[ckan-dev] Issues/Questions/Cry for help.

[Steven De Costa]

Hi Ross,

1-3 sound good to me. I like the idea of taking some time to refocus and
re-delegate/renominate on issues.

For 4 we can certainly do a blog post as a minimum. One of the things I
think should be great for anyone contributing to CKAN is their ability to
make a big difference and support so many substantial open data initiatives
around the world.

More than a year ago I gave myself the todo item of running a few jobs
through fiverr.com to get flyers posted up in the ICT bulletin boards of
campuses around the world (although I'm yet to get it done!). I think the
message to promote is that the CKAN project is a great place to learn how
to be a part of an open source community and get deeply involved in release
planning and management as well as coding and contributions. Business
Analysts can assist with user stories, use cases and test plans. Coders can
work with both data and code to give them exposure to a wide variety of
techniques that will advance their skills greatly.

We'd have some compelling stats to promote the project if we looked at the
number datasets and resources within just the top 20 or so open data
portals using CKAN. Comparing this to the number of people contributing via
GitHub stats would make it pretty clear that there is quite a bit of
opportunity to gain significant exposure and self promotion for those who
invest a few years or even a few months into the project during their
studies or early years in ICT. The job prospects for those who have a
strong grasp on CKAN look very good - potential for working with national
Governments, major Cities, global non-profits, industry and academia. And,
the option to found their own services business on the back of their niche
skills.

My limited experience is that those already working with CKAN
professionally are typically flooded with client work. Their employers
generally are happy for them to contribute where their contributions align
with core duties but reality conspires against this more often than not and
it remains up to individuals to go above and beyond to make extra time to
contribute more. I think we could break this pattern by tapping into the
greater time available to students and young professionals.

Late last year I started and APAC meetup for those in a timezone which made
it tough to join tech team meetings. I'm hoping to grow this more over the
year ahead and will be encouraging people to become more active
contributors via those fortnightly meetups.

The first one for 2016 is 4 Feb and details are found here:
http://www.meetup.com/Asia-Pacific-CKAN-Meetup/events/227933553/

I'd be very happy to see folks at that next meetup, which can be joined via
video, wherever you may be based :)

Cheers,
Steven




*STEVEN DE COSTA *|
*EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR*www.linkdigital.com.au



On 8 January 2016 at 02:27, Ross Jones <ross at servercode.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I hope everyone that had holidays recently had a relaxing break, and have
> managed to start 2016 with lots of energy!  I almost managed 1 out of the 2
> ;)
>
> After a marathon tech-team meeting today I noticed that we’ve got to 320
> open issues, which are not evenly distributed and I thought it would be
> worth taking steps to rectify this before it gets even more out of hand.
>
> My suggestions are:
>
> 1. Remove the assignee if something has been marked good for contribution
>
> 2. Close anything over 18 months old with a message asking for it to be
> re-opened if this is still an issue, and/or the reporter is willing to help.
>
> 3. Hold an amnesty for users with large numbers of assigned bugs to allow
> the bugs to get re-distributed, specifically for issues that they don’t
> realistically think they’ll get around to.
>
> 4. Encourage more people working with CKAN to contribute to core if/when
> they have time to do so.
>
>
> 1-3 are really just general ticket gardening, but I think #4 is a pretty
> important one that is necessary if we’re to make CKAN ‘more awesome’ in
> 2016 and it is obviously very important for sustainability.
>
> I’m not sure how to encourage more people to contribute to core - not
> necessarily a huge investment in time, just the occasional ticket or
> whatever they feel comfortable with.
>
> So my questions are:
>
> 1. Is everyone okay with points 1-3?
>
> 2. Does anyone have suggestions for 4?
>
> 3. Does anyone on the ML who uses CKAN (by writing extensions for
> instance) want to contribute more?  Is there something that impacts your
> decision to contribute or not? What can we do to help you start
> contributing?
>
> Cheers
>
> Ross
>
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