[AG-TECH] AG Community Portal prototype launched ...

[Darran Edmundson]

Well, I was hoping to keep it under wraps for another week or so
but the word is out ...

There was a lot of discussion at the recent Retreat regarding
the lack of community input.  We are all painfully aware of
the shortcomings in the current AG, and yet we are waiting for
the small overworked Argonne team to deliver our software utopia.
The fact is, we as a community need to be more involved - in
design, development, testing, bug reporting and bug fixing,
documentation, feature requests, human factors, etc.

None of this can happen without effective communication.
But how does one submit a tutorial, update or add an "FAQ",
hook up with other developers to collaborate on a shared app,
contribute to the software roadmap, or even just find the latest version
of a node service?

As a response to this, I've whipped up a prototype web site to
stimulate discussion on these issues:

      http://slap.anu.edu.au:8200/

The downloads section has been populated with a number
of shared apps and services.  (Note, Tom Uram did *not*
put up the AGTk, I did that as a demo before inviting Argonne
to try out the site.)   Under the forums section, a number of discussion
areas have been created.  One possible option would be to populate
these with the AGTech archives sifted into appropriate categories
and gateway future traffic?   The missing item, and perhaps the
most import, is the documentation section.  This will be modeled on
the "documentation" section of the main Plone website:  http:// 
plone.org/.
Plone allows members to individually submit tutorial, FAQs,
How-To's, events, news items, etc. that are optionally reviewed
by the site admins.  It's a powerful paradigm.

Please, have a look and offer your constructive criticisms,
wish-lists, etc.  If you'd like to play a more substantial role in
the nitty gritty of getting the site up and running, please contact
me directly at darran.edmundson at anu.edu.au.

Finally,  let me publicly state that within a few months, I would  
like to
have the site either (i) run under the governance of the community at
large or (ii) used in a (planned?) redesign of the main AccessGrid.org.

Cheers,
Darran.


Darran Edmundson (darran.edmundson at anu.edu.au)
ANU Supercomputer Facility Vizlab
Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600
tel: +61 2 6125-0517  fax: +61 2 6125-5088