Group Priorities?

[Cameron Childress]

I'm kinda new to this list and really don't have the advantage of knowing the entire history of the conversations here. Also - nobody asked my opinion but I will give it anyway.

My general observation is that this group has a mission and priority problem. Spending resources on Lucee membership when there discussion about the groups own website needing work - that doesn't make sense to me.

Cutter's comments about paying for a domain name renewal reflect this same priority confusion.

Perhaps it would be good to take a step back and prioritize what exactly a volunteer should do when they have spare cycles (or spare money). This is how I would prioritize things as a relative outsider. You guys may have different opinions, which is fine with me.

Priority One - Team Advance Website - Minimum Viable Product

This means keeping the website up to date with minimum information and features. No bells and whistles, but current.

Priority Two - Projects - Minimum Viable Product

All the projects Team Advance has been bringing under it's umbrella need to have functioning domains, hosting, and a basic functioning website. For example, ValidateThis.org needs to be acquired and fixed ASAP.

Priority Three - Moving Projects Forward

Updating the projects under the Team Advance umbrella and making sure they are stable, issues have been addressed and some basic support mechanisms are flowing properly.

Priority Four - Advancing CFML

I know there is a strong desire to have CFML advocacy and that's noble and should be done but till 1-3 are done, this group will have a hard time standing on a stable respected soapbox and having anyone actually listen. Doing a good job with priorities 1-3 are what give the group "authority" to speak on behalf of CFML.

Priority Last - Raising Money for Another Organization

Lucee is awesome and exciting but in my opinion this group has a whole lot of other things to worry about before throwing away very important resources that should be used internally to an outside organization.

Priority DEAD Last - Team Advance as a Customer

In my opinion, building CFML projects where Team Advance is the primary customer is busy work and should be done only after everything else and considered a luxury. This is a classic distraction where the group can spin their wheels forever and do nothing to actually serve anyone else. Existing projects with a large user base should be given a much higher priority.

The whole purpose of my little priority list above would be to help instruct someone who has spare cycles and says "Hey I can do something, what needs doing"? Just injecting some new thought into the mix here.

-Cameron

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Cameron Childress
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[Denard Springle]

Thank you Cameron. I cannot agree more.

Initially we had no legacy projects - so early on it was easy to come up with TCFA oriented projects. However, as we have acquired several legacy applications the focus should be shifting towards supporting those and ensuring they are maintained.

Unfortunately, this group has had a severe problem with participation and several attempts in several ways to help get members to participate has failed to produce results, which has left the team leaders scratching our heads. We've asked for suggestions several times, so I am super appreciative that you have voiced yours. I think your outline is an awesome start and very insightful.

There are issues on every legacy project we've taken on that could be addressed during spare cycles.
There are several suggestions in the TCFA website repo for things that could be added to the system during spare cycles.
There are legacy issues, such as the validatethis.org domain, that need to be addressed as well - we've got the support of vendors... we just need someone to step up and make it happen. I'd volunteer to do it, but at present I don't have the time. I have the $$ though, hence my offer to help support those issues in any financial way that is required.

It's not that we don't have things members could be doing - nor is it that we haven't communicated these things to our members - it's that members don't seem to *want* to participate overall. We've had a couple hundred people sign-up for this team - but I can count the number of members who have participated on two hands (and maybe one foot) and the number of commits from team members on one hand.

All said and done, a handful of people made some really great strides last year. Imagine what we could do if more people joined the effort! I just don't know how to get there from here, and suspect neither does anyone else who has jumped in and tried to get this team moving forward.

I wish I had the answer... honestly. I'd love to see this team take off and be able to come together and fulfill our stated goals. I stepped down as benevolent leader, frankly, because my hope was with more group control (than my own) it would help invigorate the team. I stepped back and am here to support the group for all things financial and to lend my own 2 cents when I think it's warranted. And, of course, to keep coding when I have the cycles ;)

Anyway, I agree with your assessment and think your outline is a great start on a broader discussion on how we move forward and organize the team. If you have any ideas how to help get members to participate beyond these basics, I'd welcome the suggestions ;)

-- Denny

[Cameron Childress]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Denard Springle wrote:

It's not that we don't have things members could be doing - nor is it that we haven't communicated these things to our members - it's that members don't seem to *want* to participate overall.

I find that I tend to participate much more in open source projects when I am actively using that project. When I am working on a Mura site I end up finding and fixing bugs and submitting them but rarely do I sit at my desk in the morning and say "wow I have a totally open schedule, lets go work on some bugs".

So, in my opinion this is why it is so critical that friction be reduced as much as possible for potential contributors. That time when they are "in the moment" is fleeting and they need to be able to find what they need as fast as possible. If there is something to contribute to the project they need to be able to do it quickly and with very little resistance.

 

We've had a couple hundred people sign-up for this team - but I can count the number of members who have participated on two hands (and maybe one foot) and the number of commits from team members on one hand.

I don't know that this is how you are looking at things or not - but I think that looking at this organization as if it were a company with bosses and workers is the wrong way to look at it. The people who sign up on the website love CF. They aren't really looking to be assigned work. Even if they WANT to do work, 99% of them aren't going to realistically be able to find the time to follow through. 

I stepped down as benevolent leader, frankly, because my hope was with more group control (than my own) it would help invigorate the team.

So who is the leader now? What is the structure of the organization? Does it have non-profit status or is it more just a community?

 

Anyway, I agree with your assessment and think your outline is a great start on a broader discussion on how we move forward and organize the team. If you have any ideas how to help get members to participate beyond these basics, I'd welcome the suggestions ;)

In the years I spent leading the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group we always had a ton of volunteers. Lots of people wanted to help. However, I learned that people's ability to volunteer and help out goes up and down over time. Sometimes we would have a great team of people working together and I had to basically do nothing but at other times everyone got really busy and I had to pick up the slack - even if it wasn't convenient for me. Ultimately - the buck stops with the leader of the group.

Realistically I think the best way to keep projects like ValidateThis or other things going is to just make sure that the ecosystem for contributing is healthy and straightforward.

-Cameron

[Denard Springle]

It's not that we don't have things members could be doing - nor is it that we haven't communicated these things to our members - it's that members don't seem to *want* to participate overall.

I find that I tend to participate much more in open source projects when I am actively using that project. When I am working on a Mura site I end up finding and fixing bugs and submitting them but rarely do I sit at my desk in the morning and say "wow I have a totally open schedule, lets go work on some bugs".

So, in my opinion this is why it is so critical that friction be reduced as much as possible for potential contributors. That time when they are "in the moment" is fleeting and they need to be able to find what they need as fast as possible. If there is something to contribute to the project they need to be able to do it quickly and with very little resistance.

 

Yes, this was my understanding as well - most of the work done in open source projects are done by those using the project. I know we have members here using the legacy apps we've inherited, but I'm unclear what their ability to contribute happens to be - based on the lack of commits - I'm going with 'none' :)
 

We've had a couple hundred people sign-up for this team - but I can count the number of members who have participated on two hands (and maybe one foot) and the number of commits from team members on one hand.

I don't know that this is how you are looking at things or not - but I think that looking at this organization as if it were a company with bosses and workers is the wrong way to look at it. The people who sign up on the website love CF. They aren't really looking to be assigned work. Even if they WANT to do work, 99% of them aren't going to realistically be able to find the time to follow through. 

No, that's not at all how I envisioned this organization. I envisioned quite the opposite - members who volunteer and participate in projects of interest to them (that they are using, perhaps) doing what they can when they have the time to help out. There is no 'work' here heh... just stuff the people who love CF can do to help out ;) I expected the group would grow organically and individuals would find a niche they would like to participate in.
 

I stepped down as benevolent leader, frankly, because my hope was with more group control (than my own) it would help invigorate the team.

So who is the leader now? What is the structure of the organization? Does it have non-profit status or is it more just a community?

 

Originally there were seven of us 'leading' the group in various working groups. After I stepped down the remaining six working group leaders took a more active role. Some of them have since dropped off over time. So, there is no single leader of the project these days, though Randy would probably be closest to this description if one had to pick.

The working groups were designed to a) address the various aspects of development and contribution and b) spread the load among team leaders. In my opinion, no single individual can 'step up to the plate' when nobody else does. Nobody has the time to do everything. So, from the outset we tried to address this with working groups. This also allowed members to participate with a focus on a particular group that peaked their interest, and we tried to cover the gambit. Those working groups are:

   FOSS Rescue Group – this working group is focused on locating older, unmaintained, ColdFusion projects that could be resurrected and given new life under TCFA leadership. This group is/was led by Randy.

   FOSS Pioneer Group – this working group is focused on isolating new projects and pioneering software solutions for the CFML marketplace that do not already exist. Several suggestions have been proposed and that working group has isolated which of those solutions should be tackled and in what order. Pete Oliver-Kruger is/was leading the charge on this group.

    FOSS API Group – this working group is focused on hackathons and sprints designed to wrap and promote the use of CFML with various APIs and providers. This has, thus far, been one of the most active working groups so far. Danny is/was heading up this group.

   FOSS Package Manager Group – Originally this working group was focused, in concert with Adobe, on developing a cross-platform package management system for CFML. This was supplanted when Ortus released their CommandBox product and members we're instead encouraged to adopt this and help facilitate expansion and feature enhancement of CommandBox. I was leading this group, but support for it fell sharply after switching over to supporting CommandBox.

    FOSS QA Group – this working group is focused on helping other teams learn how to write tests, validate our development against the multiple versions and platforms that run CFML, and overall ensure that the development TCFA puts forth meets quality standards. This group is/was led by Sean Corfield. To my knowledge. nobody has ever asked Sean for his help aside from the generous work he did on all our projects to get them set-up for tests.

    FOSS Documentation Group – development is only as good as the documentation that accompanies it. As such, this working group is focused on helping developers document their work, ensure all our documentation follows the same basic format and provides the same basic information and otherwise ensure that the team has the support to document our projects thoroughly. The leader of this group left last year and nobody stepped in to fill this role.

    FOSS Promotion Group – at the end of the day the primary issue most CFML developers see with CFML is the lack of promotion of the language. Working in concert with the Open CFML Foundation, and working the social media, blogosphere and forums are our promotion group members who help promote our projects as they are completed, generate buzz for new projects we take on, and advocate CFML as a competitive development platform to others. Ryan Mueller is/was leading the charge for the promotion group.

And lastly, this is just a community effort. 503.c was investigated early on, but the associated costs and time required to put one together was decidedly prohibitive.
 

Anyway, I agree with your assessment and think your outline is a great start on a broader discussion on how we move forward and organize the team. If you have any ideas how to help get members to participate beyond these basics, I'd welcome the suggestions ;)

In the years I spent leading the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group we always had a ton of volunteers. Lots of people wanted to help. However, I learned that people's ability to volunteer and help out goes up and down over time. Sometimes we would have a great team of people working together and I had to basically do nothing but at other times everyone got really busy and I had to pick up the slack - even if it wasn't convenient for me. Ultimately - the buck stops with the leader of the group.

Yup. Same for me with NVCFUG. But, I found running a (relatively small) user group and picking up the slack was pretty easy in contrast to what we were doing with this effort, and as such I asked for and got volunteers early on to take on the leadership roles that would help spread the responsibility and provide ample opportunities for participation in several areas of any project. A bit more ambitious than the user group effort, for me ;)
 

Realistically I think the best way to keep projects like ValidateThis or other things going is to just make sure that the ecosystem for contributing is healthy and straightforward.

 

Agreed. And the ecosystems should be fairly healthy and strightforward. We've made contributing to projects as painless as any other - using GitHub, issue tracking, etc. I even had a project management system I put in place that nobody ever used (and received strong pushback from several members). The only bump in the road as of late that could possibly be construed as not being healthy, aside from the general lack of participation of course, would be ValidateThis.org being down. And that's something we could fix - but so far nobody has volunteered to take it on. I actually have this on a task list for myself... I just can't seem to find the spare cycles to get to it lately. I am half-hoping someone else will tackle it, but if not... I'll get to it when time allows. Not an ideal solution, but lacking any volunteer I don't know how else to approach it. :(

-- Denny
 

[Chris Geirman]

Denny/Cameron,

This has been a great discussion. I resonate pretty much everything Cameron had to say and sympathize with Denny in trying to motivate the community. I can only speak for myself, but I specifically resonated with Cameron's comment about reducing the friction to participants. This hits the heart of an earlier comment I made about needing a little hand holding. The problem may simply be that you have a lot of capable and willing people (to various extents) but their energies simply aren't well organized or focused. As I've stated before, I would like to help (desire), but I'm unsure how to get started. I've not yet been a member of any FOSS, so I'm a n00b in that regard.

Denny, you've stated...

It's not that we don't have things members could be doing - nor is it that we haven't communicated these things to our members - it's that members don't seem to *want* to participate overall.

You may think you've communicated these needs out to your members, but I'm one member who doesn't feel that's true. I'm not sure what issues need attention, nor am I sure where to look to figure this out. It feels to me as though a lot of this information is tribal knowledge, such as the issue with validatethis.org you're wanting a volunteer for. Your mention of it here is the first I've heard. But, I've not looked in a while, so I thought I'd try to figure it out. Here are the steps I took and my thoughts. I hope they provide some insight...

1. Went to the Team CF Advance Website
• The "Getting Started" section seemed like a good place to start reading
• I thought the statement, "Many of our projects have features and bugs listed and tagged as beginner." was interesting and helpful, but I wasn't able to find these tags when I looked through the validatethis issues list. Maybe that's not one of the many projects you're referring to.
2. Browsed through the GitHub Repos, but there are a lot of projects with no clear priority among them. I suppose I could browse the list of projects, find one that interests me, review the issues list, then start knocking out bugs. But coming back to comments you two have made, we tend be more active on projects we're actively using. I'm not using any of these. 

As a FOSS n00b, it's not that straight forward figuring out how to get involved. So here's my commitment to you. I am willing to spend a few hours each week for the foreseeable future on accomplishing CFTA goals. Please help me use those hours effectively :-). Should I start by trying to get validatethis.org back up and running? If so, let's do this!

[Michael Evangelista]

Like everybody else on this list I’ve been busier than I want to be  in terms of having time to contribute but I want to float an offer to the Team CF community in general. GoWest will provide hosting and domain registration free of charge for any Team CF project or team member wanting some dev space for a team project.  Just shoot me an email and we’ll supply a free code for signup on any service we offer.  

 

What I love about the CF camp is the love for the language, the projects, the hard work of other members and loyalty to the things we’ve all benefitted from. On the other hand life beckons, family survival comes before outside loyalties, and as much as we all agree on what the cfml world could be, it is what it is. Our creativity will always outpace the hours in even the longest day. If we can’t make big strides, let’s choose small, doable goals - I think the team website is a good start.

Another idea I’ll toss out there, if we really want to call in the able and willing, perhaps we should accept small pledges of 1 hour per week or more from anybody who is able, and get at least a sense of what time would be available if an organized team effort were to be launched. I could commit an hour per week without much difficulty to at least do something useful, however small.

 

 

 

 

From: team-cf...@googlegroups.com [mailto:team-cf...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Geirman
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 8:10 AM
To: team-cf...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Group Priorities?

 

Denny/Cameron,

 

This has been a great discussion. I resonate pretty much everything Cameron had to say and sympathize with Denny in trying to motivate the community. I can only speak for myself, but I specifically resonated with Cameron's comment about reducing the friction to participants. This hits the heart of an earlier comment I made about needing a little hand holding. The problem may simply be that you have a lot of capable and willing people (to various extents) but their energies simply aren't well organized or focused. As I've stated before, I would like to help (desire), but I'm unsure how to get started. I've not yet been a member of any FOSS, so I'm a n00b in that regard.

 

Denny, you've stated...

It's not that we don't have things members could be doing - nor is it that we haven't communicated these things to our members - it's that members don't seem to *want* to participate overall.

 

You may think you've communicated these needs out to your members, but I'm one member who doesn't feel that's true. I'm not sure what issues need attention, nor am I sure where to look to figure this out. It feels to me as though a lot of this information is tribal knowledge, such as the issue with validatethis.org you're wanting a volunteer for. Your mention of it here is the first I've heard. But, I've not looked in a while, so I thought I'd try to figure it out. Here are the steps I took and my thoughts. I hope they provide some insight...

 

1.      Went to the Team CF Advance Website

o    The "Getting Started" section seemed like a good place to start reading

o    I thought the statement, "Many of our projects have features and bugs listed and tagged as beginner." was interesting and helpful, but I wasn't able to find these tags when I looked through the validatethis issues list. Maybe that's not one of the many projects you're referring to.

2.      Browsed through the GitHub Repos, but there are a lot of projects with no clear priority among them. I suppose I could browse the list of projects, find one that interests me, review the issues list, then start knocking out bugs. But coming back to comments you two have made, we tend be more active on projects we're actively using. I'm not using any of these. 

As a FOSS n00b, it's not that straight forward figuring out how to get involved. So here's my commitment to you. I am willing to spend a few hours each week for the foreseeable future on accomplishing CFTA goals. Please help me use those hours effectively :-). Should I start by trying to get validatethis.org back up and running? If so, let's do this!

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[Chris Geirman]

I agree, a well directed hour of effort from many could be collectively very useful. Our own "CF Hour of Code.

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[daniel fredericks]

Just a thought from a group member but someone with too many family commitments to be of much help, but I have opinions :)

The idea of the external facing website is a start...does it have to be some wonderful site, or just for starters, a one page simple site with info about how to join, and what projects the group currently has....that should be simple for now and would help to get exposure.

My next thought would be are the applications that you now run on github or use some sort of ticketing system, so people can submit bugs? It is great to take a app and update it, but right now, is it necessary if the app works? if people have issues, I can't remember where they submit those issues...that is where people that want to help could go to fix issues.

I know we talked about testing and documentation...Maybe people that are really interesting in testing or how to do unit testing on the apps get some "training" from certain people that use testbox...weather that is Brad, Luis, Sean, anyone that could get some people up to speed on how to do tests for these apps the group currently has...if someone has not already done that.

Documentation...maybe look to set up some good documentation on all the apps currently handled by the group...look at any old docs for the apps and update them in github maybe to go along with the repo code.

This would put out there some "work" for people that want to help but are not sure what to do....if the group gets a few more people that understand the apps the group currently has, the better for the community and better for those people as well...and we might get test and new updated docs for those apps.

If the group can get a better handle on the current inventory, then maybe new ideas will form for upgrading those apps, or new app ideas will come and then people can work together to build something...

Again, just my 2 cents, but i hope this brings about some more comments. 

the point of the group is to get people in the community to take ownership of products that are currently being used and keep them updated, and build new products that can benefit the community...

we have to start somewhere, so start with existing stuff.

any thoughts? am i way off base?

Dan

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[Ryan Mueller]

All great ideas guys. 

Regarding The Website

We've talked about breaking down things into pint sizes before and we made an attempt regarding the website in October.

I'm very, very, open to ideas for the site. It's in GitHub waiting for pull requests and there are several issues filed as well https://github.com/teamcfadvance/website/issues

The website is super simple and would be a great place to hone our MVP skills on. Grab an issue in GitHub you like by commenting on it and then send a pull request when you're done.

If there's another idea/feature/bug you'd like to add/fix, add a GitHub issue and let's discuss and code.

General Ideas

More openness. When we started, this group was closed in order to get a sense of interest via a membership signup form. Last fall Randy and I felt the need for that had passed and we made the Google Group public. This was a good first step.

Going forward I'd like to see the idea of "membership" replaced with that of "contributor" and "supporter". 

1. A contributor is someone who's pushed a commit a project under our protection. 
2. A supporter would be a person who's financially contributed to domains, hosting, conference booth, sponsorship, etc.
   

The latter is least important and maybe never comes to fruition.

Also, I don't think there's a need to add every person to the GitHub account. That's what pull requests are for. We need a couple of cheerleader contributors to have admin rights (we have these folks I think) and each project might have one or two core contributors who have rights to that project. Everyone else only needs to fork and pull.

Thoughts?

[daniel fredericks]

So just from this email, Ryan shows there are "Tasks" to work on, so for those people that want to help, there are some tasks ready to go. This should help everyone.

Thanks Ryan for getting this info out there again, it is probably wise to do so every few months to remind people and let new people know what they can do.

Dan

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[Ryan Mueller]

To help with informing folks about available issues in our GitHub repos, I've added a few ITTT recipes that will tweet when:

1. A new repository is created.
2. A new issue is created.
3. An issue is closed.

GitHub admins, you'll notice a new user, tcfapublisher, has been added to the ownership group. I'm using this account for automated tasks like those above.

Ryan