RFC : more participation through a reworked “Get Involved” section.

Thursday 31 March 2011 4:10:25 am

By : Nicolas Pastorino

The “Get Involved” section is being reworked in depth. We need your feedback on the proposal made by the share.ez.no team, read-on and comment !

This RFC will stay open for two weeks. The objective is to gather your feedback on both the content and the structure of this new “Get Involved” section.

The objective in revamping this section is to improve the guidance for new and existing community members. The content is sliced and diced according to the main fields of activity of our community. For each of them (develop, exchange, internationalize, etc), a clear description is given, under the form of an invitation for potentially interested people.

The first entry on the right-side menu ( take a look at the "Table of contents" box on the right of this text, the first entry is "Introduction" ) will be the main landing page of the get-involved section. All other entries on the right-side menu (Develop, Exchange, ..) are sensed to be, in the final layout, independent subpages of /get-involved (the main landing page). While difficult to present in a blog post, please try, when reviewing this RFC, to picture it like this. The diagram below gives an idea of the envisioned final structure.

This section will be made full-width, so that one scroll maximum is required to read the whole page. Thanks in advance for spending 5 minutes of your time with us, start here.

 
 

Introduction page (/get-involved)

Tabview :
[develop] [exchange] [tutorials] [internationalize] [spread the word] [events] [infrastructure]

As a new comer or a long-distance member, you can find, right here on this page, guidance on how to get involved. Come as you are, there is something for you. And no, you do not have to be a senior coder to wire-in :)

This place is the eZ Community. It reflects eZ Systems dedicated care towards its community, and the eZ Ecosystem 's core philosophy: Open, Share, Innovate. By being open, sharing ideas and experiences together, we believe we can achieve greater things.

 

The eZ Community is for anybody having a degree of connection with eZ Publish : developers, eZ Partners, eZ Customers, IT managers, technology deciders, content editors, journalists. Implicitly, lots of connected communities are warmly welcomed here too : designers, php developers, web developers, architects, open-source lovers, evangelists, analysts, content management experts, Apache Zeta Components users & developers, Solr addicts, TinyMCE users and developers, etc.

 

This place is meant to be as attractive, open, helpful, rich in exchanges, innovative, intense and fun as possible to all eZ-Publish-connected people.

Personal recognition, gratification, fun, more knowledge, new skills, career and business opportunities, visibility, meeting new people from all around the globe at eZ Events, that is what you can get in return.

 

Questions / Contact

If you have any questions regarding the participation model, or the community project, please contact us through community AT ez DOT no. Also, feel free to contact members of the share team, the people behind this platform.

 

Develop (/get-involved/develop)

Tab view: [ eZ Publish ] [ Extensions ] [ Development Resources ]

 

"The eZ Community Project Board mission is to lead the community, facilitate collaboration between the community and eZ Systems and to foster innovation of the eZ Publish content management platform"

 

Participate to eZ Publish development

The eZ Publish Community Project is where innovation happens, where the eZ Community and eZ Engineers collaborate, contribute to eZ Publish's kernel to make it tomorrow's Content Management Platform.

This is the place where you can :

  • Develop new features,
  • Bring enhancements,
  • Fix bugs,
  • Report bugs

Coding along with the other contributors to eZ Publish will get you to learn eZ Publish even deeper, and get a great share of recognition.

But coding is not all, you can get involved on other aspects like reporting issues, or testing the software, seize your chance !

The eZ Publish Community Project is managed by a Board of community members and eZ employees. The Board is communicating through its blog (http://share.ez.no/blogs/community-project-board). To get in touch with them you can post comments on the blog posts, or get in direct touch with them : http://share.ez.no/community/profile/111598 . The Board’s main role is to foster a large innovation at a fast pace. eZ Publish Community Project should absolutely not be used for business-critical platforms, and should rather be seen as an opportunity for eZ Ecosystem members to share one's real-life eZ Publish experiences by bringing-in features & bug-fixes. The production-ready version is called eZ Publish Enterprise Edition.

When thinking of developing large features, implying large code change-sets, you first have to submit your idea to the Board, ensuring a proper synchronization of all initiatives. Also, you need to sign a CLA before submitting your contribution : Contributor Licensing Agreement - CLA.

TODO : link to release policy explanation

 

Develop & share eZ Publish extensions

You have developed a cool extension for eZ Publish ? You would like to share it, and get other community members to help you push it ahead ? Then you should visit http://projects.ez.no and open-source it there. You can log in with your ez.no account (the same as your share.ez.no account), and create a new project there. You may want to first check that no similar extension already exists, in which case you would probably prefer joining the existing team and tell about your ideas, suggestions or exisiting code.

This platform gives every project a simple collaborative development sandbox:

  • forums
  • a subversion repository
  • a news wall
  • a home page
  • a rating system for people to praise or blame
  • galleries for screenshots
  • a download section
 

Resources

How to use GIT/Github to contribute to eZ Publish

How to contribute to eZ Publish using Git is a must-read before contributing to eZ Publish Community Project. It gives :

  • Tips & tricks on how to use git/github with eZ Publish,
  • Guidance on how to submit your code
 

Coding standards

TODO : (Bertrand D. working on this)

 

Documentation

The eZ Publish documentation can be found here : http://doc.ez.no. The API documentation can be found there : http://pubsvn.ez.no/doxygen/trunk/html/index.html. An alternative documentation source is http://ezpedia.org, very complimentary to the above.

Lots of knowledge can also be found in the tutorials section : http://share.ez.no/learn. Contribution is totally open there, feel free to come-up with your idea, we will gladly publish it !

TODO : contribution to the documentation

Anyone who is into writing new, and maintaining documentation is welcome to help out.

eZ Systems also provides a large range of training offers : http://ez.no/eZPublish/Training-and-Certification

 

Issue tracker

Use http://issues.ez.no/ezpublish to report issues, bugs or requests for enhancements on eZ Publish and extensions.

 

Apache Zeta Components (formerly known as eZ Components)

The Apache Zeta Components are used by the kernel eZ Publish, and can be very simply used when developing your own extensions. You may want to have a look at this blasting, high-quality library of loosely-coupled PHP components.

Visit the Zeta Components website : http://incubator.apache.org/zetacomponents/

 

Tools

TODO : developer’s tools such as best-in-breed extensions (or how to find on projects.ez.no ide plugins), ezlupdate etc.

 

Exchange (/get-involved/exchange)

The eZ Community is active on a fair amount of communication channels. Below is a list of those channels, following them to stay tuned on what is going on in the community !

Forums

A well known method of participation in a community project is by being active in forums. eZ’s forums can be found at http://share.ez.no. If you already have knowledge about eZ Publish, a great way to contribute is to check in on the forum regularly and help other community members by answering their questions. In most cases, you learn along the way yourself. If you are rather new, simply step-by and use them, you will learn volumes !

From http://share.ez.no/forums, you can pick one of the existing forums and ask a question, make a remark, answers others' questions, or simply read through, looking for a bit of information. The following forums are available:

The "Extensions" forum is broken down into extension-specific subforums:

One forum is dedicated to translators and linguists translating eZ Publish :

One forum is dedicated to local eZ Publish communities who do not have a dedicated platform and would like to share in their native language :

If you think a local community is missing forums in her own languages, tell us, we'll make this happen <todo: link to contact info/form>
A last forum welcomes suggestions for this portal:

It is often used in conjunction with the share.ez.no-dedicated issue tracker (not to be confused with the general eZ Publish issue tracker).

 

Blogs

Blogging daily, weekly, monthly, now and then, is a common way to share your thoughts. You can have your own blog on the eZ Community portal, you are a few clicks away from this : Your blog on the eZ Community portal.

On top of this, a central blog planet is aggregating many community members' blogs: http://planetezpublish.org (available through RSS ). In case you have your own blog on a separate platform, and are sometimes talking about eZ Publish, you should get it through the planet : http://planetezpublish.org/contact_us.

Local initiatives exists, among them the french-speaking blog-planet : http://www.planet-ezpublish.fr.

 

Chat on IRC

Two channels are dedicated to live chat (mostly around eZ Publish and Apache Zeta Components - formerly known as eZ Components), here they are :

Feel free to join the chat. There usually is a number of people willing to help you out with your problem or discuss features. You need an IRC Client for joining the channel. Here is an indicative list of popular IRC clients :

 

Mailing-lists

Feel free to register on the eZ Community mailing-list. You can do so here : http://lists.ez.no/mailman/listinfo/sdk-public. It serves as a community support channel, obviously less responsive than IRC or twitter, but more persistent, which can be preferred in some cases.

 

RSS

Follow the eZ Community activity through RSS. Here are the feeds at your disposal:

 

Learn and Teach : Knowledge Base (/get-involved/learn-and-teach)

The Learn sections is a goldmine of useful, practical tutorials on eZ Publish and eZ Software. That is the definitive place to be when learning eZ Publish. You may be willing to contribute to growing the amount of common gold by sharing one of your experiences, read more on this here : Share your experience, write a tutorial for the Community.

 

Internationalize / Localize (/get-involved/internationalize)

A last example on how to contribute to the project, is creating and maintaining translations for eZ Publish and related products. A central community translation initiative is hosted here http://projects.ez.no/ezpublish_translation. The homepage of the project gives you all necessary details to get involved in translating eZ Publish into your preferred language. If you feel you have a linguist soul, or simply are fed up with not being able to use eZ Publish in your native language, this initiative is for you !

Also, you need to sign a CLA before submitting your contribution : Contributor Licensing Agreement - CLA.

 

Spread the word (/get-involved/spread-the-word)

Twitter

Stay tuned on the portal's activity by following @ezcommunity. Also, cool instant pings happen on Twitter, where many community members are active. Feel free to join this sphere, and the first step could be to follow this Twitter list : http://twitter.com/i_robin/cms-ezpublish/members.

 

LinkedIn and the likes

The eZ Ecosystem is also gathered on LinkedIn, swing by there!
Local initiatives exist :

Tell us the ones you know, we will list them here promptly !

 

Link-backs

A common practice for spreading the word about something you like or find useful is to link back to it. From your various online presences (your own blog, your profiles, etc. ) you should do so with http://share.ez.no : a link-back, a small description if there is room for it. That will be of great benefit to our community.

 

On your resume

Stating that you know eZ Publish on your resume is likely to raise interest around it. eZ Publish developers are looked for intensively, so tell them you are into it !

 

User/Interest groups

When participating to user or interest groups, mentioning eZ Publish, when appropriate, is a guarantee of a continued growth of the eZ Community. These simple actions help push the boundaries of our Community.

 

Something is missing ?

The world of social media is moving fast, tell us about your findings where you think the eZ Community should be !
<link to contact form/info>

 

Events (/get-involved/events)

Meeting after online exchanges always feels good. Putting faces on nicknames, having a beer together, face-to-face talks recharge batteries and give a ton of energy for a continued engagement, once back home.
eZ organizes two large events a year :

  • The eZ Conference, usually in June
  • The eZ Winter Conference, usually by the end of january, followed by a ski week-end.
 

These are great occasion to hear greatly instructive talks about eZ Publish, its technological surroundings as well as business experts. They are respectively announced here on share.ez.no, stay tuned on your RSS feeds and register once they are announced !

On top of this, an event planner is coming up, allowing Community members to announce their participation to events where they are to mention/talk about eZ Publish. These can be all types of conferences, ranging from the many PHP conferences to more business-driven fairs and conventions, through open-source meet-ups. Having these events listed will be a good way to grab an occasion to meet other community members participating to conferences you will attend to. More contact, more power.

 

Infrastructure (/get-involved/infrastructure)

The share.ez.no team is taking care of the eZ Community's infrastructure. It ranges from this website, to projects.ez.no, planetezpublish.org, pubsvn.ez.no, ezpedia.org. They can be followed through their blog, and contacted directly through their respective profiles.
Two main tools are used to gather feedback on the infrastructure :

 

So feel free to feed your ideas, remarks, or bugs you found through the issue tracker or the forums, this helps making everyone's life better !

And if you feel you can contribute to evolving these platforms, you should join the share.ez.no team. Just tell us : <todo:link to contact info/form>

 

Reputation System (the Gameplay) (/get-involved/reputation)

Being rolled-out progressively, a reputation system will add a game layer on top of the eZ Community World. Participating in the eZ Community’s life, on the various fields described under http://share.ez.no/get-involved, will let you accumulate points, grow your karma and unlock badges. More later, but keep in mind that all of your contributions are already counted, and will be introduced step-by-step, visually, on members’ profiles. We do not see why your participation should not be rewarded :)

Our idea is to let you have, on your eZ Community profile, a clear score-card of your activity within our community. While this is first and foremost a source of fun, you can also advertise this to show your involvement in the project, gain recognition, show your skills and experience. Can be useful for you. We will make sure that this score-card can be surfaced through widgets anywhere else : LinkedIn, Blogging platforms, etc.

Here is below an idea of the badges you can unlock. If you have used http://stackoverflow.com, or foursquare/gowalla before, this should feel familiar. Also, if you have new ideas, tell us ! ( <todo:link to contact info/form> )

 
Loyalty badges

Badges rewarding a steady activity on a given period of time.

Badge label Badge description
New comer A person who posted once
Regular A person who posted at least once a month during one year. The badge should include year information
Super Regular A person who posted at least 5 times a month during one year. The badge should include year information.
eZ Community Mainstay A person who earned the Regular badge 3 different years.
eZ Community Cornerstone A person who earned the Super Regular badge 3 different years.
Teacher A person who posted at least 5 tutorials
Dean of the eZ Community A person who posted at least 15 tutorials
Ambassador A person who invited 3 new members to the eZ Community
Settler A person who invited 10 new members to the eZ Community
Boundary Spanner A person who invited 30 new members to the eZ Community
Godfather A person who invited 100 new members to the eZ Community
Serial coder A person who committed (pull-request) at least once a month during one year. The badge should include year information
Super serial coder A person who committed (pull-request) at least 5 times a month during one year. The badge should include year information
 
Quantity badges
Badge label Badge description
Chatter apprentice A person having posted 10 times in the forums.
Forum addict of the month A person having posted the most in the forums in a month. The badge should include year & month information
Forum addict of the year A person having posted most in the forums in a year. The badge should include year information
Top blogger of the year A person having posted the largest amount of blog posts in a year. The badge should include year information
Top teacher of the year A person having posted the largest amount of tutorials in a year. The badge should include year information
eZ Publish coder A person having committed once on eZ Publish. (pull-request)
Pop eZ Publish coder A person having committed 10 times on eZ Publish. (pull-request)
Rock’n roll eZ Publish coder A person having committed 50 times on eZ Publish. (pull-request)
Heavy eZ Publish coder A person having committed 100 times on eZ Publish. (pull-request)
 
Quality badges
Badge label Badge description
Relevant Forum scanner A person who received more than 10 "Likes" in forums
Top Notch Forum scanner A person who received more than 50 "Likes" in forums
eZ Publish Nobel Prize Author A tutorial author praised with 5-stars 5 times.
Shakespearian eZ Publish Author A tutorial author praised with 5-stars 2 times.
 
Group, Appointment, Locational and Knowledge badges

Ideas :

  • Hackathons at events
  • Code rushes before releases
  • Hackathons for crafting a new feature
  • Participation to a feature-branch
  • Participation to an eZ Event
  • April fools
  • New year’s eve
  • Saint Patrick day
  • Halloween
  • Easter
  • Christmas
  • Certification passed

These ideas were not 100% thought through yet, hence the absence of exact badge definitions.

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