Community-based 3

My focus is shifting ever more toward community-based activities that inform and shape Sakai 3. Again, I think Sakai 3 represents for us not just a new codebase and user experience, but also new ways in which the community comes together to produce the product.

At the end of last week I participated in a two-day virtual working session with our Teaching and Learning community, led by Josh Baron and David Goodrum. They are in the midst of trying to distill and organize the functional brainstorming that's been worked up over the last several months in a google spreadsheet. About 20 of us spent 6 or 7 hours a day, two days straight, on the phone together; I admired everyone's stamina, and was heartened by the level of interest. The practical aim of this ongoing effort is to provide clear input for the designers that are trying to shape Sakai's user experience, by laying out a clear and well-rounded picture of many of the core tasks and activities they're trying to serve. At the same time I think this group's effort may be paving the way toward what might soon become a functionally-led roadmap, as they draw rings around fundamental capabilities.

Last week also brought published results from a first round of user testing, ably led by Daphne Ogle at UCB, for a set of Sakai 3 wireframes.  Several members of the UX community are moving into a new cycle of testing this week as well. One of the benefits of Sakai 3's shift client-side is that one can move from wireframes to prototypes far more quickly, and we can iterate on them relatively rapidly. The hope is that this will prove to be yet more empowering for our user experience and accessibility specialists by providing them direct, frequent and practical influence on Sakai's development. I expect in the next few weeks we'll be refining a community-based practice of feedback loops. If you're at all interested in this work, I'd urge you to join the conversation on the sakai-ux list. 

Meanwhile the Product Council is going to start wrestling with the question of how it can help usher the Sakai 3 development work toward a completeness and maturity that serves the wider community. Sakai 3 as a whole has just recently formally entered incubation, and in treating it the council will need to ratchet up existing standards while also fleshing out new sets of objective criteria in cooperation with some of our expert sub-communities. You can be part of this ongoing discussion on the management list.