Insight for post-GA

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 04:15:23PM -0400, David Nalley wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > OK, referencing our meeting minutes here:
> > http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-mktg/2010-04-22/fedora_insight.2010-04-22-18.01.txt
> >
> > Insight is not ready as of our go/no-go meeting this afternoon, and
> > based on our self-imposed production schedule, we are going to target
> > post-GA for this work.
> >
> > However, I am still concerned about an issue that's plagued us since
> > we started, which is that as a group, it doesn't seem like we're
> > developing our skills at *solving* problems on the Zikula platform.
> >
> > We've been extremely fortunate to have some wonderful people from the
> > Zikula community who are spending time helping us fix problems when we
> > run into them.  To what extent is that collaboration helping them?
> > Are we going to approach a point where they are expending much more
> > effort than what they're getting in return?  What does that mean for
> > sustainability?
> >
> > These are hard questions.  I'm not proposing that we simply not work
> > on Insight.  It's a worthwhile effort many people have said they want,
> > and would increase the visibility and depth of content we could offer
> > a lot of different types of users and the public at large, in a way
> > our wiki can't.
> >
> > We also don't have to halt work on the remaining tickets by any means.
> > Are there some alternatives we should pursue at the same time?
> >
> 
> 
> If you look at projects similar in scope that we've tackled there is
> something we're missing, and that's a real project owner/champion.
> 
> Please don't take this as criticism of anyone. Besides, even if I
> meant it that way, I'd be most at fault.
> 
> What I mean by a real project owner is that we need someone who is
> passionate about getting this done, learns the software (whatever that
> may be), and then works on it, heavily if needed, and becomes the
> champion for this project. As wonderful as our friends at Zikula have
> been, I fear that we have used them as a crutch, to our detriment, and
> not taken ownership.

This is a fair statement.  When the project came to Marketing, the
Zikula platform had already been selected by other people and Mel and
the Marketing team agreed to run with it.  So in a sense there was a
predefined path we felt bound to follow, and that's probably affected
the uptake of the project.

> To date we've had people who took ownership of portions of this
> project (packaging, workflow, infrastructure, etc) And they've done
> good work. And we've had great luck in pulling in help from Zikula,
> and other parts of the community. But the end of the day, we have to
> be able to run, troubleshoot, administer, and fix this ourselves. If
> we start with something less than that, I fear it will be an exercise
> in frustration.

Although I'm passionate about what a CMS could do for us --
particularly providing multiple different views of our resources from
news articles to docs to podcasts -- I haven't been able to devote
much personal time to it.  It's *possible* that could change once Red
Hat finds and hires the next FPL.  But this system can't hang
completely on one person, whether that's me or anyone else.

One very important consideration going forward is, how many
*self-service* resources exist for people to learn and grow skills on
the platform?

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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