From Uweb
Notes from 5-15-09 Meeting
Thoughts and ideas from Stone Soup
Sharing Knowledge
- Overloading
- This seems like a system wide problem so I'm putting it here. Should go with methodologies below
- Separate email lists for different areas of expertise? Design v. Dev etc.
- Town Square
- Should this be the wiki or something like it?
- Should there be some sort of developer indoctrination?
- Formal or informal design critiques?
- Suggested readings
- Pragmatic Programmer
- Mythical Man Month
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Practices of an Agile Developer
- Ship It
- UWeb Wiki
- Different lists of keywords maintained for different types of users (i.e. admin vs. dev)
- Leadership
- Are there any institutionally supported programs at A&M for leadership training and advancement?
- Design
- Best Practices
- How it integrates with development
- Best Practices
- Best Practices transcend langauge/framework boundaries
- Caching
- Zipping
- Compression - a la YUI Compressor, etc.
- CDN - Content Delivery Network
- Unit Testing
- Continuous Integration
- Version Control - a.k.a. Source Control and Configuration Management
- Centralized (CVS, Subversion, Team Server) vs
- Decentralized (Git, Bazaar, Mercurial)
- Tool feature comparison
- etc
- Software Development Methodologies
- Lean
- Agile in its various flavors: i.e. Scrum, DSDM, Crystal, etc.
- XP - Extreme Programming
- Tech talks from both
- local established professionals and
- experts from industry
- Other groups in the community at large
- Other Knowledge Resources
Sharing Resources
- Google Search Engine
- Already a shared resource
- Someone who knows more about this than I do is going to have to elaborate on this
- Registry Sniffer for figuring out who is using what tools for possible future cost savings
- Shared hosting of development tools: i.e. JIRA, Jabber, laconi.ca, etc.
- Templates - be they in the form of WordPress themes, etc.
- Open Source Software
- Design and Hosting of utilities desired to be used across campus
- Working together when negotiating software licensing (i.e. Adobe Creative Suite)
- Whois: ought to be a way to query wiki or listerve to generate a table of members by place of employment
Thoughts and ideas from recent listserv activity:
- Romona in SELL for bulk software licensing possibilities?
- Smaller groups could be part of large uWeb organization, modeled after national uwebd - http://cuwebd.ning.com/
- Make sure smaller groups still communicate with the large group
- Work with all groups for projects so we know they'll be well-rounded - accessibility, usability, testing, security
- ColdFusion shops on campus? Texas AgriLife? Wendy Wolfington with BVUAG
- TAMU PHPUG maybe needs new leadership too?
- Do some beginner tutorials, advanced stuff, or the crazy off the wall?
- Living "Best Practices" document
- Survey the audience?
- Let's ask people what two or three issues they'd like help with. University Writing Center has a pro Survey Monkey account we could use, or we can create a wiki page for it
- We could spread the word through Aggie Hotline and/or DistA to grab people beyond this list
- There are enough new(ish) central resources that we badly need to revise the Projects section of wiki ... as in:
- Need a blog? Blogs.tamu.edu
- Need a wiki? Talk to [xyz] about Confluence - Jeff Kurtz, Instructional Tech Services has a confluence instance, but not completely set up
- Need photos? Photo.tamu.edu
- Need a map? [how to use the campus map app]
- Did you know we have a Google Search App? (what it can do for you)
- Need something on howdy.tamu.edu? Talk to portal group
- etc.
- BCS Web/Tech Community Calendar
- meeting times, once a week probably too much
- ITS does offer Confluence Wiki accounts, much like they do for WordPress-powered blogs at Blogs @ TAMU - who can use?
- SHI (www.shi.com) has a LOT of packages including the entire Adobe Creative Suite for a much-reduced cost.
- Specifically with the Adobe products SHI also offers a multi-year "upgrade pricing": something like $100 for ALL updates for two years.
- These prices are Texas Texas A&M System - wide.
- Charlie Lindahl from TAMHSC (Health Science Center) willing to present on: Hannon Hill CMS, LimeSurvey System, Footprints tracking system, myHSC portal (Luminis), etc. etc.
- Other notes:
- University Writing Center hosts the mediawiki install for uweb site, can continue to host, login with netid 206 emails on listserv list, but many duplicates (because of posting problem), and some not here anymore, so 100 for now?
- other meeting locations besides GSC on campus:
- Library?
- WREC conference room 324 - It has a computer, a projector and a screen we can use. Having food/drinks in the conference room isn't an issue at all either. Building is off Bizzell (think across University from Schlotzky's) past Zachary on the right. It is basically between Langford (Architecture) and Zachary. The closest lot for business permits is Lot 51. (It is the lot right behind the construction site that is going on across the street). It can hold 15-20 around the table and then more around the room if needed.
Notes from 5-15-09 Meeting
