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I've recently been awaken to a great concept by one of our fellow Joomlers! It's certainly not my idea, nor will I take credit. I do however agree with the ideas so much that I'm posting on the matter.

"Imagine a bi-weekly live chat with one, two or even more of the core developers. Where users could ask questions and receive answers in real time. With a summery posted on the site."


There are still quite a few that set on the edge. They want to believe that what is happening now with Joomla! won't become what we have seen in the past. Can we bring all that love the program into the loop? Can we work harder to "OPEN" up the group in such a way that we all communicate about the "Real, What is Happening?", and have questions answered, etc on various topics?

What do you think?  Both fellow member's and  core team? Something along the lines of what Mambo is doing with their current Podcasts.... But rather live intereaction on set times and dates?

What do you think?

This is an idea we have already discussed.

We (Core Team) are all for 'opening' up to the community, and we'd like that so far we are doing a pretty good job. Not many projects have a community like ours where users can 'talk' and interact directly with the developers of the project.

Perhaps something like this can be worked out in the future.. maybe a weekly IRC chat with some of the devs.. something like that is quite doable, I'll have a chat to some of the others.

Super Brad.

I like the idea. I realize this takes a bit to put together etc... But I'm certainly glad that it's been discussed before. Thanks for mentioning it to others in the core. Appreciated.

What would be the best way to do this. On the forum or on an Irc or Java chat client

Brian

Hey, cool idea..

Could be as simple as setting up FlashChat, for example, which integrates nicely with Joomla, or the new, AMFPHP driven version which you can test as "guest" here: http://www.eyezberg.com/chat/ Dunno how well this handles MANY users.. maybe Java is faster..?
All text can be exported / copy-pasted into an (edited) report of the session.
Very simple.

Just announce: "on Xday, the xth of december, at X GMT (or whatever it is now..), we will be holding a chat session where you can ask Core devs X and Y (to be confirmed) precise questions about xyz"

Can even be targeted towards specific discussions like ACL, languages etc, and Core participation be adjusted to the date/time set according to the dev's timezones..

Maybe even run a poll or a thread for a week or so asking what the most wanted discussion topics would be..

Content (summarized) could even be used as promo material for news sites.. communiqués.. compiled into monthly reports.. archieved to trace the evolution of J!..

eyezberg wrote:Hey, cool idea..

Now I wonder who is going to ask lots of nice questions to the devs first ..................

How about an audio podcast? The cost to create and publish one of these is nominal. What do you think?

I support this live chat idea very much, also please support my joomla journals section for the forums.

Thanks.

Are there anyone else in the core team that think this is a good idea?

Hi

We're just trying to work out the best technology to use to implement this to enable maximum participation.

(For example irc whilst its very popular amongst developers is not the sort of application that the majority of users have installed these days)

Brian

CORE TEAM DOES NOT HAVE TO promise to be in any live chats, that is not what
anyone is expecting I don't think.

I just think it is just a very good idea to build friendships and
to hang out and chat with anyone who is out there online on the site
at any point in time, whether those chat users know a lot, or know nothing
much at all about Joomla.

Nobody has to make any time sacrifice beyond installling some kind
of basic chat room script. I don't see any reason this should not be
implemented asap.

Alright later people.

squig wrote:CORE TEAM DOES NOT HAVE TO promise to be in any live chats, that is not what
anyone is expecting I don't think.

I just think it is just a very good idea to build friendships and
to hang out and chat with anyone who is out there online on the site
at any point in time, whether those chat users know a lot, or know nothing
much at all about Joomla.

Nobody has to make any time sacrifice beyond installling some kind
of basic chat room script. I don't see any reason this should not be
implemented asap.

Alright later people.

Have you seen: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,3196.0.html

Thanks brian and brad.

@ Squig,

This was more of a question if it were a good idea and who might be interested. It may not work due to time each persons time schedules etc... but you never know until you ask.

The problem with podcasting is that transcription is a dog of a job 

I vote irc or Java client.

I vote for SOMETHING..
It's so quiet these days..

IRC chat with some of the dev's is something we are trying to implement ASAP. Bear with us, few on the team have hadd colds and flu's and generally been flat out...

Hey team, get well soon, the whole bunch of you! We miss you! Where's Rey? Where's everybody?

We are all doing what we do... donating our time free of charge to the Joomla project. Sometimes sickness, family and a host of other factors mean some of us are not as active as others.

Thanks for understanding, and any support you can give us by answering questions here on the forums is much appreciated. Also tested of releases and submitting bug reports is also a great help.

squig wrote:CORE TEAM DOES NOT HAVE TO promise to be in any live chats, that is not what
anyone is expecting I don't think.

I just think it is just a very good idea to build friendships and
to hang out and chat with anyone who is out there online on the site
at any point in time, whether those chat users know a lot, or know nothing
much at all about Joomla.

Nobody has to make any time sacrifice beyond installling some kind
of basic chat room script. I don't see any reason this should not be
implemented asap.

Alright later people.

To add to Brad's reply to this, I'm on Freenode often with my other open source projects, and I'm almost always in channel (even if I don't respond/say much). In fact I'm idling there RIGHT NOW! :O

Pop in if you like...

Edit: I had my sickness and am now well btw :p

Actually this is on the radar. I already contacted Damian (one of the op's on the freenode #joomla channel) and i'm coordinating with him. The plan is to have a few IRC chats after the release of alpha 2. (maybe a weekly one). Specially oriented towards 3P developers. Goal would be to gather feedback on the API changes. Based on this we can fine-tune and make sure we are as backwards compatible as possible, before going towards a beta.

That sounds like a perfect plan; the less CMTs have problems, the less questions and support demands

About submitting bug reports, the problem is we don't know what is still WIP, and what should be working, so it's hard to not submit useless artifacts. It may so happen we test one release, submit, and it was WIP and is already ok in the next one..

I understand that problem Joe, until we are fully alpha 2 u can think of the trunk as a complete WIP. Once we are alpha 2, we start moving towards stabilisation. I will take your advice into account and try to communicate clearly about the status once we are there. How does that sound ?

Even better

This is looking very good. Thank you eyezberg, brad, brian, pasamio and others. We do tend to imagine all the people, we just tend to not put up sites that have the look and feel of woodstock...  Well, I personally wouldn't want another vw beetle.

I've really been enjoying the mambo podcasts with the latest having Martin set in for a session. I love english/UK/British voices. I have a computer consultant friend that was on the mandrake linux team for quite some time. He is from Norway and now lives here in US,IL close to where I am. Martin reminds me of my good friend when listening to him.

Anyhow, the whole idea here should be looked at as a Joomla! promotional event and I'm not at all against podcasts or something where we can enjoy the core and other teams speaking on various topics and future ideas for joomla.

Martin really had something to say with the latest #4 podcast and I beleive we can do better ourselves to bring future ideas and concepts for joomla to the forfront. All of course in a postive direction and with goodwill towards the joomla community. I myself would be willing to help with such an event. I've maintained my own professional television commercials in the early 90's. I'm quite sure podcasts or audio casts can be performed with limited technical abilities. Open IRC is an idea as well, but less marketable in my own opinion.

PS. I didn't however agree with everything in the podcast. Just one example was saying simpleboard is now mamboboard. They say they found someone to adopt the little orphan. Of course you can see the issues in the podcasts no doubt, the point is, advertisement. Anyone in business knows even bad advertisement is better than no advertisement. Nevertheless, anyone wanting the dev's opinion on matters will look it up. http://www.tsmf.net/content/view/176/43/

And as stated in previous posts, all ideas are just that, ideas.

My vote is forget irc, that is useless as far as I am concerned and not at all practical or userfriendly
whatsoever to people who either randomly or purposely visit these forums to learn or talk about Joomla
stuff.

Someone should today just install the AJAX shoutbox for joomla
or some similar simple browser chat thing to run as people are
viewing the pages on this forum so they can chat as they view different
posts.

Bye.

rjs wrote:This is looking very good. Thank you eyezberg, brad, brian, pasamio and others. We do tend to imagine all the people, we just tend to not put up sites that have the look and feel of woodstock...  Well, I personally wouldn't want another vw beetle.

I've really been enjoying the mambo podcasts with the latest having Martin set in for a session. I love english/UK/British voices. I have a computer consultant friend that was on the mandrake linux team for quite some time. He is from Norway and now lives here in US,IL close to where I am. Martin reminds me of my good friend when listening to him.

Anyhow, the whole idea here should be looked at as a Joomla! promotional event and I'm not at all against podcasts or something where we can enjoy the core and other teams speaking on various topics and future ideas for joomla.

Martin really had something to say with the latest #4 podcast and I beleive we can do better ourselves to bring future ideas and concepts for joomla to the forfront. All of course in a postive direction and with goodwill towards the joomla community. I myself would be willing to help with such an event. I've maintained my own professional television commercials in the early 90's. I'm quite sure podcasts or audio casts can be performed with limited technical abilities. Open IRC is an idea as well, but less marketable in my own opinion.

PS. I didn't however agree with everything in the podcast. Just one example was saying simpleboard is now mamboboard. They say they found someone to adopt the little orphan. Of course you can see the issues in the podcasts no doubt, the point is, advertisement. Anyone in business knows even bad advertisement is better than no advertisement. Nevertheless, anyone wanting the dev's opinion on matters will look it up. http://www.tsmf.net/content/view/176/43/

And as stated in previous posts, all ideas are just that, ideas.

What does this mamboBoard mean for Joomla? Will it still work in the future?

One thing I would love to see, as a newbie, is more integrated stuuf such as a native newsletter, shop, and message board. And of course a one button updater for all.

krbmedia wrote:
What does this mamboBoard mean for Joomla? Will it still work in the future?

One thing I would love to see, as a newbie, is more integrated stuuf such as a native newsletter, shop, and message board. And of course a one button updater for all.

Doesn't mean anything. Joomlaboard is a very actively maintained product for joomla. Mamboboard is Mambo's attempt at keeping the popular component compatible with mambo. No worries. Back to the topic....

Thought I would drag this ol'e thread back up.

The new podcast interviewing Mitch was fantastic at Jamboworks. Quality was good, content even better.

If you haven't had the opportunity to catch it, http://www.jamboworks.com .

If there are other ideas shoot them along. The devleoper IRC chats are also on their way, a first one is currently being planned right after the alpha2 release.