Unlocking the Community Toolchest

Tony AtkinsUHI Millenium Institute

What can you expect in the next 30 minutes?

(Should you get a cup of coffee instead?)

A few practical tips…

A bit of philosophy…

A few links to take away…

Whatever else you want to talk about…

Here we go!

A few practical tips…

What tools are out there?

…That’s what you’re here to find out…in the rest of the “Sakai Showcase” …in the tool demo session

What kinds of tools are out there?*

…Core tools are bundled with Sakai and turned on by default

…Provisional tools are bundled with Sakai but turned off by default

…Contributed tools are downloaded and installed separately

…Custom tools are those you write yourself

*What kinds of tools will there be?

…3 star tools, 5 star tools…Shrinking core, expanding periphery…Owned tools, unowned tools…Tools you care about, tools you don’t care

about…Tools to meet new needs…Tools to meet existing needs better

How do I get and install tools?

…Core tools can be run from the demo version of Sakai

…Provisional tools require a bit of configuration to use

…Contributed tools require the ability to build Sakai from source

…Custom tools require familiarity with a whole host of technologies

Who supports these tools?

…Core tools are supported by the portions of the community that use them

…Provisional tools are supported by smaller portions of the community

…Contributed tools are supported by even smaller portions of the community

…Custom tools are supported by your local team

What does “support” actually mean?

…The larger the group, the more likely someone out there can give you advice

…You still have to understand and act on the advice yourself

A bit of philosophy…

“Given enough eyeballs, bugs are shallow”

Linus’ Law: “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”,

Eric S. Raymond

“Adding more users adds more different ways of stressing the

program”“The Cathedral and the Bazaar”,

Eric S. Raymond

The more we work together, the happier we’ll be…

Traditional

Community Source

…Sakai started out as a project supported by a grant

…It’s now supported almost entirely by the community

Open Source is not Free

…If nothing else, you pay for open source software with your time

Community Source is also not Free

…For a community source project to be viable, you need a vibrant group of individuals and institutions willing to share of themselves

…This means you

Different Ways of Contributing

…Assume or share the development cost for a tool

…Participate in Quality Assurance testing…Answer questions…Contribute to documentation…Share your experiences using the software

Support the tools you use

Sharing a tool with the community is primarily a volunteer activity

…You can repay tool developers and their institutions by helping share the burdens…Learn as much as you can about the tools you rely on…Put in high quality support requests…Answer the questions you can in the forums…Document and share your solutions to problems…Contribute code

A few links to take away…

Finding tools

…The Sakai Source Codehttp://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/sakai/

…Contrib Toolshttp://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/

Documentation

…There is a wealth of community support documentation available at:http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/

…Don’t see what you’re looking for? Ask around. If no one has written anything, learn what you can and write it up for the next person.

Sakai Mailing Lists

…There are general, topical, and even tool-specific mailing lists.

…For more information, visit:http://collab.sakaiproject.org/

…List archives can be found at:http://news.gmane.org/(under gmane.comp.cms.sakai)

Bug Tracking

…Most tools use the Sakai JIRA instance to track issues:http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/

…Known issues, patches, workarounds are documented in JIRA.

…Don’t see information on a problem? Report it.

Whatever else you want to talk about…

Questions? Comments?

Recommendations for a good restaurant?