Team signup! (for iteration 0)

[alexbayleaf]

Hey everyone, just wanted to get an idea of who's interested in working on what over the next few weeks, for this first iteration, named (in true programmer style) "iteration 0".

Please drop a comment with the following information:

1) team(s)/skill area(s) you're interested in
2) level of experience at that kind of work

The teams are:

- customer (you're a gardener with opinions on how the site should work)
- design (graphic design, UI, CSS, etc)
- communications (writing text for the website, eg. community guidelines)
- coding (backend/frontend, let's mix these together for now)
- sysadmin/devops (including deploying releases of our rails app, etc)

A sample response might be:

I'd like to sign up for:

- design (familiar with HTML/CSS, have worked on a few websites before)
- coding (zero experience but would like to learn frontend/javascript)
- customer (err, I have a garden? and opinions!)

Note that if you sign up now, this is not a long-term commitment! This is just for the next 3 weeks; all you're doing is expressing interest in participating in the very first steps. Also, it's not set in stone... if you want to join in or drop out partway through, that's OK. I'm just trying to get an idea of who's up for this first iteration.

When this first iteration's done, we'll either re-run this signup process, or find a better way of figuring out who's interested for each subsequent iteration. (Quite likely we'll find a better way. I know this is clunky!)

------

ETA: signups so far

Customers: skud, inkstone, azurelunatic, japester, ilyena_sylph, Seegwen

Design: commodorified, Seegwen, algeh, aquaprofunda (via other channels)

Communication: skud, amianym, commodorified, japester (primarily technical/project stuff), shadowspar, algeh (available but less interested)

Coding: skud, amianym, shadowspar, seegwen, cesy, algeh

Sysadmin/devops: japester, shadowspar, Seegwen

Comments

[alexbayleaf]

- customer (I have a garden! and opinions!)
- communications (this is perhaps my top skill, def want to work on this)
- coding (experienced coder but new to Ruby on Rails)

[inkstone]

- customer (I have a garden and opinions!)

[alexbayleaf]

Excellent! Welcome aboard!

[azurelunatic]

- customer (I have a pot with rosemary that I forget to water. And opinions!)

[alexbayleaf]

Azz? Opinions? I'm *shocked*, shocked I say!

[azurelunatic]

^_^

[amianym]

- communications
- coding simple things; I have only basic knowledge of Ruby and no experience

[alexbayleaf]

Sounds like we have about the same Ruby knowledge, then ;) I'm going to be cramming up on some of the free online tutorials over the next few days. If you wanted to do likewise that would be awesome.

Here are a couple of screencasts I bookmarked as potentially useful for Rails newbies:

http://railscasts.com/episodes/310-getting-started-with-rails
http://railsforzombies.org/

I'll have to wait til I'm somewhere with better Internets til I can watch them but I offer them in case they might be useful.

Also, this book: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book (HTML version free, PDF/hardcopy version for $$$)

And yay for having another comms person, too!

[amianym]

Will do, thanks for the links!

[(Anonymous)]

I would be willing to do graphics or writing but smallish ( ~6 hours) and fairly freestanding would be best.

[alexbayleaf]

That's great... but you posted anon and I have no idea who you are! (ETA: turns out it was commodorified)

We're going to try and get everyone to pair on tasks, so I don't know how that works wrt "freestanding", but if the task is small I'm sure you'll be able to figure out eg. sharing with your partner via email and reviewing/revising that way.

[japester]

- Sysadmin/Infrastructure (No, really!)
- Customer (I am attempting to not kill my garden this time)
- I occasionally have opinions, sometimes they're even valid.
- Communications (documentation, wiki, etc)
- Mentor/reviewer/JoaT/spare body

Slight word of warning, my enthusiasm comes in fits and starts. I've got it right now, which is good and useful, but there is likely to be a time when my brain will go awol ...

[ilyena_sylph]

-customer (i have a garden -- okay, not so much right now but I'm thinking about fall crops -- and i always have opinions :)).

[shadowspar]

Hi! I'm helping coach, but if need be I can also stand in in the roles of

- customer (we have a garden that my partner runs and I help tend)
- communications (though I take forever to write things, they seem to come out ok when I do)
- coding (I have both development and test experience, though I'm not current on Rails)
- sysadmin/devops (I do general sysadminly stuff, though again, I'm not up to date on the latest & greatest of Rails deployment)

I'm a little time-constrained, but I'll try to clear up as much schedule space as I can and not bite off more than I can chew. ^_^;

[(Anonymous)]

Hey there,

* design: I'm no grafic designer, but I can give a hand on integration (html/css/responsive design).
* coding: I'm a coder though not with Ruby (chewing tuts atm).
* sysadmin: I am also a sysadmin (Debian mainly), focused on webservers.
* customer: Gardener, for sure!

I'm mainly interested in coding, but if help is really needed on the other areas, I'll be there.

Seegwen

[cesy]

Coding (reasonably current on Rails), though I can't commit a huge amount of time. But some fun coding would be a lovely break.

[algeh]

- Coding (I don't know Ruby on Rails, but I'd like to learn! My background is mostly in C and in the kind of handwavy pseudo-code used in places like algorithms classes. I went to graduate school in computer science, but left after the first quarter.)

- Design (I don't care much about the graphics being perfect, but I care a lot about accessibility for people with disabilities and other people accessing the site through less-common configurations. I used to do a lot of print layout stuff in the 90s but don't have much online experience with the design process as opposed to discovering that accessibility was not considered during the aforementioned process. Disclosure: I don't use a screenreader or such things to access the internet myself. I do, however, use a computer without Flash installed as my primary computer for unrelated reasons and often run into places where the non-Flash fallback is not graceful.)

- Communications (I can do this, and enjoy working on things involving this, but it's of less interest to me than the other two things. This is what my undergrad degree is in, and then I went on to get a master's in education, which has a lot of skill overlap.)

Note: this weekend (August 10th-12th) and next weekend (August 17th-19th) I will be without computer access. I'll be around on weekdays, including the week in the middle.

[fe2h2o]

I'm another customer:-) I might be able to get involved in communication tasks, but I have absolutely no skills in design or coding or anything of that nature:-)
I have some opinions:-)

[randomling]

Hi! I hope I am not too late.

For me:

-design (a bit; I can do HTML and CSS)
-coding (my major interest - I've been programming about a year, don't know Ruby but would love to and obviously can chew online tutorials for both Ruby and Rails as needed, and I know some Javascript, but not jQuery (yet!))

[alexbayleaf]

Not too late at all! I'll put you on the list. There are some ruby/rails tutorials already linked elsewhere in this thread.

[federico]

I'd like to participate as:

* Customer! My wife and I are maintaining a small vegetable garden in the backyard, and a small ornamental garden (that mostly maintains itself these days) in the front of our house. I'm lazy and I'd like Growstuff to help me keep the garden organized.

* Communications: I have written a lot of documentation, structured wikis, and learned how to make noise" about a project in the past. I want to help spread rowstuff to other communities in which I participate - the Mexican permaculturists, ur Free Workshops for Arts and Technologies, etc.

* Coding: I have a lot of experience with desktop applications for Gnome/GNU/Linux. This is my excuse to finally learn web development, and server-side stuff. I have substantial experience analyzing performance of desktop applications; I hope this will be useful to make the site scale once we have trillions of users :)

[aunty_marion]

Please Sir, may I have some more? I'm a gardener with a veryveryvery small garden (no really, VERY small).