CWG meeting 2012-06-25

Communication Working Group meeting on Monday 25th June 2012

Topics:

• Licence change - Nothing urgently to communicate but Andy's working on it. making progress
• Feedback from some osm users. Need for better 'about' page.
• Design mailing list
• podcasts
• New "prose" tool and other ideas for Documentation using git

IRC log:

21:00 harry-wood: hello
21:00 toffehoff: Hello!
21:01 harry-wood: How's it going Henk?
21:01 toffehoff: Good, but busy.
21:02 harry-wood: Sorry I missed the management team meeting the other day by the way. Very busy at work that day as it turned out
21:02 toffehoff: Now all kinds of stuff to end one of my companies.
21:02 harry-wood: ending a company? blimey
21:02 : JonathanB [~jono@114.174.125.91.dyn.plus.net] entered the room.
21:02 harry-wood: Hello JonathanB
21:03 harry-wood: RichardF around?
21:03 toffehoff: Well, I've joined another company full-time. Liquidating my work-company is the cheapest thing to do.
21:03 toffehoff: And then parking all IP in another company...
21:03 toffehoff: Well, accountants are having a field day ;-)
21:04 toffehoff: Hi Jonathan!
21:04 harry-wood: yeah most people decide the cheapest thing to do is leave their companies dangling… in the UK
21:04 harry-wood: not tried it myself. I'm too disorganised to have a company :-)
21:04 toffehoff: Sure. Currently I have two. Will liquidate one and move all assets into the left-over.
21:05 JonathanB: There are advantages if there are two of you
21:05 toffehoff: :-)
21:05 toffehoff: All fiscal stuff....
21:06 harry-wood: Seems there's no RichardF
21:06 harry-wood: haven't heard from rweait in a long time
21:06 JonathanB: Council probably overrunning
21:07 toffehoff: Might have to move our meeting if RichardF is having a regular council meeting on Monday.
21:07 harry-wood: it's a regular thing?
21:07 toffehoff: Not sure. It could very well be. Regular being once a month ....
21:08 harry-wood: ah right
21:08 toffehoff: ... or another kind of regular ;-)
21:08 harry-wood: At one stage we discussed the idea of voice calls alternating vs IRC
21:08 harry-wood: could do that when RichardF is not available
21:08 harry-wood: since he massively prefers IRC
21:08 toffehoff: :-)
21:09 harry-wood: anyone heard from rweait lately?
21:09 JonathanB: No -- been quiet for a while
21:10 toffehoff: No. Didn't he have some kind of project, that he would not be able to join our meetings?
21:10 harry-wood: maybe yeah
21:10 toffehoff: Maybe you could ping him this week.
21:10 JonathanB: I seem to remember him saying something like that
21:10 harry-wood: yeah I'll email him
21:10 harry-wood: So topics for today
21:11 harry-wood: License change
21:11 harry-wood: (somethings happening!)
21:11 toffehoff: Was in Berlin last weekend. Got some feedback about comms
21:11 harry-wood: oh yeah?
21:11 toffehoff: WhereCampDE
21:11 toffehoff: Let's make that a topic on todays agenda.
21:12 toffehoff: Anything else?
21:12 harry-wood: Well there's various things on the TODO list. but mostly focussing on License change
21:12 harry-wood: Shall we talk about license change
21:12 toffehoff: k
21:13 harry-wood: not much to say, other than it's progressing now.
21:13 toffehoff: Youhoo!
21:13 harry-wood: And RichardF said we should do a blog post at the time when things actually start running
21:13 harry-wood: We just need to be ready to write that at the time I think
21:14 harry-wood: Not entirely clear what the details would be at this stage
21:14 toffehoff: Since there has been some activity on rebuild@ list I think the readers are kinda up-to-date
21:14 harry-wood: yes think so
21:14 toffehoff: From board, RichardF and Dermot are contact persons for Andy.
21:15 toffehoff: It might be good to check comms with them.
21:16 toffehoff: Very happy that things are really progressing now.
21:16 harry-wood: yeah the decisions are being taken still at this stage around order things get processed and where that'll be reported
21:18 toffehoff: Anything we need to do further?
21:18 harry-wood: nope don't think so
21:18 JonathanB: It's an odd situation to be in, but we can't just keep putting things out saying "Nope, nothing yet"
21:19 harry-wood: yeah well that was getting a bit repetitive on the rebuild list certainly
21:19 harry-wood: but discussions are happening on there again now
21:20 harry-wood: so we need to jump on it when theres some things to blog about a start date etc
21:21 harry-wood: I'll keep an eye out, but let me know if I miss the news
21:21 harry-wood: toffehoff: what's the feedback about comms?
21:21 toffehoff: Sorry, was a bit disctracted.
21:22 toffehoff: Some other projects that are using OSM ...
21:22 toffehoff: are linking to OSM for "read more about the project here" ...
21:22 toffehoff: they feel however, that there is not a very good page that explains the project.
21:23 toffehoff: There was a strong need for an OSM homepage that explains the project.
21:23 toffehoff: ... and not just show the map.
21:23 JonathanB: Well, harry-wood has brought up the issue of CWG's role in documentation before...
21:23 toffehoff: Or at least a page with the general info
21:23 harry-wood: yeah that turns in the "front page design" debate
21:24 JonathanB: Maps/no maps
21:24 toffehoff: I heard it from Komoot and wheelmap
21:25 harry-wood: I used to like the about page on the wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/About but it's been "improved" recently
21:25 toffehoff: Leave the frontpage out of it, there is still need for a good starting-page about the project.
21:25 harry-wood: Tell them to link to the About page from a year ago http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=About&oldid=506873  :-)
21:27 toffehoff: I think the guys I talked to where more thinking in something along the line of http://openstreetmap.de/ ;-)
21:27 harry-wood: sure
21:27 JonathanB: ...but that *is* the Front Page Design debate.
21:28 toffehoff: Maybe we need to work on the OSMF site....
21:28 toffehoff: then it is *our* frontpage and not that of the communities ....
21:28 : Blackadder left the room (quit: Quit: heading for the next unmapped place=).
21:29 harry-wood: There's the 'design' mailing list, and some developments coming from hack weekends in the U.S.
21:29 toffehoff: ok
21:29 harry-wood: It think we'll see some movement on Front Page design coming from that at some point
21:29 harry-wood: Maybe we could prod that mailing list a bit
21:30 toffehoff: Any idea of time?
21:30 toffehoff: Might be an idea.
21:31 harry-wood: There was an "public vs hidden user messaging" discussion on the osmf list a few weeks back
21:31 harry-wood: I was meaning to migrate that on the design list
21:31 harry-wood: think I do that
21:32 toffehoff: You mean this list: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/design
21:32 harry-wood: yeah
21:32 toffehoff: No that many activity to be honest....
21:32 harry-wood: no. very quiet now
21:33 harry-wood: So I will take that as an action to start some discussion on there
21:33 harry-wood: (remind me)
21:33 toffehoff: will do ;-)
21:33 harry-wood: I saw a tweet about a new german OSM podcast
21:34 toffehoff: is adding himself to the mailinglist.
21:34 harry-wood: sounds cool hey? I often thought about a podcast in english.
21:34 harry-wood: Just one of those things which requires a lot of dedication from one person
21:34 harry-wood: to keep it alive
21:34 toffehoff: Oh yes....
21:34 JonathanB: It's /very/ time consuming
21:35 toffehoff: Also though about some vodcast once.... but decided not to due to time.
21:35 harry-wood: cloudmade started doing a podcast back in 2008 some time. Didn't keep it up
21:35 JonathanB: Then there was Steve's thing
21:35 harry-wood: "this week in maps"
21:36 toffehoff: Could we try and find one (or more) person who would be willing to do this. Like once a month?
21:36 toffehoff: just a thought ....
21:37 harry-wood: maybe. maybe.
21:37 toffehoff: I know ... the list of things we could do is only growing ...
21:37 harry-wood: I'll put it on the TODO list :-)
21:37 toffehoff: problem solved :-)
21:38 toffehoff: Anything else for the moment?
21:38 harry-wood: Saw another interesting tweet today. Development seed blogged about a new documentation tool based on github
21:39 JonathanB: O rly?
21:39 harry-wood: (actually it wasn't so much documentation as web content mangement)
21:39 toffehoff: http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/june/25/prose-a-content-editor-for-github/
21:39 harry-wood: that's the one
21:40 JonathanB: Well, Github has lots of stuff built in anyway
21:40 JonathanB: For OSM we'd want the same system, just running on our own servers
21:40 harry-wood: Anyway that's just another thing to mull on with "the big documentation challenge"
21:41 harry-wood: Andy allan was suggesting a git base approach to some documentation (like the beginners guide) to allow people to fork their own versions
21:41 toffehoff: But this could also be something for the Engineering WG....
21:41 harry-wood: Having never quite got my head around git, I was dubious. Maybe "prose" would help
21:42 harry-wood: anyway…. something to think about.
21:42 harry-wood: Shall we wrap up for today? other topics?
21:42 JonathanB: I've had a look at Andy's thing, and it generally works
21:43 harry-wood: Andy's thing?
21:43 JonathanB: His OCM documentation thing
21:43 JonathanB: hang on...
21:43 harry-wood: (didn't realise he'd *done* something)
21:44 JonathanB: https://github.com/gravitystorm/OpenCycleMap-Mapping-Guide
21:44 harry-wood: ah yeah. The cycling mapping PDF
21:44 harry-wood: need to remember to add that to the list of documentation (when i write such a list)
21:45 harry-wood: but yeah he's using github for that hey? hmm
21:45 JonathanB: Yep
21:45 harry-wood: Ah wait no. this is different thing. not the PDF he did for cyclestreets
21:46 toffehoff: Isn't this the same thing as the DevSeeds guys are talking about?
21:46 toffehoff: yekyll
21:47 JonathanB: They've just built a prettier front end
21:47 harry-wood: jekyll is a github based content thing which their "prose" thing hooks onto (and provides a less gitty interface into)
21:47 toffehoff: h
21:47 toffehoff: ah
21:48 harry-wood: Shall we wrap this up for today? I know you said you wanted a quick meeting.
21:48 toffehoff: Please do.
21:48 harry-wood: I have to crack on with bottling my homebrew beer! (so exciting!)
21:48 toffehoff: enjoy!
21:48 harry-wood: JonathanB as was going to ask if there's anything left to do regarding facebook timeline?
21:49 JonathanB: Nothing urgent
21:49 harry-wood: photos to add in still?
21:49 JonathanB: If there are some, yes
21:49 harry-wood: so uploading old images to give it a fully historical timeline? is that the idea?
21:49 toffehoff: Guys, I'm hopping off.
21:49 toffehoff: Good night!
21:49 harry-wood: ok see ya
21:50 : toffehoff left the room (quit: Remote host closed the connection).
21:50 JonathanB: Yes, just to build up a picture really.
21:50 JonathanB: It's nice, but not essential
21:50 JonathanB: Anyway, you go sort your beer out.
21:50 harry-wood: ok. I'll shunt it down the todo list a bit
21:50 harry-wood: and describe that
21:51 harry-wood: righteeho. Let's leave it at that then hey?
21:51 harry-wood: See you!
21:52 JonathanB: Yep, bye!