OneWeek|OneTool: An Experiment in Interdisciplinary, Rapid, Open Source Software Development

OneWeek|OneTool
An Experiment in Interdisciplinary, Rapid, Open Source Software Development
Sponsor/Organizer Center for History and New Media, George Mason University
Effie Kapsalis
digitaleffie@gmail.com
Twitter: @digitaleffie
FunderThe National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities

What it is
“Digital Humanities Barn-Raising”
12 “digital humanists”
6 days in “isolation”

How it worked: Learning & planning
Sunday nightOverview + Get-to-Know-You
Monday morningBrief seminars(Outreach/Open Source Software Development, Digital Humanities)
Monday afternoonBrainstorming
Tuesday morningTeam + Twitter voting, teams formed (Development, Outreach, UX)
= 2 days

How it worked: Doing/Testing/Refining/Launching
Tuesday afternoon - Saturday afternoon
Work in teams with BRIEF morning/ evening check-ins
= 4 days

Guiding Principles: Center for History & New Media
Build something that will be used
Keep tool simple & focused
Outreach and marketing are important for building user & developer community
Make decisions and move on (“Leadership is momentum-making,” Tom Scheinfeldt.)
Director of Public Projects
Assoc. Dir. of Public Projects
ManagingDirector
Community Lead
Creative Lead
Director
Dan
Sheila
Jeremy
Trevor
Tom
Sharon

Team Outreach Approach/Reflections
Illustrate a compelling story for potential users/developers-why should they care?
Create buzz where users are
Divide & conquer/Trust
Outreach doesn’t stop at release
Project Mgt/ Copywriter/Outreach/ Designer
Design/Multimedia Prod./ WP Site Builder
Copywriter/ Editor/ Grant Writer
Social Media Guru/ WP Site Builder/Writer
Zach
Jana
Doug
Effie

Team UX Approach/Reflections
ID’d real-world use case scenarios and built use cases
Evaluated similar projects.
The diversity of backgrounds in the OWOT crew was a benefit
2 days in, Jason & Scott moved to the dev team to pitch in on some UI/AJAX development. Kathie worked iteratively with the dev team to build wireframes and UI documentation.
I.A/ Java-Ajax Hijinx
I.A/ Java-Ajax Hijinx
Project Mgt/ I.A
Kathie
Scott
Jason

Team Dev. Approach
Forced parallel development
Constant communication and trust
Good-enough prototyping
Decide and go
Design software around technical strengths as well as our hypothetical users’ needs
XSLT Transfixor
Metadata
Badass
Wordpress
Guru
“Glue”
pdf -Tamer
Steve
Boone
Patrick MJ
Julie
Patrick R.

PLAY VIDEO

Results
6,000 downloads since Aug. 3, 2010
Active user & dev. forums
Press
We learned a ton.

What worked
Bringing together a group of do-ers
Ratio of doing vs. planning
Quick timeframe kept egos out
Diversity of skills on one team
Living & working together
Common goal

What didn’t work
More doing!
More cross-learning
Post-release, we have our day-jobs
Not enough time for UX

Future
Continue to develop tool – Recent 0.5 alpha release (10/2010)
Continue dissemination of software with online outreach and conferences
Apply for more grants

How is it different than our environment?
Ratio of Planning vs. Doing is flipped
Minimal risk-taking
We stay in our roles

One Week | One Tool http://oneweekonetool.org/
Anthologize http://anthologize.org
Center for History & New Media http://chnm.gmu.edu/
Twitter #Anthologize
Effie Kapsalis digitaleffie@gmail.com / @digitaleffie

OneWeek|OneTool: An Experiment in Interdisciplinary, Rapid, Open Source Software Development

by Effie Kapsalis on Oct 30, 2010

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OneWeek|OneTool: An Experiment in Interdisciplinary, Rapid, Open Source Software Development — Presentation Transcript