[DISCUSS] New Mentors and Apache SensSoft Needs

[Joshua Poore <po...@apache.org>]

First, please welcome our new mentors Atri and Dave, who have graciously offered their help to navigate the road to graduation. Atri, Dave—many thanks and +1!

Second, I thought I’d begin outlining some of our major concerns and issues, in frank terms. Our other committers should feel free to jump and contribute any thoughts they have, as well!

1. Committers—The last few months have taken a toll on our committer base. Due to employment changes, a number of our committers will not be able to participate in the project going forward. We need to replenish the ranks. While I am working hard on this on my end, we need to accelerate this process. It’s worth noting the history of Apache SensSoft here, in brief: Most of our code base was gifted by a single organization, and most of our committers worked at that company (myself included). We worked on the project, funded by various contracts. Recently, many of our committers changed employment (myself included), and we won’t be able to count on those committers to work on the project, unfunded.  

2. Community—We’ve always struggled in building a larger community. Frankly, I believe that this is due in part to our product focus. I have a deep network in the Science and Technology space, and academia. I will be doing what I can to use that network to augment our community, but I’m not sure that’s the right network and can use help in growing our community to meet the right product focus.

3. Product Focus—Because project development was driven by a wide range of contracts for a variety of applications, we weren’t able to push forward on some of the most obvious directions that should make our products really take off within ASF and beyond. Namely, I think we were too mired in advanced R&D concepts to bring full fruition to our largest potential markets:

1. user behavior logging for usability, user experience testing.
2. user behavior logging for click path, usage analytics

Our UserALE.js product is a high resolution behavioral logging engine with multiple deployment operations suitable for single site or enterprise deployments. Our backend services, offer a few different scaling options from single node dockers, to monstrous kubernetes builds for scale. From a core technology perspective, I think we’re a suitable (or at least sufficient) open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Masumo (frmrly PIWIK), Click Tale, etc. There aren’t a lot of solid open source project out there that offer the capabilities and configurability we do, but I don’t think we’ve really capitalized on that for community growth.

Known Next Steps;

1. We’re undergoing a name change at the moment (for the reason, see [1]). Having some fresh air from a number of projects, I am starting in earnest (I promise) tomorrow 11/24. We already have a number of great nominations, which I will be submitting to the PODLINGNAMESEARCH process.

2. We’re not far from a massive release. Branch-192 in UserALE.js is a massive update to our deployment features (deployable in plugin format), and is about ready to ship.


Please @atri @dmeikle, feel free to pose more questions and make suggestions. Our ears and eyes are wide open.

Thanks!

Josh


[1] https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10 <https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10>  

Re: [DISCUSS] New Mentors and Apache SensSoft Needs

[Joshua Poore <de...@gmail.com>]

@Dave

Hard copy. See my comment under Apache Flagon-https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PODLINGNAMESEARCH-154 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PODLINGNAMESEARCH-154>. We’ll do our Vote first. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Josh

> On Nov 26, 2018, at 8:21 PM, Dave Fisher <wa...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2018/11/25 03:01:53, Joshua Poore <poorejc@apache.org <ma...@apache.org>> wrote: 
>> First, please welcome our new mentors Atri and Dave, who have graciously offered their help to navigate the road to graduation. Atri, Dave—many thanks and +1!
>> 
>> Second, I thought I’d begin outlining some of our major concerns and issues, in frank terms. Our other committers should feel free to jump and contribute any thoughts they have, as well!
>> 
>> 1. Committers—The last few months have taken a toll on our committer base. Due to employment changes, a number of our committers will not be able to participate in the project going forward. We need to replenish the ranks. While I am working hard on this on my end, we need to accelerate this process. It’s worth noting the history of Apache SensSoft here, in brief: Most of our code base was gifted by a single organization, and most of our committers worked at that company (myself included). We worked on the project, funded by various contracts. Recently, many of our committers changed employment (myself included), and we won’t be able to count on those committers to work on the project, unfunded.  
>> 
>> 2. Community—We’ve always struggled in building a larger community. Frankly, I believe that this is due in part to our product focus. I have a deep network in the Science and Technology space, and academia. I will be doing what I can to use that network to augment our community, but I’m not sure that’s the right network and can use help in growing our community to meet the right product focus.
>> 
>> 3. Product Focus—Because project development was driven by a wide range of contracts for a variety of applications, we weren’t able to push forward on some of the most obvious directions that should make our products really take off within ASF and beyond. Namely, I think we were too mired in advanced R&D concepts to bring full fruition to our largest potential markets:
>> 
>> 1. user behavior logging for usability, user experience testing.
>> 2. user behavior logging for click path, usage analytics
>> 
>> Our UserALE.js product is a high resolution behavioral logging engine with multiple deployment operations suitable for single site or enterprise deployments. Our backend services, offer a few different scaling options from single node dockers, to monstrous kubernetes builds for scale. From a core technology perspective, I think we’re a suitable (or at least sufficient) open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Masumo (frmrly PIWIK), Click Tale, etc. There aren’t a lot of solid open source project out there that offer the capabilities and configurability we do, but I don’t think we’ve really capitalized on that for community growth.
>> 
>> Known Next Steps;
>> 
>> 1. We’re undergoing a name change at the moment (for the reason, see [1]). Having some fresh air from a number of projects, I am starting in earnest (I promise) tomorrow 11/24. We already have a number of great nominations, which I will be submitting to the PODLINGNAMESEARCH process.
> 
> Please DO NOT abuse the Suitable Name Search process by submitting 12 names. Just stop and pick your favorite TWO.
> 
> Regards,
> Dave with my Brand Committee Hat.
> 
> 
>> 
>> 2. We’re not far from a massive release. Branch-192 in UserALE.js is a massive update to our deployment features (deployable in plugin format), and is about ready to ship.
>> 
>> 
>> Please @atri @dmeikle, feel free to pose more questions and make suggestions. Our ears and eyes are wide open.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Josh
>> 
>> 
>> [1] https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10 <https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10>  

Re: [DISCUSS] New Mentors and Apache SensSoft Needs

[Dave Fisher <wa...@apache.org>]

On 2018/11/25 03:01:53, Joshua Poore <po...@apache.org> wrote: 
> First, please welcome our new mentors Atri and Dave, who have graciously offered their help to navigate the road to graduation. Atri, Dave—many thanks and +1!
> 
> Second, I thought I’d begin outlining some of our major concerns and issues, in frank terms. Our other committers should feel free to jump and contribute any thoughts they have, as well!
> 
> 1. Committers—The last few months have taken a toll on our committer base. Due to employment changes, a number of our committers will not be able to participate in the project going forward. We need to replenish the ranks. While I am working hard on this on my end, we need to accelerate this process. It’s worth noting the history of Apache SensSoft here, in brief: Most of our code base was gifted by a single organization, and most of our committers worked at that company (myself included). We worked on the project, funded by various contracts. Recently, many of our committers changed employment (myself included), and we won’t be able to count on those committers to work on the project, unfunded.  
> 
> 2. Community—We’ve always struggled in building a larger community. Frankly, I believe that this is due in part to our product focus. I have a deep network in the Science and Technology space, and academia. I will be doing what I can to use that network to augment our community, but I’m not sure that’s the right network and can use help in growing our community to meet the right product focus.
> 
> 3. Product Focus—Because project development was driven by a wide range of contracts for a variety of applications, we weren’t able to push forward on some of the most obvious directions that should make our products really take off within ASF and beyond. Namely, I think we were too mired in advanced R&D concepts to bring full fruition to our largest potential markets:
> 
> 1. user behavior logging for usability, user experience testing.
> 2. user behavior logging for click path, usage analytics
> 
> Our UserALE.js product is a high resolution behavioral logging engine with multiple deployment operations suitable for single site or enterprise deployments. Our backend services, offer a few different scaling options from single node dockers, to monstrous kubernetes builds for scale. From a core technology perspective, I think we’re a suitable (or at least sufficient) open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Masumo (frmrly PIWIK), Click Tale, etc. There aren’t a lot of solid open source project out there that offer the capabilities and configurability we do, but I don’t think we’ve really capitalized on that for community growth.
> 
> Known Next Steps;
> 
> 1. We’re undergoing a name change at the moment (for the reason, see [1]). Having some fresh air from a number of projects, I am starting in earnest (I promise) tomorrow 11/24. We already have a number of great nominations, which I will be submitting to the PODLINGNAMESEARCH process.

Please DO NOT abuse the Suitable Name Search process by submitting 12 names. Just stop and pick your favorite TWO.

Regards,
Dave with my Brand Committee Hat.


> 
> 2. We’re not far from a massive release. Branch-192 in UserALE.js is a massive update to our deployment features (deployable in plugin format), and is about ready to ship.
> 
> 
> Please @atri @dmeikle, feel free to pose more questions and make suggestions. Our ears and eyes are wide open.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Josh
> 
> 
> [1] https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10 <https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@senssoft.apache.org:2018-10>  

Re: [DISCUSS] New Mentors and Apache SensSoft Needs

[Dave Meikle <dm...@apache.org>]

Thanks Josh, both for the welcome and comprehensive email.

It sounds like we need to try to help get the word out about Sensoft,
probably after the new name is found.

Having had a play in using it in a development environment for a bit, I
think it is a powerful open-source analytics solution.  With some
configuration and visualisations in Elastic it was giving me most of what I
currently use Heap for at a start-up I am involved in.  I had some
challenges getting Tap up and running using Docker, but will spend more
time on it.

Like you, I think some focus on making the system easy to setup and manage
(app registration, user management, custom events and reporting) for those
looking to drop it in for product usability and click path analytics could
really grow the user base.

In terms of growing the commiter base, it may be worth us carving out some
starter tasks/features in JIRA and labelling them as such.  I was also
wondering if it is worth revisiting the roadmaps for each product to make
it clear where the community would like the system to head, so those
looking to help can jump in?

Cheers,
Dave