OFBiz Developers Conference Sponsored by Hotwax Media

["David E. Jones" <jo...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

NOTE: I'm just sending this to the dev list as this event is meant  
mainly for those who want to be involved with development of OFBiz  
itself. There will be a variety of projects going on and we hope  
everyone will be able to work on both paid and fun stuff, but the  
results will all be going right back into OFBiz. Still, everyone is  
welcome to attend and join the "party" so if you know of someone who  
might be interested but isn't subscribed to the dev mailing list,  
please forward it on to them.

NOTE2: While most of this conference will be centered around  
development, if you aren't a developer it doesn't mean you can't  
come. It would be great to have, for example, people like business  
analysts and technical writers to help with requirements, design, and  
documentation and such would be great!

Included below is the original email about this, and most of the  
information there is still applicable. Here are a few decisions,  
based on feedback:

1. the conference dates will be 5-9 March 2007 (Monday - Friday), and  
may spill over into Sat the 10th

2. you don't have to come for the entire conference, but we recommend  
coming for at least Mon-Wed or Wed-Fri as we'll schedule big-group  
meetings and any presentations for Wednesday; if you can come for the  
whole week, please do, it'll be great!

3. people are welcome to come and enjoy local attractions for the  
weekend before and/or after (it will still be cool in the area here,  
snowy in the mountains for skiing/boarding/snowmobiling, and  
depending on weather it can be a great time for visiting the deserts  
and canyons south of here)

4. the cost to cover the meeting rooms, snacks, infra stuff, etc will  
be $175 for the week (or $35/day) per person; we will have wireless  
internet access, and I have a bridge if anyone needs wired access; we  
will have at least 2 projectors and perhaps other large monitors to  
facilitate group development and discussion

5. meals, lodging, etc are not included in the main price, but we'll  
have 5-9 rooms available in the building (for $20-30 per night, first  
come first serve); there is a decent hotel in town as well for around  
$80 per night (contact me for details); for meals there are various  
restaurants within walking distance

6. the attendance cap is initially 20 people; there seems to be a lot  
of interest in this, so if we go over that we'll raise it by perhaps  
5-10 more people and convert some other adjacent rooms in the  
building to be for group meeting use as well (we're planning on 2 big  
rooms, plus a fairly big room with a small kitchen in it)

7. the actual development goals are not finalized, but there is quite  
a bit of interest in various things on the original list I included  
(below), the big things seem to be testing infrastructure and project  
management functionality

To register (ASAP please, to make my job of planning easier!), please  
contact me by email (jonesde@hotwaxmedia.com) with the following  
information:

1. your name, company name, contact info (phone, email if different  
than from address)
2. how many in your group (if more than one, their names too)
3. plans (as much as known) for how many days and which days
4. lodging preference - in the building (private rooms, shared  
toilets/showers) how many rooms, or nearby hotel (I'll respond with  
contact info for the nice place close by, or there is a "fleabag"  
motel place too though not sure if I'd recommend it)
5. snack/diet preferences
6. local travel plans: do you need a ride, or do you plan to rent/ 
have a car (I'll try to arrange rides in advance for people that need  
them, so please ask EARLY and get a verification from me before you  
depend on this!)
7. while I'm not sure how this will work out, if you need financial  
assistance or have money you could contribute to getting developers  
here, please let me know
8. any questions or concerns you have

Also think about the topics you'd like to cover, especially things  
that will make your life easier and the lives of your employers/ 
clients too. I'll be contacting people just before the event to ask  
for preference and ideas, and then I'll put together a real list for  
the conference.

I look forward to meeting everyone there! Given the topics and people  
I've heard from so far this should be a pretty incredible event. I'm  
predicting we'll have more OFBiz experience in one room than has ever  
been done before!

-David


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Hello All,

During the Users Conference this past November the idea of a  
developers conference came up, and being something I had discussed  
with others before this seemed to be a great idea and something I'd  
be happy to host here at the same place where we had the user  
conference in Nov 2006 (ie the old hotel where my home and office are  
right now, in Ephraim, UT).

The general idea is to get together and basically just work on stuff.  
We'd like to get as many of the committers and regular contributors  
here as possible, and maybe even pool some funds to help mitigate the  
expense for far away people like Jacopo, Jacques, Hans, and perhaps  
various others.

We may have some presentations on general topics, but the main point  
will be to pick a few objectives for the project and push them  
forward. We will definitely want feedback on the projects we want to  
attach, and I'm thinking we'll have one person champion each  
objective, and then everyone can split into groups and rotate around  
and just work on stuff. We'll have a couple of projectors available,  
plenty of chairs and table space and facilities for everyone's  
laptops, and then we'll get some snacks and a mountain of bottled  
water and we should be good to go.

As we talked about this the hope is certainly to help move certain  
part of the OFBiz project forward, but also to work on anything that  
at least a couple of people need for clients and hopefully have  
funding for to help them be able to attend and collaborate.

Ephraim is a small town and rather conservative, but we managed to  
find pretty good diversion in the evenings, including "imbibing"  
mountains of pasta, or getting in some beer and bowling at the local  
alley (which surprisingly, even to me, was pretty decent). For those  
staying longer in the area there are some national parks within a few  
hours, and lots of mountain roads that are groomed and marked for  
snowmobiling and back-country skiing and such (or other things during  
the summer). We also have games and stuff in the building, like ping  
pong, foosball, and air hockey types of things.

The 2 main things I think we need to discuss are:

1. when to do it
2. what objectives to pursue

For #1 we're thinking about doing this as a full week late February  
or early March with 3 possibilities, including: Feb 19 - 23, Feb 26 -  
Mar 2, or Mar 5 - 9.

These are all about 2 months away and should hopefully give everyone  
time to get organized and make arrangements.

Before getting into topics to cover, here are a few details about  
arrangements:

1. this will be sponsored and organized by the new and improved  
Hotwax Media, and the cost will be minimal and intended to just cover  
expenses (including meeting room facilities, food/snacks/drinks, and  
in some cases even lodging); the conference alone (without lodging or  
meals included) will probably run around $150 per person and as  
mentioned lodging in the building can be added on very affordably,  
and the meals dining in the area should be around $20-30 per day  
depending on how crazy you want to get ;)

2. the location will be old Ephraim Hotel at 24 West Center, Ephraim,  
UT 84627; we'll have meeting/working space for a maximum of around 25  
people and we might be able to arrange for another adjacent room to  
handle a few more; there will be around 10 very affordable (~$25-30  
per night) lodging rooms available in the building, and beyond that  
we have other rooms that aren't fixed up yet but there are other  
lodging options in town including a pretty nice mid-range hotel that  
costs around $80 per night

3. for travel: Ephraim is about a 2 hour drive from the Salt Lake  
City airport (code: SLC); alternatively, it is about a 4.5 to 5 hour  
(340 miles) drive from Las Vegas, NV; for real flexibility renting a  
car is a good idea, but we plan to arrange for rides with various  
local people or perhaps even a rented van or something for a ride  
share; we will need feedback on what people need or want in this area  
too

So, for anyone interested in coming, please contact me (directly, off  
the list) with your preferences on the following:

1. when to have the conference: Feb 19 - 23, Feb 26 - Mar 2, or Mar 5  
- 9

2. your travel and accommodation preferences: need a ride from the  
SLC airport? prefer to stay at the building or in a nearby hotel?

3. would you be interested and able to contribute to help core people  
from farther away make it to the conference? if so how much?

4. would you be interested in intermediate level training before the  
conference (we are considering this, but haven't decided yet), or  
perhaps even more mentoring oriented sessions during the conference?

5. which objectives most interest you (select from below, and include  
your own too):

a. testing infrastructure (finishing this up)

b. kick-start a body of automated tests based on (a)

c. project management build out so many of us as services companies  
can use it to run our businesses, and so that once it matures we can  
run/manage OFBiz on it too (this would be an alternative to things  
like Jira, XPlanner, gForge, etc); this could include a number of sub- 
objectives, even things like ical, etc features to integrate with  
desktop calendar and contact and such software; should also include  
reports, handy UIs for common tasks, short process docs for how we  
recommend the various tools be used together, etc

d. content solutions: this could/would include stuff built on the  
current OFBiz content management data model and services, and/or the  
really cool Webslinger stuff from Brainfood (beyond whatever happens  
before the conference!)

e. begin development on the human resources application

f. refactor and clean up really old and messy code, like: the  
storeOrder service, the order manager checkout process, etc.

g. visually appealing face lift for ecommerce, and based on that the  
back end apps too; this should include CSS oriented refactoring to be  
more Zen Garden like and easier to maintain and customize

h. usability enhancements for certainly frequently used screens (like  
party search, order search, etc) based on AJAX and DHTML

i. generic setup wizard, and perhaps one or two extension wizard  
examples for specific industries; this would go along with setup data  
files specific to these as well

j. reporting tool refinements (probably form widget based) and a  
wider variety of OOTB reports, including some examples of how to do  
funky and cool print and web reports with these tools

k. working through bugs to stabilize a release branch (which should  
be started a few weeks before the conference)

l. review, organize, and expand the documentation (mostly now on  
docs.ofbiz.org, with most stuff moving there)

m. ...

Okay, there is a LOT we could cover and depending on how many people  
show up we'll want a list of probably 5-10 objectives to pursue,  
making sure we get at least a few things of interest to everyone.

==========================

In general this is a chance for all of us to learn tons of stuff and  
collaborate in a way that is sometimes difficult remotely. The main  
goal is to take care of things that have been moving slow for a long  
time, or to jump start things that would be great but just haven't  
been able to get off the ground yet.

I should also note that we would like to start doing this more  
regularly, perhaps even quarterly if there is enough interest. We can  
keep costs fairly low by doing it here in Ephraim or in other places  
like this, and by doing it regularly we can build the community and  
move forward long term objectives in a way that has been very  
difficult so far.

I look forward to seeing as many of us there (here!) as possible!

-David