

My goal is to write the tests I need for the current system, then maybe more to TDD. The way I plan features and the API is very similar, where I think about how I want to do something as a user or module/theme dev, then I actually write the code or interface the way I'd like to use it, then I finally go into the back end and make it do what it needs to in order to conform to the interface I mocked up.

And trust me, age and experience aren't as big a deal as you would think. For one thing, you'll continue to get more of each! But I think if you stay interested in something, keep an open mind, and don't be afraid to voice your opinion then you'll excel in anything you do.

I love the 'The Cathedral & The Bazaar' essays: http://jbwebware.com/home/content/cathedral-bazaar

In one of them it talks about a particular benefit about open source development. If you have enough people involved, all bugs are shallow. What happens is that one person finds a bug but might not be able to come up with a solution, while another person will look at it and the solution will be self-evident, just staring them in the face.

First of all, both people have made an equal contribution, one by finding it, the other by seeing a solution. Second of all, every person on this planet goes through life differently, we have different experiences, and we have different perspectives. The person that took one look at the bug and saw the solution wasn't brilliant. The fact is that the experiences in his life, which formed his perspective, made him better able to look at the problem in a different way than the person that found the bug. I'm sure the person that found the bug has had the proper perception to solve an issue that others didn't see in the same light.

One more note on experience. Sometimes experience can come with a few negative side-affect:

1. Know-it-all-itis: This side-affect can stunt your ability to learn new things and think outside of the box
2. Stuck-in-my-ways--acusis (-acusis is the medical suffix used for hearing problems lol): This side-affect usually affects your ability to listen and admit that you aren't always right. It can also lower your energy level when it comes to learning new things, or taking part in anything that is related to change

So to sum all this up: You're going to get older and more experience with time, it happens to everyone. Just enjoy the ride and keep both your mind and mouth open :-p

[Jesse Burns]

And welcome to the AllianceCMS community!!!

[Nicolay Markin]

Hi.

Who I am:  

My name is Nicolay Markin, I'm 23, I'm a web developer, I develop different web apps (web sites, services, back end server side parts for client-server apps), mostly on PHP (native or drupal or yii), but a few months ago I learned a little about Node.js and liked it. I have my own an experimental web service, we provide a platform where people can set their alarm clocks with some money as a bet that they will do something in time, it's already available but we actually thinking what to do with it. Actually it turned out that I need a few more days to work on my project, but I still interested to try to become a part of your dev team because I feel that this idea can help me not only to improve my "best practices", good coding style and wise approaches knowledge, but also organize and complete my base knowledge.

My background:

I had c++ classes in a university but web technologies I learn by myself for the past 3-5 leisurely years. A few months ago on a previous job I started develop Node.js web apps, couple weeks ago started to learn python+django just because I like to learn new things. But also want to improve my current PHP and other skills that's why I decided to join to your team. I have some experience in integrating some payment methods (including mobile commerce), in providing sms and voice calls operations and in working with a highload project. Here's my full, up to date linked in profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/nmmarkin. 

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

I have a few web applications built from scratch, so I have some experience and picture of how web application works and how to develop them.

I worked with a highload project.

Closing comments:

Hope to be useful for your team and hope to make a big step on my way to becoming a rock star web developer! :)

[Jesse Burns]

Hello Nicolay,

Thank you for stopping by and allowing us to get to know you better :-)

It's great that you are getting so much experience using so many different languages and tools and projects. That's really going to give you a well rounded development knowledge set.

I worked for a company that solely used their own proprietary languages, and as a developer there we had to be familiar with the different languages that were still used by our clients. They've been in business since the sixties, so for the first 3 months I had to learn 5 different languages. Over the years they would either make large improvements to the last language or the would move in a completely different direction and be a different platform. The newest language they created for their newest projects is a functional language, which is very different than a procedural or object oriented language. Check out some docs on Erlang if you're interested in seeing what a functional language is like.

I can't tell you how much that experience has helped me grow as a developer. Being exposed to such a wide range of development styles allows you to pick up any language/tool and get moving with it.

I've dabbled a little bit with Python, and right now I'm becoming familiar with Go. I think it might be a great tool for back end systems, especially where we can take advantage of it's concurrency functionality.

I know your experienced mind is going to be a great addition to the brainstorming sessions that I'm so eager to get going and jump into. I'm also very interested to hear about your experiences working on a high load project.

Welcome to the AllianceCMS community!!!

[Patrick Weaver]

Hey guys, took me awhile to get this posted but I wanted to wait until I could get to the computer and do it so there weren't as many typos and such!

Who I Am:

My name is Patrick Weaver, aka septor, and I'm 32 years old.

I have a newborn (actually he's 6 months old now, holy shit) son and a wonderful wife that together consumer 95% of my free time as of late. I enjoy coding and gaming when I do get a chance to sneak onto the computer!

My Background:

I, like a few others it would seem, am self-taught in everything I know. I have knowledge in PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, and C# with a desire to learn more about JavaScript and Ruby so that I feel comfortable saying I have knowledge in them! I consider myself more of a middle-end person. I like to dig into the back-end of things, but try and go into things from the front-end point of view.

Up until last September I spent roughly 12 years supporting and developing for the e107 CMS, so I feel I have a great understanding of what should and shouldn't be done for a community and to a project.

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

By taking what I've learned from my past projects and ensuring that the best parts of that knowledge gets put to use. I enjoy bouncing ideas off of people and figuring out the best way to implement the results. The knowledge and improvements that others make to the project will improve my skills as well enabling me to take knowledge I gain and come up with even better ideas for other features and to, again, bounce off other people.

Ultimately I don't think it's the effort of a single person that makes a piece of software great, it's the combined effort of a group of like minded people making themselves better that, as a result, makes the software better. A product can only be as good as the people creating it.

[Patrick Weaver]

Eh, I forgot to post the personal information garbage:

You can check me out on:

GitHub: https://github.com/septor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/septor

Or my personal landing page (because I don't have time to make it anything else!: http://septor.us/

I'm also on Google Hangouts if anyone ever wants to toss ideas around.

[Jesse Burns]

Heyyy Patrick, it's great to see you here :-)

You've been around acms since I decided to dust off the old code from 5 years ago and get this thing working in overtime. Always good to see you around, especially since the arrival of your little one.

Along with Ruby you might want to take a look at Go (or GoLang). It seems a lot of people have been moving from Ruby and Python to take up the Go mantle. I'm not too concerned with what other people are doing, but I've been looking into Go and I keep getting a little more excited that the day before :-)

And I truly feel, understand and agree holeheartedly with the comments you made in the "How I can help" section. That's my view on open source code and collaboration, and it's my view on communities, and building and strengthening communities. It's my hope that this software will enable and promote people pulling each other up and learning and making themselves better, through the help of other members in their community.

Alright, I need to jump down from this soap box before I really get fired up :-p

It's good to see you buddy, give my best to your family, and keep an ear this way, you might like what you hear :-)

[Nghia Nguyen]

Who I am:

I am Nghia Nguyen.  I live in Canada and have a family.  I enjoyed coding, teaching and playing with my kid and playing tennis.   

 

My background:

I have a bachelor and master degree in Computer Science.  I've been working on software development for 10+ years.  Initially working on enterprise platform and later moving to web development.  I worked on both backend (mostly PHP and a little of C++ and Java) and front end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).  I like using best practice in coding based on design patterns (MVC,...), ... and good frameworks (CodeIgniter,..).  Currently, self-learning AngularJS, Node.js and MongoDB. 

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

   With my knowledge and experience in software development I hope I could help Jesse to realize as many of his goals as I could.  :-) 

Closing comments:

  I have been a user of many great open source applications for different projects.  Now, it is the time for me to be a contributor for this open source project that hopefully can help people in communities.

[Jesse Burns]

Hello Nghia,

It's great to hear from you :-)

It's always great to see a new face around here with a different set of skills. The diversity of skill sets, knowledge and personalities are a great base for exciting possibilities when it comes to open source projects.

I have updated my original post to include some contact info.

I look forward to chatting with you :-)

[Kumar Saurabh Sinha]

Hello All,

My Name is Kumar Saurabh Sinha and I am working as a LAMP Architect with Nimbuzz.
I have done my Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and Music with Table. I even love to play Guitar.

I can be reached at

Skype: saurabhsinhak
Mobile: +91-9971047719
Email: sinha.k...@gmail.com
Site: http://www.saurabhsinha.in

Experience Summary

Excellent problem solver: multiple successes in taking large complex projects from customer requirements phase to definition - design - development - deployment and then to production, maintenance and support mode.

B-Tech (Computer Science), having an Experience of around 5 years in Open Source Technologies. I have worked on various projects from Web-Portals to ERP like Applications.

I am a Team Player with a willingness to learn New Technologies being introduced in IT. I had been a proactive and focused student with a creative bent of mind. I possess strong Communication & interpersonal skills with good analytical and logical problem solving ability.

A summary of my main experiences:

Techniques:
PHP5 (Object oriented), Javascript, jQuery, MySQL, Doctrine, REST, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, AJAX, Twitter Bootstrap, Solr, Git, Subversion, UML.

Frameworks:
Zend Framework Open Source PHP5 framework
CakePHP Open source PHP5 Framework
Yii Open Source PHP5 Framework
Wordpress Comtent Management System

Tools:
Netbeans PHP, Redis, PHPMyAdmin, MySQL Workbench, Memcache & SQLYog

Other:
Linux platform Ubuntu, SEO (Search Engine Optimalisation), Scrum / Agile.

Specialties: Specialist in writing MVC based PHP Frameworks and Core Application Classes.

I am very passionate about leaning and doing new things and always seeks opportunity to ding something exciting and extra ordinary.

Hoping to get a response.

Regards
Kumar Saurabh Sinha

[Jesse Burns]

Hello Kumar,

Thank you for stopping by and letting us know a little bit about yourself.

It looks like we're getting some interest from knowledgeable people.

I look forward to chatting with you and hearing your thoughts and opinions :-)

[Bob Light]

Hi Jesse et all. Figured I would extend the age curve here a bit, and bring a different skill set though like mind it seems.

 

Who I Am:

Bob Light, 53 years old.  2 “kids” in their 20’s, hobbies/passions include fishing, woodworking and a good IPA.  I generally can take apart and fix most things that break, including iPhones which my daughter has given me much practice on…:>)  This is mostly driven by a lot of patience, a long stubborn streak, a general desire to save money, and in the end, the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

 

My Background:

My experience has mainly been on the accounting and operational management of small businesses (10+ years in software), and I have seen and slayed many skeletons that came out of closets in this area.  I took courses in Basic and Fortran back in college, which is the extent of my formal education in software dev.  I have used many software applications, some pretty good, some very bad, but most in between.  I recently spent 3 years selling and supporting a project management app, which unfortunately turned out to be more a hobby than a career but was a great learning experience.    

 

 

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

By sharing my broad experience in using many types of software on different platforms, I can help the UI develop into something that attracts and retains users.  I can also help manage the overall project, helping to organize it and break it down into various tasks so that those willing/able to work on them can see what is desired and expected. 

 

I’m a big believer in taking calculated risks, understanding that failure is often the result, but that at least for me, the potential reward is worth it.  Reward not just defined in terms of monetary gain, but in completing something fun with people you enjoy being around.  Life is about the journey, as everyone gets to the same place in the end.

[Jesse Burns]

Note: I meant to apply to the group and I ended up only replying to Bob, so I thought it would be best to repost my response where it belongs :-)


Welcome Bob,

I'm glad you dropped by to say hi and let us get to know you a bit.

It sounds like you have a very useful skill set that could help AllianceCMS a lot. I've been doing more to adopt tools and processes that will help organize and coordinate everything related to the project.

Even though I've been the sole developer this far I have still made attempts to work as if I were working with a team of contributors. Some of my efforts include  creating/updating/closing Issues, working on documentation, especially documentation regarding my thoughts about design decisions. I also have the intent of adopting Pythons PEP system to help formalize the Enhancement Proposal process while at the same time ensuring that a lot of thought and planning goes into each proposal.

The reason I've been doing these things is three fold. One, I will have a workflow in place when other folks start to make contributions. And two, it's a my way of showing people that this is an active project. It's a way to allow possible contributors what's going on with the code base at the moment.

Any suggestions regarding organization, especially Issue maintenance, are welcome. It would be great to see someone interested in making sure we are following up Issues as needed, and helping to break large Issues into smaller, easier to chew pieces, along with staying in contact with Issue owners to see if they need any help in order to keep the Issue moving forward.

I am interested in organization in all aspect of the project and community, so please share your experience and we'll see what we can do to run a tight ship (without strangling ourselves in red tape).

And I'm very adamant about having a pleasant, easy to use UI. We're all ears on that subject too. Heck, we're all ears about anything that you find interesting and will help AllianceCMS

[owen beresford]

Sorry for the late response.  I have been taking with Jesse in idle moments and not doing anything relevant.

 
 

Who I am:
My legal name is Owen Beresford.  I am trying to build a better visible profile under this name.

 
My dominant twitter is @channelOwen.

I have this g+ account but don't use it much.  This particular account is to link to articles when google analyses websites.

I have a github acct, but thats not really for messaging.  I was chatting with Jesse, he says use the project co-ordination features of github.
I have a stackoverflow acct, but thats not really for messaging.
I have a linkedin account..
I would like my skype name not to show up in search results; "b y l l i e c h i l d i s h", without the spaces.

If you want to mail me, try "info at iceline.ltd.uk"

My background:

I have two degrees in IT, a recent ZCE, and a few other qualifications.  I have been employed to write OO PHP for a decade.  Its alot less bad than it used to be.
I am a backend engineer, I have built several CMS, and several frameworks.  I am strongest on planned infrastructure, I test thoroughly.  To "be fashionable", I am quite good at Agile.  I can use JS, RDBMS, Perl, Python, C, Java, HTML5, alot of CSS, make, ant, sqlplus, expect, rpm-build, git and so on for a very long tool roll.
If needed I will use any language. I have used a range of platforms e.g. gmap, twitter, SOAP, jQuery etc etc.

My personal site is at http://owenberesford.me.uk I am now the top search result on my legal name.

How I think I can help AllianceCMS become a better piece of software:

My code works reliably, quickly and efficiently. 
I would like to contribute to a multi-person project, so there is public evidence that I can/have.
I do everything that is necessary to be a good software engineer.
I use punctuation and UTF8 in English text.

Closing comments:

I do not consider it bad that if I mostly write docs.  That way, they exist.
The discussion on the oxford comma is still incomplete.

[Jesse Burns]

Hello Owen,

And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better.

From our few brief discussions I can tell you are a friendly gentleman who is very bright and wants to help where you can.

I know I've barely brushed up against what you can offer to AllianceCMS, but a of the few things we have discussed has already helped me put a few things into perspective.

I really appreciate the interest and effort you have shown so far, and I have a feeling that you will be a great asset to AllianceCMS :-)

Welcome to the AllianceCMS Community!!!