Devcongress Jobs: Calling for contributors!

[Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko]

Hello Guys,

Its time to burn rubber :) The DevCongress Job Board project has been setup on GitHub. Here's a quick rundown on the project to get you going:

Overview

This project aims to provide both local and foreign organisations with access to a unified pool of quality Ghanaian developers,

who they can engage to fill up vacancies either on a full or part-time basis. Developers on the other hand will be able to find jobs and

more importantly, market their skills to prospective employers, co-founders and more :)

Project Structure

As you're probably aware, the project will be written in NodeJS. Here's what the stack looks like:

 

Backend

Node JS          -     Server

Express JS     -     Routing, Sessions, Request/Response Handling etc.

Mongo DB       -     Database

Frontend

Jade               -      HTML Views (Creation / Rendering)

Stylus             -      Stylesheets - CSS Precompling (Similar to SASS if you're familiar with that kinda stuff)

jQuery             -      Client-Side Processing (validation, animations, AJAX etc)

Proposed Feature Set

Here are a few features that might be interesting to have in the final release. This list isn't meant to be exhaustive, so feel free to share your thoughts.

Excited to hear what you think on this :)

 

Employers:

Post a new Job Listing

Update an existing job listing

View the details for a listing

View a history of all listings they've posted

Browse a developer database by keyword (eg. PHP, Rails etc)  

Developers:

Browse job listings by category / keyword (eg. freelance, full-time, Rails, Javascript etc)

View the details of a listing

View the summary/bio of an the employer

View other/all postings by a given employer

Apply for an opening - This could include steps like writing a brief cover letter, uploading a resume & sending it off the employer. Just saying :) 

How to Contribute? 

You can start by heading to the project repository on GitHub. The project has 2 branches: Master (Production) and Develop (Staging & Testing)

Once you've decided on what story/feature you want to work on,

• Fork the repository
• git clone the repo to your local machine
• Branch out of the develop branch into a new branch for the feature you're about to implement
• Once you're happy with your changes, merge them back into the Develop branch
• Next, push your changes to your copy of the repo in github and submit a pull request over here
  

That's it! Your feature/changes will be tested and merged into the Live production code 

 

Another way you can contribute is to write/run tests against the application, and submit bugs & issues over here. If you prefer, you can help out by writing documentation for the code so new contributors/comers to the community can get started quickly.

And guys, we really appreciate the turn up and all the support you have been so far. Lets get this baby on the road and establish some dev swag!

Cheers :)

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'm @mrewusi on twitter and nanaewusi on Github.

 

[yaw]

What if jobseekers could comment on the job listings as a way of requesting for more information? I think that'd be cool

[Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko]

Thanks Yaw. It would provide a quick feedback loop back to the Employer so they can provide clarifications and further feedback.

[Maze Oslo]

Are there any front-end designs for this project.. or maybe just wire-frames? 

[Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko]

Hi Maze, there are no UI mockups as yet, but thats a really good place to start. Would you like to take lead on this? I also have a few ideas for the UI so we could share ideas too :)

[Maze Oslo]

****! .. i just got shot!.. okay I was actually hoping the were ui-mockups or at least someone had taken that up, so I could work on coding the front-end. I'm not a designer but i could still come up with a few wire-frames in (Evolus Pencil format: http://pencil.evolus.vn/Downloads.html). Is it okay if  a dir is created at the root of the project called 'ui-prototypes'? when it's done I'll the github-fork-kungfu-jutsu-thingy and stuff em' there 

On Monday, August 26, 2013 3:40:04 PM UTC, Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko wrote:

[Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko]

Great! I've just created the prototypes folder you requested at the project root. Go ahead and do your thing :)

[Godwin Elorm Adjaho]

I could pitch in when the designs are done.

On Monday, August 26, 2013 5:25:16 PM UTC, Maze Oslo wrote:

[Vibrant Ghana]

Hi Guys, name Michael Newlove - Mensah (@Kofi_Ba_bone). Not a dev or designer. I think this is a very good idea and this project must definitely happen. But it really depends on your individual resolve to make it work and your ability as a group to be objective, put person differences aside(both existing and yet to be found out) and strapping up to make it work. So success or failure is really hanging loose from each one of your necks;you owe it to yourselves.
Back to regular programming.
Me being helpful;
I suggest u guys should study sites like www.elance.com and other sites that operate in a manner similar to this. I will be hanging around, will be glad to help implement a good marketing strategy when the time is ripe.
Have a good day guys and don't be shy to say every once in a while. Thanks.

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[Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko]

Thanks Michael for your support. Those words really go a long way. I have checked out Elance and we'll certainly keep them in mind as we build out the platform. We are looking forward to great things going forward :)

[Francis Addai]

How different would the proposed app be from the existing Developers in Africa project? Aside the cool technology stack, of course.

On Monday, August 26, 2013 3:40:04 PM UTC, Nana Ewusi Precious Nyarko wrote:

[yaw]

I'm not too related to this project but what's fantastic about it for me is it's open source which means that it could become some sort of extensible platform. I like the fact that I can contribute to it too :)

[Francis Addai]

@Yaw,

The project being open source doesn't cut it. The guys involved in developers in Africa could as well decide to open source it tomorrow. Then what happens? We end up with 2 platforms serving the same purpose.

I propose that whoever is in charge of this project talk to Michael (he's working on the DiA project) so that both parties can come up with something that will stand the test of time. A well tested and proven system that will be useful to us all.

My favourite python web framework (Pyramid) is a typical example of what I am talking about. It basically took existing projects (repoze.bfg, pylons) written in python and mashed them together to get something very flexible and highly decoupled.

The open source nature of this project doesn't make it special in anyway. At the end of the day, it is how useful the application is that will drive it to success.

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[yaw]

You're absolutely right here. The open source nature doesn't matter most of the time. The little it matter is, it affects the motives of the platform. While DiA could potentially be Michael's startup, DCJB (DevCongress Jobs Board) is an open source project borne out of the attendees desire to provide a place for headhunters to find them. It's collectively owned by the community, would be promoted by the community, and if we get to make money out of it the would be used to make the community better and stronger. Again, this may not be a good enough reason.

We have taken a good look at DiA, myself included (I even have an account there). From  what I saw, it has been inactive for a disturbing time period. It has no job postings across anywhere in Africa. Maybe it hasn't been promoted well, maybe it doesn't nail the problem down, maybe who knows the reasons? I stand to be corrected, but while it's always good to bounce back, it's equally evil to launch a new platform in the name of a dying one as a reason to revive it. There's good luck in starting fresh!

On collaboration, I think collaboration is the new competition. I'm so bent on collaboration and I think the team is. The benevolent dictator for life (used with permission from Guido) of the project, Precious, is a good guy. I know him. He'd love to collaborate. He should talk to Michael. Do you have his contacts?

The other invisible benefit of the project is to get developers to know themselves and learn from each other. We are working on ways to ensure that there's more collaboration and more inter-learning between developers. That's why it's open source. It's difficult but we'd also want to make pair programming a rule. You know the benefits.

In all, though, we could be doing a lot of thing wrongs and making mistakes that are not worthy of our community. We're not open for nothing. What do you think? Where are we off? Help now! :)

PS. When are you coming back? We need to talk.