[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen Web Site Strategy

Fri Nov 12 10:03:08 EST 2010

Here are some of my thoughts on a few of the goals:

> Strategic Goal #1:
> Requirement: Provide a centralized location for Evergreen feature information,
> documentation, and software downloads.

-Perhaps this can be worded so it sounds more like you are providing links to existing tools and not creating a one stop site to replace the existing tools?

-Additional Requirement for goal #1: Enhance the search features to search across multiple resources more effectively.

> Strategic Goal #2: Encourage growth of a healthy developer community
> Requirement: Provide an effective platform for Evergreen developers to
> communicate with each other and with Evergreen users
Are the current ones broken? Are the current platforms ineffective? First, I would have to ask the active developers whether the current system is effective for their communication? Perhaps a survey has already been done or feedback has been given? As a user of Evergreen since 2008, I would say that I have been extremely satisfied with the opportunities which currently exist to communicate with developers or others who may have some answers or suggestions. I am also impressed  at how open the communication was, allowing any user the opportunity to see the communication take place and participate.  I suppose there could be improvements to ensure that everyone knows the channels of communication and how to use them? As well, I have seen question asked on the lists which have slipped through the cracks. I think more info or a guide about each communication channel and advantages and disadvantages of each or when to use a particular one might be helpful?

> Requirement: Provide technical information needed by current and future
> Evergreen developers
Dan made an important point about how the website is one minor piece of this puzzle. The more important questions is how to extract the information from the minds of the experienced developers in a way to make it easy to digest for new developers. Some developers such as Dan Scott, have made great efforts to share everything they know through workshops and writings etc... and we are trying to capture some of that in the development part of the documentation. However, this does take time and a ton of work. I also wondered if some support entities could provide developer training or even fee based developer certification programs for Evergreen. Not sure if that is even a good idea or would sense in a business model?

> Strategic Goal #4: Encourage widespread adoption of Evergreen by the
> library community worldwide.
This is a lofty one and I wonder how much the website can really address this? A translation strategy for the information would be one way to assist in this goal if the resources exist, or ensuring that the site can be easily translated as Dan suggested. The current language support in Evergreen has come about organically because early adopters happen to be from specific regions which is why we have support for some languages and not others. We do have a chapter on localization and languages in the documentation which I hope will eventually include guidance on introducing new languages into Evergreen. One resource mentioned which could help in this is the Evergreen directory (if we have a good list of users or support mechanisms from other countries). In my mind, 99% of the battle to encourage widespread adoption worldwide comes down to the following:

1) Great software (done)

2) Great documentation (in progress via DIG buts lots of work to be done)

3) More languages supported out of the box (perhaps a larger Evergreen support company could make this a strategic goal based on a business model to infiltrate untapped markets such as China?)

4) Documentation available in multiple languages (This seems like a daunting task – I can’t even imagine the work required to translate the existing official documentation into one other language.)
- A short term goal perhaps is for the existence of unofficial IRC channels or blogs or lists in other languages. If these exist, the website/communication folks could have a goal to find them and provide the links or directory listings from the site so international folks can find multilingual resources.

5) International developers and documentation writers. Currently, Evergreen seems pretty North American, or at least English, centric. The hope is that the group of developers can be extended to communities outside of North America. Then I feel worldwide adoption could grow much more rapidly. This can happen in several ways:

a) Existing support company decides to extend its market to other countries outside of North America and train and hire international developers.
b) A new support company forms in a specific region/country with developers from the region.
c) Happens naturally with specific organizations deciding to use Evergreen in a country and learns the code.
d) An international educational institution embraces Evergreen and sees the exciting possibilities for development and curriculum.
e) A North American educational institution currently using Evergreen uses its international connections or campuses to collaborate with international people or entities or create curriculum around Evergreen software in regions outside of North America.

The other tool for “encouraging widespread adoption” is marketing. If people don’t know about Evergreen, how can they use it. Creating a good website and centralizing resources is not enough if no one can find it or thinks about it. Perhaps other marketing strategies could be developed such as the use of youtube video commercials to promote Evergreen as a low cost solution for institutions with limited resources?

Of Course, this all sounds great, but as Dan suggested and as I have experienced with DIG, it doesn’t mean very much if you do not have the tangibles - time or resources or volunteers to implement the strategies.

Regards,
Robert

Robert Soulliere, BA (Hons), MLIS
Systems Librarian
Mohawk College Library
robert.soulliere at mohawkcollege.ca
Telephone: 905 575 1212 x3936
Fax: 905 575 2011
________________________________________
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Anoop Atre [anoop.atre at mnsu.edu]
Sent: November 11, 2010 8:22 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen Web Site Strategy

Dan
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!

> At a very low-level, I'm not sure whether these requirements allow for
> multiple web sites. "an easy-to-use, comprehensive portal" suggests
> one Web site to rule them all, which would be (in my opinion) a
> mistake. For example, I would argue that our adoption of Launchpad,
> perhaps in combination with the wiki, is "a mechanism for Evergreen
> users to share development plans, co-sponsor development projects, and
> submit development requests and bug reports", and it would seem to me
> to be a huge waste of resources to try to recreate it.

The current website is doing this "portal" thing to an extent already
say by pulling in the blog entries, being a central website so people
don't have to check 5 different places for information/updates.

For example I want to see the SVN and Launchpad entries get pulled in to
a pretty section on the website so someone who isn't subscribed for
updates from those sites could see all the great work that has been done
at a glance.

I wish I could snap my fingers and have the Fedora website you'd
mentioned [ [ http://fedoraproject.org/ ] which is what I'd like us to
get to one day.

> Hmm. When you list strategic goals for the Web site, I pretty much
> immediately wonder whether these are aligned with the community's
> strategic goals (and then I hate myself for thinking like an
> administrator, but that's a different issue). WIG could adopt the
> draft as working strategic goals, but if we think we have an overall
> mission for Evergreen, that should be front and centre on the landing
> page of http://evergreen-ils.org/ shouldn't it? Taking that approach,
> the mission for Evergreen on the development side, since at least
> 2006, is that it be "stable, robust, flexible, secure, and
> user-friendly". Perhaps we need a separate discussion to tease out an
> overall mission for Evergreen.

I agree that the WIG is going to use them as working strategic goals,
the draft was not proposed for the overall Evergreen mission. I will
leave the bigger discussion to be brought up by the governance folks to
the community.

> I think that we could and should drop some of the oblique terminology
> where possible, as this would help drive out requirements and/or steps
> to take to address certain goals. For example, if "Strategic Goal #3:
> Facilitate development of multi-faceted support network for Evergreen
> users." really means "Reduce Evergreen's reliance on Equinox for the
> bulk of its development and support needs", it seems like this
> overlaps with "Strategic Goal #2: Encourage growth of a healthy
> developer community" ... and in either case, rather than jumping
> directly to "What do we need to do with the Web site to achieve this
> goal?", it might be better answered by steps such as "Hire developers
> locally, give them training and time to develop their
> Evergreen-specific skills, and set an expectation that they will
> participate in the Evergreen development community" and perhaps "Get
> Evergreen packaged in Linux distributions so that it will be much more
> accessible to a broader audience of potential developers", as just
> some initial thoughts.

2 & 3 are slightly different. 3 is not only necessarily just reduce
reliance on Equinox but also provide a list of service providers which
is easy to find for libraries looking on our site. Encourage community
sharing and communication, even with the mailing list there is a lot of
ideas and works not being communicated when it comes to non-devs. Chris
Sharp is setting up a jabber server which the communications team thinks
will be less intimidating than IRC for their discussions/chats.

Regarding 2 your suggestions are what we want to provide on the website,
I think the oblique terminology doesn't help : ) and the strategies are
what the website should keep working towards.

I second re-wording the language, if the folks from the communications
group (including me) could take a stab at this on the dokuwiki page it
would be great. Just because they came up with draft. I'd like the
comments to the initial draft coming to this thread to keep things together.

http://www.evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=webteam.strategic_goals_requirements

> "Provide technical information needed by current and future Evergreen
> developers" identifies a broad gap that's much more than just the Web
> site in scope; it's really "Produce more entry-level developer
> documentation, training, and sample code" (some of which will probably
> live on the Web site, but a lot of writing and curriculum development
> needs to happen before the Web site needs to get involved).

+1

> On a similar angle, "Strategic Goal #4: Encourage widespread adoption
> of Evergreen by the library community worldwide." may be an implicit
> goal for the community, for which the Web site could take tactical
> steps (for example, "Web pages should be able to be translated and
> maintained in sync across all languages") vs. non-Web site tactics
> such as advocacy requirements ("Send Evergreen community members to
> international library conferences in exotic locations to spread the
> word about Evergreen" -- okay, more realistically, dent and tweet and
> blog -- or even more importantly -- create a great stable, robust,
> flexible, secure, and user-friendly library system and provide
> excellent, up-to-date documentation for it) and development
> requirements ("Support right-to-left languages", "Add
> internationalization support to pages developed using
> Template::Toolkit") and community requirements ("Find an
> internationalization coordinator"). But listing that as a strategic
> goal for the Web site itself seems like it's over-reaching.

I would second this also.

> That might be the primary thing that bothers me about a fragmented
> approach like this: rather than starting with a general discussion
> about a problem the community has, and what steps we can take to
> tackle those problems on various fronts, and who can actually do the
> work required to tackle those problems, starting from the perspective
> of just one particular Interest Group skews the discussion
> significantly.
>
> Of course, we can talk about goals and requirements and tactics, but I
> think we would all agree that the current Web site could use some
> love, and I know the WIG wants to give it some love, but ultimately it
> takes people doing work to make a tangible difference. So could I
> suggest a parallel approach (assuming that there will be some other
> discussion about community-level goals and challenges)? Could WIG be
> redefined to mean "Web site Implementation Group", and start by
> finding one concrete gap between our community's needs for a website
> and our current Web presence that you think needs to be tackled
> (perhaps drawn from the current draft list of goals/requirements),
> discuss that particular gap that you want to tackle with possible
> solutions in more detail on the mailing list, and then actually tackle
> the problem (perhaps in a few different ways, depending on how much
> effort is required), inviting feedback while the solution to that
> problem gets developed?

As Lori mentioned the "Web site Interest Group" did get sucked into the
Communications group and then created a sub group to wade through the
existing site/content. The sub group "Web site Implementation Group"
still needs to meet and plan the attack on the website.

I was supposed to send the strategies out earlier than I did and should
have probably highlighted the changes in the WIG/Communications group.
As the kids say "my bad".

Hopefully this helps clarify things a bit for you and others. If we want
to use this thread to discuss what's lacking on the website and what
folks want to see fixed/changed/added that'd be fine with me.

Please email me or anyone on the communications committee if you think
something does not make sense and you don't feel like mailing the list
(I'll make sure the community also gets notified the clarification
requested by the anonymous person).

Again the strategies/goals are more a guideline for what we think the
the website needs to provide.

Dan thanks again for your thoughts, I'd like to see some more discussion
on this so please chime in folks.

Cheers

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Anoop Atre
IS Developer & Integrator, MnPALS
PH: 507.389.5060
OF: 3022 Memorial Library (Office-ML 3022)
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