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Peter Martin

Joomla Operations Department Meeting, November 16th 2017

By Peter Martin on 2017-11-25 15:24 in Operations

Joomla Operations Department Meeting Agenda

Thursday November 16th 2017 from 9:00 - 11:00 CEST
Location: JWC17, Sheraton Roma, Viale del Pattinaggio, 100, 00144 Roma RM, Italy

Participants: Toivo Talikka (Forum Team), Peter Martin (Operations Department Coordinator), Sander Potjer (Volunteers Portal Team), Sigrid Suski (Template Directory Team), Brian Mitchell (Resource Directory Team), Nicky Veitch (Community Magazine Team), Jaz Parkyn (Extensions Directory Team), Sebastien Lapoux (Showcase Directory Team).
Invited: Sandra Decoux (Marketing Team), Aleksander Kuczek (Vice-President)

Minutes: 

Operations Department Coordinator

Community Magazine Team

  • The Community Magazine Team created a document with a path for the team to follow. A few members joined organically as proof reader and authors. There was no issue published in November 2017 due to the lack of organic engagement from possible contributors. The JCM Team would need to have a mentor to accomplish the team's goals.
  • Peter and Aleksander requested regular/monthly team meetings by all teams, and reports on team page. Regular meetings help with goal alignment. People see the reports and see the team is active. Even if the team is active, without the reports it isn't transparent. In JCM team meetings, we should proactively discuss what type of articles we want in the next edition. In the report it should detail "look for someone to write an article about xyz". People will read this and think they could do that. Just relying on people to decide to write, isn't proactive enough, people will not write without some encouragement. Nicky volunteered to do these reports for JCM, if required.
  • JCM should look to the Showcase every month to find a website to describe. This also promotes the Showcase directory. JCM should look to JED every month to find an extension to describe. This also promotes the JED. This can be done without specifically advertising, if it is done as a high level review of several products. JCM could also consider asking several individuals to submit 50-100 words on their favourite extension, which could be compiled into a larger review.
  • Important to think of the target audience - web professionals, implementers - and how the content answers questions. Professionals looking for tools, advice, reviews. For example, for a new Joomla user, an article about different gallery extensions (with help from JED) and an example of them in use (from Showcase).
  • Simon from CINNQ magazine (French) is keen to partner with JCM. He says this will also help bring non-English-speaking authors back into the fold.
  • Some feedback from other teams - it would be nice to receive an email (as an author) saying "Thanks, you'll be published in the xxx edition". Currently somebody submits and has no idea if/when/ever their article may be published. Consider having marketing design a badge - "I was published in the JCM" (like Resource Directory or Certification badge). Consider ways of "raising the bar" on quality of magazine amongst all the other Joomla noise, to make authoring an article something that is desirable, something to brag about and strive for, that can be shared professionally to enhance professional reputation.   

Extensions Directory Team

Forum Team

  • The Forum Team does not have official meetings. However, they do monthly reports on forum statistics. The Global Moderators discuss about issues and forum maintenance in a subforum for Global Moderators and decide if any issues come up. The team is currently replacing inactive moderators.  

Resource Directory Team

Showcase Directory Team

  • The Showcase Directory Team is discussing their listing policy: list all submitted Joomla sites or only beautiful sites. A possible compromise is to accept all Joomla sites and list the beautiful sites as featured.
  • For transparency it’s recommended to have monthly meetings and publish reports at the Volunteers Portal or publish monthly statistics.

Template Directory Team

  • Report: JTD team sprint
    https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/template-directory-team/reports/692-report-from-jtd-team-sprint 
  • The goals of the Template Directory Team for 2017 were to start to build the Template Directory site using SobiPro, find out what template clubs need in a directory and implement an API into SobiPro to pull templates from template clubs.
  • The team had a sprint in October 2017 and started to build the site and to create the implementation of the ThemeForest API. A JTD Survey was created to find out more about how the Joomla! Template Provider ecosystem works and also to gauge interest in listing in the directory. The team had a great number of responses with mostly positive feedback and some great suggestions for improvements. The results of the JTD survey will be published shortly.
  • Further plans are to set up a support section (helpdesk), future procedures for handling submissions and legal aspects. The team’s goal is to publish the JTD site in the first half of 2018. They will also look into ways to monetise the website to support the project financially.

Volunteers Portal Team

  • Report: Joomla Volunteers Portal team meeting 16 October 2017. https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/volunteers-portal-team/reports/675-joomla-volunteers-portal-team-meeting-16-october-2
  • The plans of the Volunteers Portal Team for 2017 were to rebuild the team (they added new members to the team including developers), improve changing of positions in JVP (development in progress), Improve the tools & workflow for teams to communicate with each other, like sending email messages to all team members (development in progress). Furthermore they are planning a “match open positions” functionality (see the Help Wanted page) with volunteers willing to contribute based on skills & interests. They need to add the skills to the volunteer profiles and roles for that and allow to set if a volunteer is available for the role.

Other Business

  • A lot of teams get support requests regarding private Joomla sites. They all refer to the Joomla Forum for technical support or to the Resources Directory to find companies that offer paid support. The canned responses could be more unified, more friendly replies with link to the right resources. The teams will work together to unify their responses.
  • There is a Glip group for the team leaders of the Operations Department. The assistant team leaders should be added as well.
  • What’s the procedure for new team members to get a community.joomla.org address? Ask Luca Marzo (Secretary) about the procedure.
  • Peter requested the Board of Directors for leave of absence. Aleksander will take over his duties.