[Planner] Re: [Planner Dev] Community web site

[Brian Christensen <brian SimpleProjectManagement com>]

Mikael suggested that I move this message into the planner-dev list so 
that we can all discuss it.

Also, I have put together a Planner web site that incorporates some of 
these ideas at:
	http://www.simpleprojectmanagement.com/planner/

Please take a look at the site and share your comments.

Thanks,
Brian Christensen

--------------------------

Hello Mikael,

> I think the answer would be,
> "yes we would very much like your help to help us maintain it".

Thanks for your nice email. I am very excited about working to make
the Planner web site GREAT!

> If you want to you can start working on the contents and suggest views
> for it and we can use that when we later on get everything in place.

I have lots of ideas on contents. More on that later.

I also have some ideas on how we could segment our targeted user
community and what we should provide to support each.

For example: one user segment would be "new project managers
who would like to use planner to manage their first projects". In 
addition
to instructions on how to use Planner, we should also provide 
information
on the essentials of project management and how Planner fits in. Our
goal should be to help them to have a successful project.

Another segment would be "talented programmers who would like to
improve Planner". We could provide a technical overview of the
tool, coding standards, and suggestions on how to get started. We
could also provide a prioritized list of enhancements they could work
on. If we provide support and encouragement they will be more likely
to succeed. I agree with you entirely that we need to "lower the
step needed to start helping out."

If we design the web site correctly, each kind of user should be able to
find what they need without being scared off by what others need. It
should be obvious that you can use the tool without learning how
to change it.

Are you interested in working with me to define our target users and
to decide what we should offer to each group? What are your
interests? Is there a part of the web site that you would like to focus 
on?
Who do think should be helping us with the site? Any ideas
about how we should divide the work?

I would like to focus initially on three areas:

    1) Identifying the user segments we will target and what will we 
offer each.

    2) Providing information on project management and how planner fits 
in.

    3) Building the web pages for the above.

I am not an artist. I won't be able to design the logo or the style 
sheets
for the web pages, but I want to make sure that the logo and page
design we use will be well received by our target users.

> I think a forum and/or wiki would be nice, there are quite a number of
> users (or at least was before the long silence) that could probably
> support each other pretty well.
>
> I could setup a phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) next week. And let's try
> to get a more living community around the project than we succeeded 
> with
> the old project.

You're right that we do need to a place like this for our users
to form a community. In fact, we need at least two: one for our 
developers
and one for our project management users.

> Anyway, just wrote a mail about the community web pages that I'd like 
> to
> hear your feedback on. My suggestion is that we get something up that
> either you or us can update and manage. Not sure what would be the best
> approach, there are a couple ways we could go.

I don't know what the best approach is either. I like the flexibility 
that it gives
us if any of us can make updates, but we need to be careful of 
overlaying
each others changes. I like to have a test version of a web site on my
development machine and then use scp to install a new update to the 
server
when I am sure all of the parts are correct and are working together
properly.

-- Brian Christensen
brian SimpleProjectManagement com