Moving Edgent Forward

["John D. Ament" <jo...@apache.org>]

Hi All,

Wanted to summarize some of what Dale, Will and I chatted about this
evening with regard to Edgent and some ideas on how to move Edgent forward.

I'll be honest, when I read the conflicting info from Kathey and in person
description from Justin I thought there was something awry, so I did want
to dig in further to having a full in depth dump of ideas.  It seems to me
that the disconnect is around past contributors vs active contributors.
From what was described the only active contributor is Dale, whereas others
have contributed to the project in different ways (Will seems to be doing
some evangelism, Kathey's helped with documentation to name it a bit).  In
the past there was a bit more outside delivery but at the end of day its
not even a single company but a single contributor doing most of the work.
While its clear to me that the project gets The Apache Way, until there's a
bigger developer community I would be hesitant to say the podling is
completely ready to go.

Looking across Edgent, there's some clear areas of improvement for the
podling.  I'll list them below in no particular order, and ignoring that
I've already spoken in person about some of these (just to make it clear
that it's also happening on list):

- Downloads are an issue.  First problem is that the links from
http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads are pointing to directories on
dist.a.o instead of the direct downloads makes it harder for a user to
leverage Edgent.  Even then, the fact that the project is not distributed
in a repository manager (e.g. Maven) makes leveraging it even harder.

- There's some website branding issues, but not issues in the "this is
wrong" sense but more "this is weird" sense.  For instance, there's two
different themes from what I can tell, comparing
http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads and the main
http://edgent.apache.org/ the fact that there's two different color schemes
makes it feel like two different sites. The same color scheme, logos etc
should be in use.

- Figure out a way to build synergy with existing ASF projects over demoing
with commercial entities.  I threw out the idea to use Apache ActiveMQ
Artemis for MQTT based communication over leveraging Watson IoT - it builds
a more common use case (many people will already know ActiveMQ, and its
embeddable).  It would also be good to have an end to end sample that
demonstrates using Edgent in an all Apache way, no third parties required.

I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:

- Be added to the roster in Whimsy
https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
- Access to your JIRA
- Access to your Confluence

Regards,

John

Re: Moving Edgent Forward

[William Marshall <wc...@gmail.com>]

Hi John,

Thanks for agreeing to become a mentor for Edgent. I agree that we should
focus on a demo which shows an Edgent use case without relying on Watson,
since it seems to have left the impression that Watson is needed to run
Edgent.

Regarding the "branding" issue with the website:
> the fact that there's two different color schemes makes it feel like two
different sites

This is very nearly true! The landing page was developed independently from
the documentation pages, so even though they're hosted in the same
directory on the same webserver, they have a very different look and feel.

Will

On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 8:08 AM, Queenie Ma <qu...@apache.org> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> Thanks for your interest in Edgent. It would be wonderful to have you as a
> mentor for our project! I can tell you have great ideas already :)
>
> I can't speak to the first and last items you mentioned, but I'm glad you
> brought up the second point. I agree that the website should be more
> cohesive... perhaps by merging the home page into the documentation page.
>
> Thanks,
> Queenie
>
> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:49 PM, John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Wanted to summarize some of what Dale, Will and I chatted about this
> > evening with regard to Edgent and some ideas on how to move Edgent
> forward.
> >
> > I'll be honest, when I read the conflicting info from Kathey and in
> person
> > description from Justin I thought there was something awry, so I did want
> > to dig in further to having a full in depth dump of ideas.  It seems to
> me
> > that the disconnect is around past contributors vs active contributors.
> > From what was described the only active contributor is Dale, whereas
> others
> > have contributed to the project in different ways (Will seems to be doing
> > some evangelism, Kathey's helped with documentation to name it a bit).
> In
> > the past there was a bit more outside delivery but at the end of day its
> > not even a single company but a single contributor doing most of the
> work.
> > While its clear to me that the project gets The Apache Way, until
> there's a
> > bigger developer community I would be hesitant to say the podling is
> > completely ready to go.
> >
> > Looking across Edgent, there's some clear areas of improvement for the
> > podling.  I'll list them below in no particular order, and ignoring that
> > I've already spoken in person about some of these (just to make it clear
> > that it's also happening on list):
> >
> > - Downloads are an issue.  First problem is that the links from
> > http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads are pointing to directories on
> > dist.a.o instead of the direct downloads makes it harder for a user to
> > leverage Edgent.  Even then, the fact that the project is not distributed
> > in a repository manager (e.g. Maven) makes leveraging it even harder.
> >
> > - There's some website branding issues, but not issues in the "this is
> > wrong" sense but more "this is weird" sense.  For instance, there's two
> > different themes from what I can tell, comparing
> > http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads and the main
> > http://edgent.apache.org/ the fact that there's two different color
> > schemes
> > makes it feel like two different sites. The same color scheme, logos etc
> > should be in use.
> >
> > - Figure out a way to build synergy with existing ASF projects over
> demoing
> > with commercial entities.  I threw out the idea to use Apache ActiveMQ
> > Artemis for MQTT based communication over leveraging Watson IoT - it
> builds
> > a more common use case (many people will already know ActiveMQ, and its
> > embeddable).  It would also be good to have an end to end sample that
> > demonstrates using Edgent in an all Apache way, no third parties
> required.
> >
> > I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
> > more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
> > volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:
> >
> > - Be added to the roster in Whimsy
> > https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
> > - Access to your JIRA
> > - Access to your Confluence
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > John
> >
>

Re: Moving Edgent Forward

[Queenie Ma <qu...@apache.org>]

Hi John,

Thanks for your interest in Edgent. It would be wonderful to have you as a
mentor for our project! I can tell you have great ideas already :)

I can't speak to the first and last items you mentioned, but I'm glad you
brought up the second point. I agree that the website should be more
cohesive... perhaps by merging the home page into the documentation page.

Thanks,
Queenie

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 7:49 PM, John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Wanted to summarize some of what Dale, Will and I chatted about this
> evening with regard to Edgent and some ideas on how to move Edgent forward.
>
> I'll be honest, when I read the conflicting info from Kathey and in person
> description from Justin I thought there was something awry, so I did want
> to dig in further to having a full in depth dump of ideas.  It seems to me
> that the disconnect is around past contributors vs active contributors.
> From what was described the only active contributor is Dale, whereas others
> have contributed to the project in different ways (Will seems to be doing
> some evangelism, Kathey's helped with documentation to name it a bit).  In
> the past there was a bit more outside delivery but at the end of day its
> not even a single company but a single contributor doing most of the work.
> While its clear to me that the project gets The Apache Way, until there's a
> bigger developer community I would be hesitant to say the podling is
> completely ready to go.
>
> Looking across Edgent, there's some clear areas of improvement for the
> podling.  I'll list them below in no particular order, and ignoring that
> I've already spoken in person about some of these (just to make it clear
> that it's also happening on list):
>
> - Downloads are an issue.  First problem is that the links from
> http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads are pointing to directories on
> dist.a.o instead of the direct downloads makes it harder for a user to
> leverage Edgent.  Even then, the fact that the project is not distributed
> in a repository manager (e.g. Maven) makes leveraging it even harder.
>
> - There's some website branding issues, but not issues in the "this is
> wrong" sense but more "this is weird" sense.  For instance, there's two
> different themes from what I can tell, comparing
> http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads and the main
> http://edgent.apache.org/ the fact that there's two different color
> schemes
> makes it feel like two different sites. The same color scheme, logos etc
> should be in use.
>
> - Figure out a way to build synergy with existing ASF projects over demoing
> with commercial entities.  I threw out the idea to use Apache ActiveMQ
> Artemis for MQTT based communication over leveraging Watson IoT - it builds
> a more common use case (many people will already know ActiveMQ, and its
> embeddable).  It would also be good to have an end to end sample that
> demonstrates using Edgent in an all Apache way, no third parties required.
>
> I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
> more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
> volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:
>
> - Be added to the roster in Whimsy
> https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
> - Access to your JIRA
> - Access to your Confluence
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>

Re: Moving Edgent Forward

[Queenie Ma <qu...@apache.org>]

John, I added you to the Confluence wiki. You should be able to edit now.

--
Queenie

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 4:54 PM, Katherine Marsden <km...@apache.org>
wrote:

> On 5/17/17 7:49 PM, John D. Ament wrote:
> <snip what sounds like a good approach>
>
> I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
>> more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
>> volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:
>>
>> - Be added to the roster in Whimsy
>> https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
>> - Access to your JIRA
>> - Access to your Confluence
>>
>>
> John, thank you so much for volunteering and for your great ideas. I
> really want to see Edgent used for all its potential and see the community
> grow. I thing with your help, that will happen.
>
> I added you to Whimsy and Jira. Queenie, could you please add John to
> Confluence?
>
> If noone objects, I will remove myself from Whimsy next Friday May 26. I
> think the project will do well with the other mentors.  I will check in on
> your progress and folks know where to find me  if I needed to be prodded to
> check in for some reason.
>
>
> All my very best to the Edgent community.
>
> See you at the beach,
>
> Kathey
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Moving Edgent Forward

[Katherine Marsden <km...@apache.org>]

On 5/17/17 7:49 PM, John D. Ament wrote:
<snip what sounds like a good approach>

> I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
> more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
> volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:
>
> - Be added to the roster in Whimsy
> https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
> - Access to your JIRA
> - Access to your Confluence
>

John, thank you so much for volunteering and for your great ideas. I 
really want to see Edgent used for all its potential and see the 
community grow. I thing with your help, that will happen.

I added you to Whimsy and Jira. Queenie, could you please add John to 
Confluence?

If noone objects, I will remove myself from Whimsy next Friday May 26. 
I think the project will do well with the other mentors.  I will check 
in on your progress and folks know where to find me  if I needed to be 
prodded to check in for some reason.


All my very best to the Edgent community.

See you at the beach,

Kathey

Re: Moving Edgent Forward

[Dale LaBossiere <dm...@gmail.com>]

Thanks John,

I’ll be following up shortly with more notes from our meeting.

— Dale

> On May 17, 2017, at 10:49 PM, John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Wanted to summarize some of what Dale, Will and I chatted about this
> evening with regard to Edgent and some ideas on how to move Edgent forward.
> 
> I'll be honest, when I read the conflicting info from Kathey and in person
> description from Justin I thought there was something awry, so I did want
> to dig in further to having a full in depth dump of ideas.  It seems to me
> that the disconnect is around past contributors vs active contributors.
> From what was described the only active contributor is Dale, whereas others
> have contributed to the project in different ways (Will seems to be doing
> some evangelism, Kathey's helped with documentation to name it a bit).  In
> the past there was a bit more outside delivery but at the end of day its
> not even a single company but a single contributor doing most of the work.
> While its clear to me that the project gets The Apache Way, until there's a
> bigger developer community I would be hesitant to say the podling is
> completely ready to go.
> 
> Looking across Edgent, there's some clear areas of improvement for the
> podling.  I'll list them below in no particular order, and ignoring that
> I've already spoken in person about some of these (just to make it clear
> that it's also happening on list):
> 
> - Downloads are an issue.  First problem is that the links from
> http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads are pointing to directories on
> dist.a.o instead of the direct downloads makes it harder for a user to
> leverage Edgent.  Even then, the fact that the project is not distributed
> in a repository manager (e.g. Maven) makes leveraging it even harder.
> 
> - There's some website branding issues, but not issues in the "this is
> wrong" sense but more "this is weird" sense.  For instance, there's two
> different themes from what I can tell, comparing
> http://edgent.apache.org/docs/downloads and the main
> http://edgent.apache.org/ the fact that there's two different color schemes
> makes it feel like two different sites. The same color scheme, logos etc
> should be in use.
> 
> - Figure out a way to build synergy with existing ASF projects over demoing
> with commercial entities.  I threw out the idea to use Apache ActiveMQ
> Artemis for MQTT based communication over leveraging Watson IoT - it builds
> a more common use case (many people will already know ActiveMQ, and its
> embeddable).  It would also be good to have an end to end sample that
> demonstrates using Edgent in an all Apache way, no third parties required.
> 
> I believe if these start to get addressed, the project may start to see
> more users with new use cases.  It is still a niche market.  I have
> volunteered to mentor you.  If you'll accept me, I would like to:
> 
> - Be added to the roster in Whimsy
> https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/edgent
> - Access to your JIRA
> - Access to your Confluence
> 
> Regards,
> 
> John