[asterisk-scf-dev] Asterisk SCF Steering Committee: Call For Participation

[Andrew Latham]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Kevin P. Fleming <kpfleming at digium.com> wrote:
> (Apologies in advance for the length of this message; please don't stop
> reading after the first couple of paragraphs <G>)
>
> A little over a year ago, when the Asterisk SCF project was just getting
> started, we invited interested community members to help us form a steering
> committee. The committee's purpose was to help shape the direction of
> Asterisk SCF development, in order to ensure that it would serve the needs
> of community members.
>
> The committee was formed and began having somewhat regular meetings (via
> conference call); the meetings are documented (and recordings posted) here:
>
> https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/TOP/Steering+Committee
>
> In the beginning, the committee's task was fairly easy to define: we at
> Digium had already decided on some basic pieces of technology, and some
> design criteria, but we needed help figuring out exactly how we should
> assemble these pieces. In other words, we knew how to make things that
> people wanted to use, but we needed people to tell us *what* to make.
>
> Some of us at Digium then spent time interviewing various people and
> companies, in order to determine what would be most useful to them in an
> 'Asterisk SCF 1.0' release. We combined the results of those interviews into
> a candidate feature list, and asked the committee to help us determine
> whether that was the *right* list of features to build first. The group was
> in agreement, so development began in earnest.
>
> Now it's about seven months later, development has been continuing at a
> frenetic pace... but the committee has become disengaged. It's been
> difficult to get a reasonable number of members to participate in the (now
> monthly) conference calls, and there have been occasions where no community
> members have participated at all. It's understandable to have some members
> occasionally unable to join; everyone has regular jobs, travel sometimes
> interferes, etc., but we'd hoped to have at least two or three of the six
> community members be able to join each call.
>
> In just a couple of months, we intend to be making the first beta releases
> of Asterisk SCF available, and when that happens, it will be quite important
> that we have the community's involvement to ensure:
>
> * that we continue heading down the right path
>
> * that we're addressing the right problems and feature requests that arise
> once the beta testing process has started
>
> * that we're providing the right documentation, examples and other
> assistance to get interested users able to actually use Asterisk SCF in
> their networks
>
> So, I'm posting this call to see if we can get things moving in the right
> direction again; if you are interested in helping to shape the future of
> Asterisk SCF development, please speak up! It's not necessary to commit
> multiple hours per week to this effort, but it's important that those who
> volunteer to be a member of the steering committee be able to stay engaged
> with the project, participate on the conference calls, and be able to spend
> at least an hour reviewing documentation and other details a few days before
> the conference call in order to facilitate discussion and decision-making.
>
> For this to be a true Steering Committee, those of us doing the bulk of the
> Asterisk SCF development are willing to commit to documenting our research,
> describing that to the committee and working to reach a consensus on how we
> should proceed... but only if the committee itself is willing to commit to
> being a full participant in the process. Without that level of commitment,
> development grinds to a halt, or decisions have to be made without community
> interaction; neither of those are what we would wish to be the case.
>
> So here's the call to action: join the committee, and help us make Asterisk
> SCF into the best framework for building communications applications that
> you can envision!
>
> --
> Kevin P. Fleming
> Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
> Jabber: kfleming at digium.com | SIP: kpfleming at digium.com | Skype: kpfleming
> 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
> Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org


I have been lurking and reading everything that is going on.  Still
trying to learn the new platform.  From what I have seen it looks like
you have been busy.

-- 
~~~ Andrew "lathama" Latham lathama at gmail.com ~~~