flocksoftware
LOGS
18:00:11 <stickster> #startmeeting Flock next-gen software
18:00:11 <zodbot> Meeting started Wed Sep 16 18:00:11 2015 UTC.  The chair is stickster. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
18:00:11 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
18:00:16 <stickster> #meetingname flocksoftware
18:00:16 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'flocksoftware'
18:00:21 <stickster> #topic Roll call
18:00:25 <stickster> .hello pfrields
18:00:26 <zodbot> stickster: pfrields 'Paul W. Frields' <stickster@gmail.com>
18:00:28 <mizmo> .hello duffy
18:00:33 <zodbot> mizmo: duffy 'Máirín Duffy' <fedora@linuxgrrl.com>
18:00:54 * stickster gives a few minutes for others
18:02:08 <stickster> but only a few ;-)
18:03:20 <jwb> hi
18:03:26 <jwb> doing double duty with fesco
18:03:59 <stickster> jwb: understood, sorry for the conflict
18:04:13 <croberts> stickster: hi
18:04:20 <stickster> #chair mizmo jwb rsuehle croberts
18:04:20 <zodbot> Current chairs: croberts jwb mizmo rsuehle stickster
18:04:46 <stickster> #topic Reports on software
18:05:43 * stickster looks for link, gah
18:05:49 <stickster> #link https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2016_software
18:05:59 <stickster> OK, first thing is to report updates on software we reviewed for next year use
18:06:13 <stickster> mizmo: I hate monopolizing the mic, are you inclined to start here?
18:06:34 <mizmo> ive only tried the OSEM instance you set up, but i was a bit underwhelmed at the functionality :(
18:07:01 <stickster> mizmo: It was promising at first -- I had done some pre-setup before you signed in, and that part went pretty nicely
18:07:26 <stickster> mizmo: But once the initial tasks were done, it was clear the software wasn't ready for some of the execution parts, like setting up a schedule
18:07:56 <jwb> i'm still not sure replacing sched.org is a priority
18:08:12 <jwb> the schedule is one of the easiest parts
18:08:14 * spot agrees. that part just works, and works very well.
18:08:22 <stickster> #chair spot
18:08:22 <zodbot> Current chairs: croberts jwb mizmo rsuehle spot stickster
18:08:25 <stickster> o/ spot!
18:08:25 <mizmo> ugh im trying to log back in as a refresher and am not able to get in
18:08:57 <stickster> mizmo: Hang on, let me check
18:09:06 <mizmo> it does handle registration, and it does handle proposal submission and acceptance
18:09:21 <jwb> does it handle email/notification of various things?
18:09:52 <mizmo> that im not sure - the reason i can't log in is because it never emailed me an account confirmation mail
18:10:02 <stickster> mizmo: That might be a server config issue :-(
18:10:04 <mizmo> so the first time i logged in and poked around it worked untli the session expired
18:10:16 <stickster> mizmo: We can try and resolve when finished
18:10:19 <mizmo> stickster, if i make another account now can you give it admin?
18:10:22 <stickster> Yes
18:10:30 <mizmo> oh
18:10:32 <mizmo> nevermind i just got in
18:10:35 * mizmo scratches her head
18:11:25 <stickster> The upshot for this software, though, is that mizmo and I tooled around in it for a while, and it was clearly not ready to execute on a conference without a good deal of additional development...
18:11:51 <stickster> and it's in Ruby, which means we don't have a bunch of skilled people in this circle ready to jump in and finish features
18:11:55 <mizmo> jwb, so it sends emails when the user registers for the conference - it sends an email when proposals are accepted or rejected, it sends emails if a user's proposal is accepted but they haven't registered
18:12:03 <mizmo> all of those proposals are customizable via a template system
18:12:18 * stickster trying to locate *his* creds :-D
18:12:24 <mizmo> it also sends out emails if conference details changed (eg the dates, registration deadline, venue update)
18:12:46 <mizmo> and it sends out call for papers dates / schedule / updates are made
18:12:47 <stickster> It also sets up a useful front page automatically with conference details, which changes over time as various deadlines pass
18:13:06 <jwb> none of our existing software does all that
18:13:31 <mizmo> you can set up the types of talks people can give (eg 45 min talk vs 2 hour workshop) and it updates the submission form with what you set up as options
18:14:07 <mizmo> it has a little tool that manages your donors too
18:14:16 <mizmo> so it'll list out the donor and sponsorship level and track that
18:14:31 <jwb> ok.  stickster can you qualify what you just said then?
18:14:33 <mizmo> it has a ticket system too if you want ppl to buy tickets for things (the example in the system right now is a lunch ticket)
18:14:51 <jwb> i mean, ruby aside, this does way more than anything we currently have
18:15:19 <mizmo> i guess it promised a lot on the website that i didnt see it doing :)
18:15:19 <stickster> jwb: I'm trying to locate my notes, the problems I saw were on the back side
18:15:34 <stickster> ARGH dammit
18:15:40 * stickster curses his lack of sysadmin-fu
18:16:57 <jwb> i'll note we have at least one or two ruby enthusiastic contributors.  if the backend doesn't look like hamsters chasing plastic blocks of cheese, we might be able to mitigate our lack of ruby-fu by reaching out to them.
18:17:11 <stickster> Could be
18:17:24 * stickster will have to work on recovering his login later
18:17:44 <mizmo> i guess voting is the big main thing it doesn't have
18:18:25 <stickster> We could probably jerry-rig that by doing an appropriate SQL query, loading that into the elections app, etc.
18:20:09 <jwb> we could.  i am not a fan of our elections app
18:20:21 <jwb> or rather, i am not a fan of our voting method in our elections app
18:20:32 <jwb> it's very cumbersome for anything more than about 7 choices
18:20:48 <mizmo> yeh thats why we use nuancier for supplemental wallpapers
18:20:57 <mizmo> usually have 50+ to vote from
18:21:33 <mizmo> well if we went OSEM we might have to solve the voting problem with something else besides the elections app
18:21:38 <stickster> mizmo: Something else I noticed was that not all the rooms showed up on the internal schedule listing
18:21:58 <mizmo> stickster, the internal schedule seemed really funky to me
18:22:03 <mizmo> potentially broken
18:22:18 <stickster> jwb: ^ Not sure that's important vs. sched.org either -- maybe all of the room/topic stuff is easier to handle there
18:23:24 <mizmo> stickster, oh those rooms are there, you have to scroll waaayy down to see them
18:23:29 <mizmo> but the schedule thing almost seems like a separate appp
18:24:04 <stickster> mizmo: whoops, you're right!
18:24:32 <mizmo> ohhh when yo uhave accepted talks though you can drag and drop them into different schedule slots and rooms
18:24:33 <mizmo> kind of nice
18:24:34 * stickster can't see how it's supposed to function here. But this is probably getting OT since sched.org is working OK, and this is probably less critical
18:25:10 <mizmo> if you expand your browser width on a humongo screen they do float back up
18:25:11 * stickster notes that he *did* do quite a bit of survey of WP plugins, though, and these were generally single-purpose, not a full integrated system like OSEM
18:25:30 <stickster> I left notes on the wiki page for these IIRC
18:25:53 <mizmo> maybe its a good contender
18:26:07 <mizmo> its between that, openconference ware, and zookeeper i think had the most potential
18:27:03 <stickster> So OSEM == worth more research
18:27:33 <stickster> I admit after the first day or two of testing, I had to drop for other things, and since I can't find my notes (good job stickster) my impressions are not super helpful
18:27:47 <stickster> mizmo: Did you try openconferenceware?
18:28:06 <mizmo> i think part of the problem is the OSEM website was so polished, i was expecting that level of polish in the UI, but it's more basic. but basic can get the job done
18:28:13 <mizmo> stickster, i didn't, not sure how :-/
18:30:08 <mizmo> it looks like open conference ware manages proposal submissions / acceptance too
18:30:30 <mizmo> and it lets admin export the proposals to CSV (maybe an option for sched.org import, not sure)
18:31:08 <mizmo> OCW has a voting thing for proposals too, but you have to add individual people to vote as 'selection committee' members
18:31:11 <mizmo> so its not an open vote
18:31:49 <mizmo> it seems more limited compared to OSEM
18:31:59 <jwb> getting fas integration there doesn't sound _too_ hard?
18:32:34 <stickster> jwb: FAS integration shouldn't be too hard -- I believe there's a plugin system for auth
18:32:39 <mizmo> it does say users can login via openid
18:32:53 <mizmo> aside from the proposal selection committee voting, any user can 'favorite' a session proposal
18:32:57 <stickster> mizmo: Especially once the sysadmin does his job and hooks up proper mail delivery ;-)
18:32:59 <mizmo> but i dont think theres limits on that
18:33:27 <mizmo> yehi dont see any mention of the mail nags, etc in the feature list of OCW but maybe they just forgot to mentoin it?
18:33:35 <mizmo> i cant imagine a system with these features working well without that
18:34:00 <stickster> #info probably more todo to check out OpenConferenceWare -- need a test system
18:35:18 <stickster> Looking down the list... SCaLE Reg is not going to really solve enough of the problem to be worth using. Plus, its documentation is nonexistent, and no helpful UI to get you through setup
18:35:58 <stickster> Or at least, I couldn't find one when I tried; I gave up eventually
18:36:04 <jwb> strike it down
18:36:09 <stickster> Did anyone here from Jon about Frab?
18:36:15 <stickster> kwizart: ^
18:36:30 <stickster> Oops, sorry kwizart, wrong nick
18:37:17 * stickster wracks brain for right nick <-> person mapping
18:37:21 <mizmo> looks like zookeepr does registration, cfp, paper review, inventory, badge printing, volunteer workflow, social networks, funding, schedule, photos
18:37:29 <stickster> wow
18:37:41 <mizmo> the paper review system is similar to ocw in that it assumes a review committee
18:37:46 <mizmo> not an open vote
18:37:46 <stickster> Do you know if Ryan set up a test system for people to try?
18:37:57 <mizmo> i dont, i think he intended to talk to donna benjamin about it
18:38:21 <jwb> is that the one that rsuehle had recommended at flock?
18:39:06 <stickster> Not sure, it's the one LCA uses
18:39:22 <mizmo> it gives you reports on proposla submission extensions, the speakers who had talks accepted, which proposers asked for financial assistance, who created an acct and didn't register, who has to be reminded they didn't pay yet, who signed up as a volunteer, who didn't agree to the a/v release, etc
18:39:27 <mizmo> they have a big list of reports they can generate
18:39:28 <mizmo> jwb, it is
18:39:53 <rsuehle> yeah, that's the one I mentioned
18:39:54 <mizmo> it apparently generates badges and printed programs and xml metadata to inject into talk videos
18:40:12 <stickster> mizmo: Looks like I need to get this one up on the server too
18:40:28 <mizmo> this is a ~2011 presentation from one of the developers i got this info from: http://www.slideshare.net/pfctdayelise/zookeepr-homegrown-conference-management-software
18:40:33 <stickster> #action stickster get zookeepr test instance running
18:41:15 <mizmo> their developers list mailman archives has a permission error tho lol
18:41:20 <mizmo> cant tell how active they are now
18:41:42 * stickster notes they have a bit of "paper chair/reviewer" in there, as long as we can find a way to short-circuit that process this looks pretty interesting
18:42:04 <stickster> github shows commits within the last month
18:42:11 <mizmo> they let you do arbitrary static pages too which i think is useful, i didnt see that in osem
18:42:21 <mizmo> eg one of their static pages is the code of conduct
18:43:12 <stickster> mizmo: That is super helpful
18:43:38 <stickster> #action get mail delivery working properly on host so we can better continue testing
18:43:43 <stickster> #undo
18:43:43 <zodbot> Removing item from minutes: ACTION by stickster at 18:43:38 : get mail delivery working properly on host so we can better continue testing
18:43:46 <stickster> #action stickster get mail delivery working properly on host so we can better continue testing
18:44:47 <mizmo> i made an accounton the LCA website but you cant do much from it right now
18:45:34 <mizmo> so the one thing we know OSEM does we aren't 100% how OCW or zookeepr do is the automated email nags
18:46:06 <mizmo> none of the three seem to do anything to enable remote attendees
18:46:26 <stickster> *nod
18:46:31 <mizmo> ocw and zookeeper have the committee based voting and OSEM has no voting
18:46:41 <stickster> OK, so IIUC we probably want to keep looking at OSEM, zookeepr, and possibly OCW?
18:46:46 <mizmo> those seem to be the major differences
18:46:49 <mizmo> yeh i think so
18:47:00 <stickster> I guess neither zookeepr nor OCW has been really setup yet, so I'll try to do that shortly
18:47:11 <stickster> #action stickster get OCW test site running too
18:47:22 <mizmo> and i think - if we can get one of those three to work, it'll save a lot of the manual email nagging effort because of how integrated they are. i think any custom solution isn't going to do the nagging we want
18:47:38 <mizmo> (by custom, i mean a lego bucket of WP plugins)
18:48:14 <stickster> mizmo: Would you be able to set up some wiki page/template for these sites with either light "use case" type organization, or a simple table of y/n features we can use to compare apples to apples?
18:48:22 <mizmo> sure i can do that
18:48:30 <stickster> If anyone else has suggestions, all ears :-)
18:49:11 <stickster> #action mizmo set up wiki page/template for project comparisons and testing workflows consistently
18:49:47 <stickster> #agreed continue looking at OSEM, zookeepr, and OpenConferenceWare
18:49:58 <stickster> #topic Any other information?
18:50:10 <stickster> #idea when to meet up again
18:50:45 <stickster> rsuehle: jwb: spot: We don't want to spin wheels forever on software, obviously. Flock wheels have to start turning at some point. Can you help us with timeline?
18:51:31 * spot is unaware of wheels not turning at any point
18:51:40 <stickster> ha
18:51:53 <stickster> Yeah, bids are kind of in. So the most relevant date is probably when a decision will be made about venue, because I expect shortly thereafter you'd want a site running
18:52:18 <spot> the CFP opened last March.
18:52:39 <spot> it would be really swell if whatever solution we were using was well tested before March 1
18:52:56 <stickster> spot: I think we ought to be able to do that.
18:53:24 <stickster> What if we set an update meeting for 2 weeks out, to make sure all the actions here got done, and report back results of more testing
18:53:38 <stickster> mizmo: is that too tight?
18:54:00 * stickster gets set to brush up on his Postfix
18:54:06 <mizmo> stickster, i can do that
18:54:26 <stickster> #action stickster to schedule a meeting ~2 weeks out, this time not colliding with FESCo ;-)
18:54:42 <stickster> Anything else before we close?
18:54:51 * stickster sets 60 sec time
18:56:26 <stickster> OK, thanks everyone
18:56:28 <stickster> #endmeeting