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TWiki Marketing Meeting, 21 Apr 2008

"TWiki, the open source wiki for the enterprise."

Logistics

Attendees

1. Blogging

  • Vicki will do a newsletter this week
  • Vicki will create newsletter application (outstanding action item)
  • Koen will write blog entry for Dutch meetup
  • Not much blogging activity
  • Why does Technorati show WebChanges of twiki sites as blog posts?

2. Usability & Home Page Redesign

  • Small steps at a time: Define pages at TWikiOrgRenewalWorks2008ToDo and put names on work items
  • Use the live server, but not link to the work in progress pages; indicate on top that this is work in progress
  • New "Apps" web needed
    • Plugins web is for extension developer and wiki champions
    • Apps web is for wiki champions and application assemblers
    • The Sandbox will be cleaned up from time to time (except for the sample applications.)

3. Testimonials & Contest

  • we have 5 videos, yay!
  • 4 qualify (one is too short)
  • the community can start to vote tomorrow
  • the vote app needs to be done

4. TWiki.org Performance

  • One web server and SAN backend has been racked and powered up
  • MarcosDella will help out in the load balancing configuration

5. Merchandising

6. TWiki Meetups

  • 04/25 in delft (Holland)
  • Action item for amir: announce next one in mid may

7. TWiki Summit

  • We have confirmation from Motorola in Berlin that they will let us have a meeting room for the two days the 4th and 5th of September 2008
  • People need to put their names on the participant list soon and we need to book hotels in very near future because there is a big event in Berlin the same week so hotels are getting booked the next months.
  • OliverKrueger is going to inform at the hotel about block booking and availability
  • Further discussion at TWikiCommunitySummitBerlin2008Q3
  • It looks like we will have a good turnout!

8. Brainstorming for ideas

  • Wikipedia-Marketing: Make sure that all "Wiki"-related articles have a link to the TWiki-Wikipedia-article.
  • Can we do a mashup with the geo coordinates of the UserForm data on t.o.?

Action items

Read more IRC Transcript

Back to: TWikiMarketing

Discussion

I think both for technical reasons as well as from a targetting the right people perspective there's no fundamental difference between plugins, contribs, add-ons, etc and twiki apps. Even the plugins in the plugins web are targetting quite different groups. Some are full solutions, some are just infrastructure or language extensions. Some of the plugins even come with perl code and a twiki app. So the decision where to put a specific extensions may be blurry. What I don't want is to put the plugin into the plugin web (because it contains perl code) and the application build ontop into the app web. That won't be a good idea. The only real reason why one would perfer an extensions web for apps only seems to be that they might get lost in the masses inside the plugins web. Concluding, it would be better to:

  1. put extensions incl. apps into the plugins web
  2. restructure the plugins web the same way the twiki.org frontpage gets redesigned

See other projects with a plugins community. Vicki proposed an example (or demo web). This makes much more sense. I would not stretch use of the Sandbox web too much. In the sandbox web, people are allowed to do what they want. It's a kind of graffiti area where they can do what they want. An example or demo web and probably subwebs for some larger apps is more of a place where well defined apps are deployed that people shall use in a certain way, i.e. not as freely as in the Sandbox. However, only a small fraction of twiki apps will probably be installable on twiki.org as it will certainly be missing some of the needed plugins not being installed. If you really need to demo a more complex app but don't want to touch the plugins profile of twiki.org, we should think about demo installations sharing the same user base, e.g. demo1.twiki.org etc.

-- MichaelDaum - 22 Apr 2008

We already decided on the Apps web several times and the majority agreed to create it and I have already offered to drive it.

Why does this get questioned again?

Main reason why I have not started is that we are waiting for the new server. But there will be an Apps web and it will be a simple TWiki application where anyone can share their SIMPLE applications. First move will be to move all the nice apps in the Sandbox to the Apps web. Second move is that I will share the apps I have on http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Application/WebHome + one more to the Apps web.

Searching using simple Word searches in the old Plugins web will return too much garbage and I do not want an over-engineered packaging for apps. It has to be primitive and simple to both use and contribute.

The Apps web has a different target group than the plugins web. The plugins web is for Admins and Plugin developers. The Apps web is for normal users mainly. Users that seek inspiration for their own apps. Seeing some good examples create new ideas and shows possibilities you do not know exists. And as long as it is simple as posting on a blog to contribute a new idea - people will. Therefore. No build contribs. No advanced packaging requirements. No installers. Simple plain examples in a topic and/or attached zips with the topic files.

Simple simple simple.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Apr 2008

SteamRoller

Erm, can you comment on the concerns instead of wiping them way, please. I think they are reasonable and none of what you said is actually contradicting.

For example, let's agree that there actually are "enduser" plugins as well as those that are more of a middleware nature....

In the end there's no Apps web yet. Who decided it must be an Apps web and there's no way to decide otherwise?

-- MichaelDaum - 23 Apr 2008

What I'm wondering about is, what makes the arguments for an Apps Web any better then the arguments for an Marketing, Glossary or whatever web. I know we talked about the Apps Web in Rome but I can't recall why we need an Apps but not a Marketing or Demo Web...

-- CarloSchulz - 23 Apr 2008

Personally I think a Marketing web makes much more sense than confusing the non-TWiki.org user by forcing them to look in 2 places to find the solution to their problem.

Making users try to guess which of several Solution repositories a solution has been put in, due to some (seemingly to them) arbitary decision of what internal to TWiki technology is used, seems to me to break both the princple of least surprise, and the principle of not making your user think.

Marketing on the other hand, like codev, bugs and similar, are not outward facing categorisations, and so can happily be slightly more obscure, when compared with someone that just wants to use TWiki to do XXX

-- SvenDowideit - 23 Apr 2008

The Apps web was decided in Rome. It was re-discussed and re-decided in San Francisco. I do not mind to discuss good arguments. But it is exhausting having defends a decision again after having spent at least 2 hours of discussions in Rome, 2 hours in San Fransisco and who knows how many at release meetings. And the wish came mainly from USERS who think it is strange that the good examples are in twiki.org's Sandbox and have a problem finding them.

Moving the Sandbox topics with good examples to Plugins web was proposed but we agreed at the Summits that they would drown.

I think that both of you think about the kind of Apps that you as consultants make for clients that are big complex apps with skin mods and/or special plugins which today get packaged as an Contrib. How many of these contribs are there on Plugins web today? Very few. People do not put their apps there because they (and for sure I) find that our small apps do not belong there and that the Build Contrib stuff makes it a small project to publish a few raw text files.

The idea of the Apps web is to create a "market place" for the end users where they can exchange small simple apps that can be anything from 1 line of TML to a few topics. The hope is that this Apps web will soon have hundreds of small examples that the end users can be inspired from.

If I make a simple topic with EditTablePlugin for booking time on a test system or rooms in a rented house for visitors (I just did) I will put such an app on the Apps web. Next time someone needs something similar they can get a major kick-start by copying this simple example and modify it.

Examples.

  • SimpleFAQ. And I bet someone will soon improve it by adding a Comment Plugin based "entry adder".
  • MeetingMinutes - I bet this is one of the most copied Sandbox topics. We also use it everywhere at Motorola. It is simple. It is efficient.
  • Sandbox.Sandbox/PaginatedSearch - again a small simple app
  • ItemToDo - a more complex app which consists of a few topics. Again too little to package up as a real contrib. But for sure it would be nice if the few topics were in a ZIP I could download. All the contributor has to do it zip the files and upload to a simple apps topis and put in some info in a form and a small description and he has contributed.

You could say that the Sandbox examples work as they are. But many users have expressed that they do not contribute to a Sandbox because they assume that many come by and destroy them because the whole idea of a Sandbox web is to allow newbies to experiment and experience. The Apps web will make a more permanent stable environment for these Apps.

We have already now enough to put around 100 apps in this Web. The main reason for waiting for the new server is that I want to build the application in it using query search and not regex search. That is why the Apps web is not yet created.

Carlo - the apps web is also a sort of Demo web. The Marketing web was also discussed but here a majority at that time found that a marketing web would have too little content. If more marketing related content builds up (hundreds of topics instead of 10s) of I am sure this decision will be revisited.

Michael - I may sit in that nice vehicle up there. But then - you sit in a similar vehicle and roll over "already accepted proposals". You may not have been present yourself but then please respect the democratic decisions made by those that were there. Why have Summits and pay a lot of money for travelling and hotels if we cannot make any decisions? Then we may as well cancel the next one.

-- KennethLavrsen - 24 Apr 2008

Thanks, Kenneth, for summing up the arguments in the discussions and meetings I was not able to attend. Are these listed on some other topics in Codev already? Hey, so we are both steamrollers. How about making another drawing showing us both wink

Note, that we have discussed the decision process in the TWikiCommunity elsewhere. Frankly, while a summit is a great place to meet and make friends and exchange ideas much more efficient than here on twiki.org, it is not legitimated to accept proposals. We should stick to our workflow here on twiki.org so far as that's giving all of us a chance to participate - and veto.

Seriously, I can clearly follow your arguments! While I am all for such a place as you describe to open up a place for a TWikiApplication community, it may be necessary to name the web differently. I'd recommend to name it Demo or Examples as has been proposed by others also. This clearly matches the intention for it as you described. Apps is far too generic and even no real word. Well, Codev isn't either, but let's not make it worse. Both Codev and Apps is much too geeky, comes right after Foo and Bar.

When you are concerned that your application using a search of type "query" won't perform on a gather-it-all web I'd seriously recommend to create sub-webs under the Demo (or Examples) web being named after the application in there.

I also agree that the plugins web would be a bad place to start a Demo area. Making the plugins web less of a swamp is an issue of itself. We've got lots of plugins. But we suffer desperately from an increasing entropy with a very low code quality in large parts. This is biting back at consultants and customers.

-- MichaelDaum - 24 Apr 2008

There seems to be a measure of confusion about whether this relates to a Demo (or Knowledgebase) web, or a Distribution web. Anyway, at the end of the day what will decide this is not discussion, but action. There have been proposals to create a TWiki Application packager (which we all agree must be simpler to use than BuildContrib). Whoever does this gets to decide ipso facto how re-usable TWiki applications are packaged. IMHO if it's done properly, then there's no reason to separate such packages from all the other extensions, but then I'm not proposing to do it either.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 24 Apr 2008

My original proposal for the web name was "Applications". I cannot remember who suggested "Apps". I think we could re-decide on that at a release meeting. Maybe there was not room for the word "Applications" in the Pattern skin left bar at that time.

  • Demo - No. Many of the apps are not easy to demonstrate because that means being able to add forms, create topics in the web that makes noise, require plugins that are not on twiki.org etc. The simple 1-2 topic apps are possible to demonstrate. But if I run out of topic name space in my own little Applications web then imagine a web with 200 applications. The problem with the name space is that the topics that define form fields need to have good names. Example is TopicClassification. I have different applications in different webs where the form field values are different from each other. Other examples are form topics ProjectName", "Department", etc etc. We could do it in Subwebs but then you need to give people access to creating webs and I fear a terrible mess coming up in a very short time and the effort needed to create it too large.
  • Distribution - No that signals that this is the download area for TWiki itself and plugins etc.
  • Knowledgebase - No that for me is more the Support web.

Examples could be an alternative name to Apps

The packaging as well as installers was discussed a lot at the San Francisco summit. The decision was to START with the simple requirement. We identified 3 levels.

  • A place to share simple TML examples on a topic (Sandbox type examples)
  • A place to share simple few topic apps packaged in a ZIP
  • A place from where you can install an application using an installer feature in TWiki.

The latter was shown to give huge security implications.

This is why we decided to get the simple case started. It is also easier to get some Action on something when the task steps are small and manageable.

If I say "make the swing with the one rope and a tyre" ...

software-engineering-explained.png

-- KennethLavrsen - 25 Apr 2008

I like this cartoon smile Here's another one "Consultants Handbook, Chapter 10: listen to your customers" from Geek and Poke:

consultants handbook, chapter 10

Applications is much better than Apps. I already do use this web name in the TWikiWorkbench approach, but use to store application implementations therein (and in subwebs underneath) that are then deployed to the other user webs using a "minimally invasive" approach.

Examples is a good name, but what makes it any better than Demo? Actually, users don't need to have web creation rights I guess. Not under Demo and not under Examples. Creating another subweb to demo a specific application whose topics would clash with those of others, should be under strict control from case to case - but surely being accepted easily - easier than we decide on top level webs here on twiki.org.

-- MichaelDaum - 25 Apr 2008

Isn't the planned content more like that from a Toolkit(s) than that from a ready made Solution(s) space. See the short article Wikipedia:Toolkits_for_User_Innovation regarding the 5 necessary criteria for the content of a toolkit. --> Better move this discussion to a more appropriate place.

-- FranzJosefGigler - 25 Apr 2008

I am sorry, that I could not turn up last monday. Next time ...

-- MartinSeibert - 26 Apr 2008

I merged the TWikiMarketingMeetingXpt2008x04x21 into this topic (irc log is attached too.)

I am with Kenneth, we discussed the new Apps web at length in two summits, and we got an agreement. We are revisiting it here, so let me give my 2c: I agree that by packaging there is no big difference between add-ons, plugins, skins, contribs and apps. But there is a key difference: Target users. The Plugins web is for us geeks, the Apps web is for the mainstream.

Whatever we name the new web, it should be short and sweet. The primary intent is as a repository for applications (widgets, components, full blown apps). A secondary use is to show sample applications in action (such as those we currently have in the Sandbox web). "Applications" is a descriptive but long web name. "Examples" and "Demo" convey the installed apps, but not the package aspect. "Solutions" conveys the message, as does "Apps".

As Kenneth stated, initially we can have a simple packaging standard to list simple applications. Target users are not programmers, but wiki champions and TWiki users who want to experiment and find out how to improve their TWiki without involving the TWiki administrator. User generated content, aka Web 2.0.

I just spent two days at the Web 2.0 expo. While you see wikis, the main focus is social software, widgets and mashups (also echoed by a recent Forrester report.) Many vendors (including wiki vendors such as Jives and IBM) showed mashup platforms with widgets. For TWiki to remain competitive as a collaboration tool at the workplace we need to address the needs.

The Apps web will big BIG, a new community within twiki.org community. I remember how the twiki project grew after we introduced the Plugins web, an extension community evolved. I envision a TWiki user community that meets in the Apps web. Packaging, browsing and installation need to be simple and appealing to non-geeks, a la Coghead application directory.

Think big. Think out of the box.

-- PeterThoeny - 04 May 2008

Yea, think big is good. Somehow TWiki.org does not reflect that, however.

So according to Peter the Apps web is more than what Kenneth outlined so far: a package repository, only difference: target audience. What about different target audiences addressed by different plugins in the Plugins web?

The reasons for a separate Apps web seem to be a bit ambiguous.

  • Basically, if it is only for demos, well, call it Demo. Create subwebs for apps that might step on each others toes as needed.
  • If it is thought to be a package repository, well, keep using Plugins. Whatever does not work out here for apps, doesn't work out for plugins also.
  • Information architecture of the Plugins needs an overhaul to address the needs of a TWikiApp community ... and others ... not restricting it to pure TWikiApps only.

-- MichaelDaum - 04 May 2008

We already have the plugins web and people have been able to package apps up as contribs for years. They DON'T! There are maybe a handful and they have been uploaded by twiki developers.

The Apps web is not at all targeted for you Michael. You are way too much a geek for its purpose. So are most of the developers here. Several mainstream users have requested this and I personally would love pick up ideas from it and share as well. I am not interested in these over-engineered solutions with special skins, plugins yadi-yada....

I am not interested in the kind of solutions that are constructed by some consultant and turning TWiki into a fully tailored single purpose application with special skin, the documentation hidden, and user interface simplified or specialized. I know it can be done and that some of you consultants do this for money and that there are happy customers for such things. But such TWiki installations are not the typical all purpose enterprise tool for enabling collaboration in many different teams.

I am interested in the simple stuff where you with very little and simple means accomplish something and where any type of profession (like my beloved nurses) can participate.

I just made a nice little comment plugin template that makes HolidaylistPlugin entries easier. Where do I put this simple app on Codev. Sandbox? No. The Dev page for the plugin? No it will drown. Plugins web packaging two topic of which one is just text that goes into another topic? No. A simple app that can be added on a single page topic with a couple of verbatim blocks and a screenshot. Nothing to download. Not even a zip file. Just copy/paste from the one pager. It took me 3 hours to make it work nicely and I based it on something I found on TWiki.org on a topic I stumbled over by chance in the Main web. Surely this little piece of work is worth sharing. But I cannot share it a place people can find it easily.

This is what we need the Apps web for. Plugins web is actually one of the well working webs. I can find a plugin relatively easily. Let us not destroy that by mixing these two completely different purposes.

Plugins web are for the Michael Daums and Apps webs is for John Doe, Niels Hansen, Jennifer Lopez and other normal users that just want to pick up and share ideas or maybe a little zip with 5-6 topics that make up a cool little application.

TWiki has so much potential out of the box. And it is a miracle machine if you install additional 10 of the best plugins. But people do not see it or understand it until they see some examples that works.

Just look at a topic like AccountLedgerApp - how much interest this little simple app has created. Surely there is a strong need in the silent user community.

Naturally the Apps web needs to have a demo entrance where some of the coolest applications are demonstrated and featured. That will "sell" TWiki even more.

-- KennethLavrsen - 04 May 2008

Okay I've outlined my viewpoint. Anything else would be a repetition.

-- MichaelDaum - 06 May 2008

Topic attachments
I Attachment History Action Size Date Who Comment
JPEGjpeg SteamRoller.jpeg r1 manage 31.4 K 2008-05-04 - 04:35 PeterThoeny  
Texttxt TWikiMarketingMeeting2008x04x21.txt r2 r1 manage 14.3 K 2008-05-04 - 04:32 PeterThoeny  
PNGpng software-engineering-explained.png r1 manage 40.5 K 2008-05-04 - 04:36 PeterThoeny  
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