[hydra-dev] Steering Committe: Your Input Needed

[John Todd]

Hydra Steering Committee

At the meeting in Huntsville, there was a general question of  
leadership of the Codename Hydra project.  Digium may have started  
this project, but the leadership of the community both in technical  
and political terms is a mandatory requirement for success.  We would  
like to have a pre-existing set of people who can assist the efforts  
and guide some of the directions of the Digium team as well as more  
closely channel the energy for what we hope will shortly be a core  
development group of community developers.  This is a large project,  
with implications on the future of network-based media communications  
that may be significant.  The decisions made in the development of the  
goals and technical implementation of Hydra are at a formative stage -  
we need your insights and comments, and we need your effort.

The ball is rolling.  We need YOU to direct the energy, and add to the  
momentum.  There were a handful of people who indicated that they  
wanted to participate in the SC, but I'd like to re-broadcast this for  
new members as well as to collect everyone's thoughts.



The Steering Committee

We are hoping to get an Steering Committee together to guide the  
progress of Hydra.  This will probably at first consist of a handful  
of people who were in the Huntsville introductory meeting, but over  
time will probably expand to a larger or different group as more  
people are brought into the project and it eventually becomes publicly  
known.


The obvious first-pass duties of the Council (up for modification) are:

1) To provide for the community the creation of ongoing goals of the  
project and to determine the acceptable methods by which those goals  
are achieved.  This is a dynamic task, and goals or methods may change  
over time with general consensus.

2) To consider the overall proposals of community members (including  
Digium) as they relate to the goals of the project, and provide a  
consistent and level-headed forum for discussion of proposals of  
features, definitions, and programming effort.

3) To provide a decision-making function to issues which require such  
decisions and which are not resolved by overall consensus.

4) To offer their specific technical expertise in discussion areas  
which may require an in-depth knowledge or experience as required.



Here are some specific duties which related to the overall guidelines  
above.  If you look at each element below, it should map pretty  
clearly to one of the four primary duties of the Steering Committee:

1) Provide fundamental development guidance in these critical first  
few months of the project.  What should we be doing first? What are  
the documents that need to be written?  What are the definitions of  
the objects that will be built?  What ARE the objects that need to be  
defined?  Digium is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and will  
continue to invest effort and management at a high level, but the SC  
will probably introduce issues that significantly change priorities or  
re-focus development considerations.

2) Provide a "roadmap" for community-driven features and set  
expectations of release features and timeframes.

3) To manage the transition between "fledgling project" and "general  
release".  This is vitally important as Hydra will not be "full  
featured" or even stable for some time, and balancing the race to  
production versus the expansion of functionality is a delicate task.

4) To serve as a collection point for community requests, and to act  
as ombudsmen for those who may be interested in the project but not  
necessarily developers.

5) To discuss and debate various elements for inclusion in release  
candidates.

6) To guide and advise developers on issues of importance and  
hopefully encourage developers to work on projects which are more  
critical on the roadmap.


FAQ:

How many people on the Council?  Are there titles?  Who leads the  
agenda?  What is the real level of effort?  I don't know the answers  
to these questions, yet.  First, I need to get your offer of  
participation - you need to step off the cliff a bit with us, and then  
we'll start building the roles as we go.  The first order of business  
would be to make the order of business: what does the Council do?

What is the level of effort expected?  The rough guess is that members  
of the Steering Committee would need at least 2, and hopefully not  
more than 4 hours per week of their time spent on thinking,  
discussing, and writing about topics of concern.  There will probably  
be weekly IRC or Jabber-based meetings (perhaps more, based on working  
groups?) and conference calls.  Much of the work is not going to be  
handed to the group - the questions and concerns will need to be  
developed by the Council, and then answered.


Mail me back with your interest level, and if you can participate.  We  
believe that this is going to be an incredibly powerful tool that  
we're building, and Digium is investing a large amount of development  
effort into it.  We want to see that doubled, tripled, magnified ten  
times over by the participation of the community as we progress in the  
coming years, and you have the ability to assist in creating that kind  
of response by your involvement NOW.  Hydra is being kick-started by  
Digium, but it is Digium's desire to see this become a truly open- 
source project.


JT

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/