Status on entering June

[John Roy]

It's been a month now since our "soft" launch when we stopped coding
and started engaging the outside world in our little project. Here's
what we've done in the past month and what we plan.

May
---
* Resolved our internal discussions regarding the open source status
of the server component. We decided to OS it all under GPL. In
retrospect this was very clearly the correct decision. The goodwill
and engagement as a result of a little altruism was immense. From a
business and legal standpoint this makes a lot of things easier. We
get hosting and source code control free from google and github.
Individuals and businesses afford us more understanding (read: slack).
We also firmly establish copyright and authorship by having our source
code publically replicated on servers all over the world with
associated commit logs and timestamps.

* Once we decided to open-source the server it was logical to
actually release a packaged version of the server. This was a major
refactoring that was accomplished in just 2 weeks. We now have VM's,
amazon AMI's and instructions to build the server on bare hardware.
Importantly, the VM's and AMI's are "pre-installed"; they actually run
in a basic configuration on startup - this gives installers an "early
win" and renewed energy to continue to customize and use the platform.

* We decided on Moodle as target of our first integration but were a
little disappointed that weeks went by while the plugin remained
marked "pending approval". Finally just last week it was approved and
we noted a 4x jump in activity! A quick look at our servers showed
account signups at babelroom.com but also conferences created via the
API on private Moodle systems. Moreover, there's a great deal of
"repeat" activity -- the same groups of people re-engaging over the
course of days. This is a good sign.

* There's been repeated feedback that our websites and discussion
groups are largely empty. We know. We're Sorry. We could have waited
longer to launch but I personally believe this would have been a
mistake. We needed to engage and set forward direction based on real
feedback, even if we have an empty website. We've not filled out
documentation on the wiki and everyday we make the website better.

* We've been channelling new users and interested people onto this
discussion group. We'd like to solve the immediate problem of lack of
documented knowledge. As questions are asked and answered here we can
build a knowledgebase which will also be indexed by search engines so
people asking similar questions can find the answer easily. Right now
we have an chicken-and-egg problem. So don't be shy if you have a
question. Most of the poeple on this group engaged with me via email
first and I can you we've got people from 5 countries on 3 continents
doing some *really* interesting projects -- and we haven't made double-
digits yet! So don't be shy about posting.

June and Beyond
---

* Bugs: There is some small finalization of server packaging and that
awful icons bug (http://code.google.com/p/babelroom/issues/detail?
id=3) to fix

* Populate issues database and create a roadmap of future features.

* Fix video signalling (on/off etc) and release WebRTC video.

* Integrate another CMS/LMS!!!! we had thought it would be wordpress
but there's been some very recent real response to a query I posted on
Elgg so maybe that'll be it -- what do you think?

* What did I miss? we'll start adding enhancement requests to the
issues DB and capture big items on the roadmap.

Thanks, enjoy June
-J