Tech assessment

[Lionel English]

The top level goals we approved recently were all rather tech oriented.  I think I mentioned that there's no need that these be our *only* top-level goals--we can add others if we like.  But for the moment I want to take a look at the state of our tech team.

First, it should be noted that, like our indexers, editors, admins, and ourselves, the tech team is comprised entirely of volunteers.  Even in the best of worlds, getting accurate forecasts of programming work is difficult.  With a tech team that contributes code in their spare time, this problem is even worse.  This is, in fact, one reason I cast the top-tier goals as long-term goals to be achieved without tying them to a specific time frame.  It also poses a problem for us in forecasting short and mid-term goals.

Even if we can't accurately predict how long any given tech project will take, however, we can still provide guidance on the relative priority different tech projects have for us.  We can, for example, determine that, e.g. the Comics Creator project should take precedence over the Comics Bibliography project.

I think we should also keep in mind that we have different types of tech work that need doing.  There is a tendency, I think, to think primarily of the Django work when we talk about the tech team--the stuff that is mostly being done by Jochen right now.  But there are several other types of tech work that the GCD could benefit from, and if we're considering spending some money for some tech work (which we've alluded to recently) then we should keep in mind that Django work is not the only kind of thing we should be looking at.

A major example would be a UI overhaul.  Our programmers have admitted they're not design people by training--our UI has a very utilitarian feel as a result.  We've had a couple of UI designers  do preliminary work on a site redesign in the last couple of years, and in both cases they drifted away before they'd finished anything (though several of us did like the preliminary work one of them had done).  A UI overhaul could presumably be done by an independent programmer who need not have any familiarity with Python or Django.

I think the site could also benefit from more internationalization/localization.  Though that's a pretty tall order, and I suspect it would exceed our budget.  But having the pages localized for a few more popular languages--Spanish, Italian, French--would probably help bring in a stronger international audience, which might help give us some oomph for pushing into more localizations.  A big part of localizations would involve translating the formatting docs, which could actually be done by a non-programmer.

We could also use help developing things like richer interactive elements on the pages, such as AJAX or other Java based tech.  I think Andres and/or Alexandros has done some experimentation in this area, so I'd be curious to hear their thoughts.

But none of this should preclude the possibility also of additional help on the Django front.  We could, for example, decide to outsource the development of one of the new components under consideration, such as the my.comics.org project or the Creator table (which would, in part, be a migration).

This post may be jumping the gun a bit, as we haven't really discussed what to do next after establishing our top-level goals.  But I assume this topic will come up as part of that discussion, so I'm curious what people's thoughts are in this area.

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Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Ray Bottorff Jr]

A major example would be a UI overhaul.  Our programmers have admitted they're not design people by training--our UI has a very utilitarian feel as a result.  We've had a couple of UI designers  do preliminary work on a site redesign in the last couple of years, and in both cases they drifted away before they'd finished anything (though several of us did like the preliminary work one of them had done).  A UI overhaul could presumably be done by an independent programmer who need not have any familiarity with Python or Django.

A thought, we may want to inquire with Jon Lovstad his interest in updating our interface. He showed me a beta page once on page layouts he had been working on that looked pretty nifty. Maybe he might be interested in giving one last help to the GCD?

my best

-Ray

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