Posted by gusaus on September 4, 2009 at 8:50am
A lot of good things coming together as we're pressing forward with many of the objectives laid out in the Drupal Open Learning Initiative. We can use this post to tie everything together, keep tabs on progress, and discuss how to get involved!
- Drupal Dojo website and subsequent installation profile - Thanks to the heroic efforts of Aaron Winborn, the new Drupal site is FINALLY starting to take shape (http://dev.drupaldojo.com/). Our goal is to build a streamlined Drupal 6 site and then develop a Drupal 7 site over the next few months. Each phase from planning, development, design, to marketing will be captured for a series of Dojo sessions, collaborative workshops and training materials.
- Drupal Dojo lessons and sessions - There are several Drupal Dojo sessions starting up ranging from Community Building, Drupal Media sessions, to the ongoing activities in the Drupal Kata and Dojo. Anyone who has an itch to teach, learn, or collaborate can check out some session ideas and fire up Dimdim.
- Drupal Kata program - With several projects and tasks already on the table, we trying to solidify program guidelines and policies; a mechanism for collaborative development; and an incentive structure for program participants. Our intent to create a sustainable program and give back the tools and knowledge to anyone who wants to roll their own program.
- Drupal Kata website (issue here) - Being the Kata site is an instance of Open Atrium, setting up the initial site should be a breeze after we finalize our site spec and decide where the website should reside. Additional feature development can will be a derivative of the ongoing Kata program. kvantomme is working on ways to integrate his planning/specification platform Spezzle.
- Drupal Kata learning curriculum (issue here) - We have started work on a curriculum based largely on Dominik Lukeš 'Drupal Curriculum and Certification'. We're collaborating with Dominik and anyone else interested in these types of efforts.
That's just some of what's happening. To ensure the program is sustainable we'll be looking for sponsors as well as volunteers. There also will be an ongoing need for mentors and apprentices in all areas.
Details on all that forthcoming, but just wanted to warn people the Dojo is back and we're not going away!!
Please don't hesitate to engage with your questions, comments, and random thoughts.
Cheers!
Comments
More tasks and opportunities to learn!
In addition to the larger projects, there are a wide range of smaller issues and tasks tagged as 'kata'.
Many of these projects already have bounties this can be used as stipends for mentors and/or apprentices.
Chime in if you're interested in participating, observing, or supporting these efforts.
Gus Austin
Doug Vann: ON BOARD!
Gus and I met in #drupal-support. We saw each other helping others and on occasions we tag teamed a solution. We finally met in person at DrupalCampLA. After that he caught me in one channel and invited me over to the dojo channel.
Bottom line...
I've been a member of the dojo group since early 2008. I met with Josh_K at the DoJo BoF at Boston DrupalCon and tried to participate in the hopeful post-Boston revival.
I understand that many efforts have started and failed and that many people have come and gone. I'm less interested in the past and far more interested in the future and opportunities that exist.
As such... I wanted to formally say hello and say that I'm committed to the Drupal-Dojo. Gus and I have discussed some various ways for me to be involved including providing training and raising sponsorships. Looking through the http://intranet.openlearninglabs.org/ I think Gus is the only one posting. I do see others active on the GDO and in chat. I'm reviewing all of the google-docs, wikis, posts, dev site, etc. and wrapping me head around our current status.
Plan on seeing more of me around and don't hesitate to catch me in chat, or contact me in other ways.
I look forward to making Drupal-Dojo a viable, useful tool to further the efforts of the Drupal Project.
The lack of participation
The lack of participation might have something to do with moving the conversation to yet another location that requires another account. Might be one reason many people who are active on existing Drupal channels aren't participating. Another, posts to GDO will be around as long as GDO. Posts to openlearninglabs.org will only be around as long as that site is maintained. If history is any indicator, forking a development community, code repository, and issue tracking does not result in a solution that lasts.
I think you'll see a lot more participation if you keep the conversation on GDO.
one-stop-shop but not GDO
I agree that having yet another place to "discuss" could contribute to confusion but I am not sold that all should be here in GDO. Use GDO to direct people to a one-stop-shop for dojo/openlearning/etc. where plans and such are organized and available in some sort of stable menu structure, not the rack-m and stack'm model used in continuous community discussion environments.
When working process docs get posted to GDO, they become just another post in the stream of posts and are easily forgotten or overlooked. It becomes hard to know what is valid or if what is being seen is the complete picture. Add to this natural issue that fact that there are several groups that seem to say the say the same thing (but not always) and it gets very confusing.
For example, as it is now, I see overlapping posts and topics in these groups:
These seem to be branches on the same tree: Drupal dojo, Drupal kata, Open learning and collaboration
Curriculum and training (this should stay as the place for discussions on all training)
Now you say there is yet another place: http://intranet.openlearninglabs.org/
There is a lot of good planning info spread across these groups (if not more) but where does one start?
I don't think you can manage a project like this using the traditional GDO stacking node process. You need one site that GDO directs people to. Use GDO for announcements, requests for help, etc but each post should send us to the place in the ONE dojo/learning/whatever site where we can contribute or learn what you need from us.
I saw you had some plans for a site but I can't tell if it for the dojo site, the openlearning site, or yet another site. IMHO, you should combine the efforts to build open learning site with the actual place that holds the open learning assets. The concept of OER (open educational resources) has been around for a while. The common element if OER sites I visit is the availability of the resource along with the information needed to contribute more.
Please let us know what you decide. Feel free to contact me directly if there is something I can do to help.
thanks
cindy
[snark] If only there was a
[snark] If only there was a module that helps groups manage hit lists and issues that need to be addressed for projects multiple people are contributing to. Oh right... there is.[end snark]
Gus has already created a Kata project and added several tasks there. Why not use Project to manage this leveraging the servers, bandwidth, support that the D.A. already maintains with a UI and workflow all Drupal developers are already familiar with?
While anyone with a D.O. account can claim an issue, the one (small) issue we've had with Project is it requires contributors to have CVS accounts before someone else can assign them issues... even issues that don't require commits to CVS. Personally, I don't see asking users to get a CVS account as too big a hurdle. If anything, it just gets people one step closer to actively contributing the "Drupal way"... and really, if requesting a CVS account is too much trouble you're probably not going to get much in way of contributions from that person anyway.
Most of the tasks in Kata's queue reference Google docs. What functionality does Google offer that you couldn't get from a wiki on GDO?
Anyone who's been involved in the community long enough has come across links to resources (including links to the old Dojo) that no longer exist.
I've been involved in a number of projects that keep switching project management software because things aren't getting done fast enough. Care to guess how often those software changes help get more of the work done?
IMltHO the issue is that most of the people involved aren't developers, but the project as it is currently designed requires lots of development. The people involved who can develop can only contribute a limited amount of time. Instead of moving forward building out the basic functionality, the group spends most of its time spec'ing out the perfect open learning system and discussing ways to get the massive amount of funds required to build the perfect solution.
We posted the first issue tagged as a kata project more than 4 months ago. I've invested more time talking to Gus about the structure of Kata than it would have taking to just create MERCI Notes myself. Having real deadlines of our own, last week we doled out $10K in bounties for small, Open Media Related projects ourselves because there is still nothing in place to manage a single Kata project.
There are enough groups with funding that want to see this succeed to the point they'd be willing to risk a few hundred/thousand dollars on a Kata project, but I can't see why anyone would invest tens/hundreds of thousands sponsoring this group before it proves it can handle getting something basic done.
I'm begging you to stop adding features to these massive lists and focus on getting one Kata project done or one training video posted with the tools you already have on DO, GDO and http://dev.drupaldojo.com. The shear amount time spent discussing what to do vs. doing it blows my mind.
Drupal Kata site is the one-stop
Hi Cindy
Just in case you missed the updates, we've set up http://www.drupalkata.com/ to better manage all the posts/resources/issues scattered about. We still need leaders in project/sprint management and education to help shape the program, so consider this an open invitation to join.
Cheers!
Gus Austin
Some clarification
Whoa - it's great to have some conversation back in this group. Even more exciting is there's some action and resolved to many of these points brought up above. Let me try to clarify...
The original post (http://groups.drupal.org/node/26076) w/ referenced links 'should' still give an overview of the big picture and how all these pieces/groups fit together. Whatever doesn't make sense needs to be refined and clarified.
The Open Learning Labs intranet is not something that should have been referenced here. I set up the intranet site mainly for back channel discussions and as a staging area for documentation, issues, and lesson plans that we'll post in these public forums.
I'll followup w/ more detail in a bit, but just wanted to quickly chime in.
Gus Austin