NOTE: I'm just sending this to the dev list as this event is meant mainly for those who want to be involved with development of OFBiz itself. There will be a variety of projects going on and we hope everyone will be able to work on both paid and fun stuff, but the results will all be going right back into OFBiz. Still, everyone is welcome to attend and join the "party" so if you know of someone who might be interested but isn't subscribed to the dev mailing list, please forward it on to them.
NOTE2: While most of this conference will be centered around development, if you aren't a developer it doesn't mean you can't come. It would be great to have, for example, people like business analysts and technical writers to help with requirements, design, and documentation and such would be great!
Included below is the original email about this, and most of the information there is still applicable. Here are a few decisions, based on feedback:
1. the conference dates will be 5-9 March 2007 (Monday - Friday), and may spill over into Sat the 10th
2. you don't have to come for the entire conference, but we recommend coming for at least Mon-Wed or Wed-Fri as we'll schedule big-group meetings and any presentations for Wednesday; if you can come for the whole week, please do, it'll be great!
3. people are welcome to come and enjoy local attractions for the weekend before and/or after (it will still be cool in the area here, snowy in the mountains for skiing/boarding/snowmobiling, and depending on weather it can be a great time for visiting the deserts and canyons south of here)
4. the cost to cover the meeting rooms, snacks, infra stuff, etc will be $175 for the week (or $35/day) per person; we will have wireless internet access, and I have a bridge if anyone needs wired access; we will have at least 2 projectors and perhaps other large monitors to facilitate group development and discussion
5. meals, lodging, etc are not included in the main price, but we'll have 5-9 rooms available in the building (for $20-30 per night, first come first serve); there is a decent hotel in town as well for around $80 per night (contact me for details); for meals there are various restaurants within walking distance
6. the attendance cap is initially 20 people; there seems to be a lot of interest in this, so if we go over that we'll raise it by perhaps 5-10 more people and convert some other adjacent rooms in the building to be for group meeting use as well (we're planning on 2 big rooms, plus a fairly big room with a small kitchen in it)
7. the actual development goals are not finalized, but there is quite a bit of interest in various things on the original list I included (below), the big things seem to be testing infrastructure and project management functionality
To register (ASAP please, to make my job of planning easier!), please contact me by email ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) with the following information:
1. your name, company name, contact info (phone, email if different than from address)
2. how many in your group (if more than one, their names too) 3. plans (as much as known) for how many days and which days4. lodging preference - in the building (private rooms, shared toilets/showers) how many rooms, or nearby hotel (I'll respond with contact info for the nice place close by, or there is a "fleabag" motel place too though not sure if I'd recommend it)
5. snack/diet preferences6. local travel plans: do you need a ride, or do you plan to rent/ have a car (I'll try to arrange rides in advance for people that need them, so please ask EARLY and get a verification from me before you depend on this!) 7. while I'm not sure how this will work out, if you need financial assistance or have money you could contribute to getting developers here, please let me know
8. any questions or concerns you haveAlso think about the topics you'd like to cover, especially things that will make your life easier and the lives of your employers/ clients too. I'll be contacting people just before the event to ask for preference and ideas, and then I'll put together a real list for the conference.
I look forward to meeting everyone there! Given the topics and people I've heard from so far this should be a pretty incredible event. I'm predicting we'll have more OFBiz experience in one room than has ever been done before!
-David ============================================================ ============================================================ Hello All,During the Users Conference this past November the idea of a developers conference came up, and being something I had discussed with others before this seemed to be a great idea and something I'd be happy to host here at the same place where we had the user conference in Nov 2006 (ie the old hotel where my home and office are right now, in Ephraim, UT).
The general idea is to get together and basically just work on stuff. We'd like to get as many of the committers and regular contributors here as possible, and maybe even pool some funds to help mitigate the expense for far away people like Jacopo, Jacques, Hans, and perhaps various others.
We may have some presentations on general topics, but the main point will be to pick a few objectives for the project and push them forward. We will definitely want feedback on the projects we want to attach, and I'm thinking we'll have one person champion each objective, and then everyone can split into groups and rotate around and just work on stuff. We'll have a couple of projectors available, plenty of chairs and table space and facilities for everyone's laptops, and then we'll get some snacks and a mountain of bottled water and we should be good to go.
As we talked about this the hope is certainly to help move certain part of the OFBiz project forward, but also to work on anything that at least a couple of people need for clients and hopefully have funding for to help them be able to attend and collaborate.
Ephraim is a small town and rather conservative, but we managed to find pretty good diversion in the evenings, including "imbibing" mountains of pasta, or getting in some beer and bowling at the local alley (which surprisingly, even to me, was pretty decent). For those staying longer in the area there are some national parks within a few hours, and lots of mountain roads that are groomed and marked for snowmobiling and back-country skiing and such (or other things during the summer). We also have games and stuff in the building, like ping pong, foosball, and air hockey types of things.
The 2 main things I think we need to discuss are: 1. when to do it 2. what objectives to pursueFor #1 we're thinking about doing this as a full week late February or early March with 3 possibilities, including: Feb 19 - 23, Feb 26 - Mar 2, or Mar 5 - 9.
These are all about 2 months away and should hopefully give everyone time to get organized and make arrangements.
Before getting into topics to cover, here are a few details about arrangements:
1. this will be sponsored and organized by the new and improved Hotwax Media, and the cost will be minimal and intended to just cover expenses (including meeting room facilities, food/snacks/drinks, and in some cases even lodging); the conference alone (without lodging or meals included) will probably run around $150 per person and as mentioned lodging in the building can be added on very affordably, and the meals dining in the area should be around $20-30 per day depending on how crazy you want to get ;)
2. the location will be old Ephraim Hotel at 24 West Center, Ephraim, UT 84627; we'll have meeting/working space for a maximum of around 25 people and we might be able to arrange for another adjacent room to handle a few more; there will be around 10 very affordable (~$25-30 per night) lodging rooms available in the building, and beyond that we have other rooms that aren't fixed up yet but there are other lodging options in town including a pretty nice mid-range hotel that costs around $80 per night
3. for travel: Ephraim is about a 2 hour drive from the Salt Lake City airport (code: SLC); alternatively, it is about a 4.5 to 5 hour (340 miles) drive from Las Vegas, NV; for real flexibility renting a car is a good idea, but we plan to arrange for rides with various local people or perhaps even a rented van or something for a ride share; we will need feedback on what people need or want in this area too
So, for anyone interested in coming, please contact me (directly, off the list) with your preferences on the following:
1. when to have the conference: Feb 19 - 23, Feb 26 - Mar 2, or Mar 5 - 9
2. your travel and accommodation preferences: need a ride from the SLC airport? prefer to stay at the building or in a nearby hotel?
3. would you be interested and able to contribute to help core people from farther away make it to the conference? if so how much?
4. would you be interested in intermediate level training before the conference (we are considering this, but haven't decided yet), or perhaps even more mentoring oriented sessions during the conference?
5. which objectives most interest you (select from below, and include your own too):
a. testing infrastructure (finishing this up) b. kick-start a body of automated tests based on (a)c. project management build out so many of us as services companies can use it to run our businesses, and so that once it matures we can run/manage OFBiz on it too (this would be an alternative to things like Jira, XPlanner, gForge, etc); this could include a number of sub- objectives, even things like ical, etc features to integrate with desktop calendar and contact and such software; should also include reports, handy UIs for common tasks, short process docs for how we recommend the various tools be used together, etc
d. content solutions: this could/would include stuff built on the current OFBiz content management data model and services, and/or the really cool Webslinger stuff from Brainfood (beyond whatever happens before the conference!)
e. begin development on the human resources applicationf. refactor and clean up really old and messy code, like: the storeOrder service, the order manager checkout process, etc.
g. visually appealing face lift for ecommerce, and based on that the back end apps too; this should include CSS oriented refactoring to be more Zen Garden like and easier to maintain and customize
h. usability enhancements for certainly frequently used screens (like party search, order search, etc) based on AJAX and DHTML
i. generic setup wizard, and perhaps one or two extension wizard examples for specific industries; this would go along with setup data files specific to these as well
j. reporting tool refinements (probably form widget based) and a wider variety of OOTB reports, including some examples of how to do funky and cool print and web reports with these tools
k. working through bugs to stabilize a release branch (which should be started a few weeks before the conference)
l. review, organize, and expand the documentation (mostly now on docs.ofbiz.org, with most stuff moving there)
m. ...Okay, there is a LOT we could cover and depending on how many people show up we'll want a list of probably 5-10 objectives to pursue, making sure we get at least a few things of interest to everyone.
==========================In general this is a chance for all of us to learn tons of stuff and collaborate in a way that is sometimes difficult remotely. The main goal is to take care of things that have been moving slow for a long time, or to jump start things that would be great but just haven't been able to get off the ground yet.
I should also note that we would like to start doing this more regularly, perhaps even quarterly if there is enough interest. We can keep costs fairly low by doing it here in Ephraim or in other places like this, and by doing it regularly we can build the community and move forward long term objectives in a way that has been very difficult so far.
I look forward to seeing as many of us there (here!) as possible! -David
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