Ordinary fool

Got to love this Internet. I've hooked up with a Montreal-resident French speaker named Sébastien Arbogast. He's a fellow Cocooner, and we're working together on growing Planet Cocoon, a site to support the Apache Cocoon development community (really, it's for geeks only).

Anyhow, the time difference between London and Montreal (coupled with our late night working habits), has meant that we've spent quite a bit of time chatting online over MSN. Apart from walking the geeky walk, we've been examining the catalogue of English idioms: "we're in the same boat", "the jury is still out", and plenty of parting phrases like "see ya round", "ta-ra, chuck", "spot ya" etc. (the explanations tend to drag out the farewells).

What's more, it's good to know the pot isn't exhausted. Today, while reading the Drupal mailing lists I came across another one: "clue bat". As in, "Let's work him with the clue bat.", or "We should not worry over such people. We should not even work them with the clue bat. Waste of time." Got to love English.

Those of you who suffer my posts regularly will know I have a strange predeliction for "tagging" things. I'm not referring to the act of creating graffiti, but rather folksonomy. Never mind the thoery now, this is a site for everyone! So, drumroll please... The award for the best practical application of folksonomy goes to... Kitten War, may the cutest kitten win!

Found via the excellent The Librarian in Black.

This 43 Things is quite a lark. I dropped by again today and found that number nine on the average Londoner's "popular goals" list was "learn to raise just one eyebrow". I mastered that a long time ago - a goal achieved if you like - so, by way of encouragement I decided to offer up my own eyebrow raising story:

When I was seven, Steve Austin (Lee Majors) was my inspiration. I yearned to be special, just like the Six Million Dollar Man. I realised sadly that no-one was going to let me crash an experimental aircraft (“we can rebuild him”; how I wanted to be rebuilt…) No one was going to give me two shiny new bionic legs that would go tink-tink-tink as I leapt from tall buildings. Then one summer’s evening, just after bathtime, as the opening credits rolled, I saw my chance! Steve Austin could raise one eyebrow, and so could I! I was special too! Mr. Austin, if you’re reading this, your bionic eyebrow changed my life!

I ticked the "worth doing" box - I'm sure eyebrow lifts have come in very handy - but, as generous as I would like to be, I wasn't sure how I could honestly tick the "Would you be willing to help others with this?" box.

A particularly heart-warming feature of 43 Things is the "Cheer this goal!" button. Every day 43 Things users get 6 cheers each. A cheer is way to spread encouragement to other users, urging them on in their quest for self-realisation. It's the button that says "I care". If you also care, you can get a regular status report on my own quest for self-realisation over on the right hand side of the screen. What about you? Go on, sign up.

Ah-ha! My evil intentions are unmasked! Seriously though, I'd like to have a damn good go at improving the marketing and documentation of one of my favourite Open Source projects. I posted this to the mailing lists:

Let me start by saying I have no desire to precipitate a fate such as this for the Cocoon community.

Instead, this is what I want:

I want to find richer and better ways for online communities to interact. I want to experiment with what I (and other energetic souls) can offer the online Cocoon community, utilising the wealth of new approaches to online communication.

One example: Cocoon developers are writing more and more in blog form. It's great stuff! Sylvain, you write about Cocoon 2.2, how it "will rock!". I want to everyone to hear it. Posts like this one give the community vitality and, crucially, a vision. People make projects. I think Cocoon's bloggers should be front and central on the Cocoon project site. Feed aggregation is a feature of PlanetCocoon.

Another example: Sarah Burri Windler writes "Based on the very useful and well written tutorial 'Write a Custom Generator' from Geoff Howard I'm on the way to my first ApplicationGenerator and it's a great feeling!" She follows this up with two remarks noting her experiences and what needs updating in the tutorial. A respondent then invites Sarah to add a patch to bugzilla to help update the documentation. Know what? Sarah did! This, despite the fact that there are more instructions for Bugzilla than for the zero gravity toilet in 2001. Don't get me wrong, Bugzilla works, but there's got to be a better way for documentation patches. With PlanetCocoon, comments can be submitted to book pages. Authors can be (automatically) subscribed and notified. It's easy, like a lot of the rest of the web.

So here's my vision of a site devoted to the marketing of Apache Cocoon:

• high search engine visibility;
• a repository of Apache Cocoon success stories;
• a catalogue of live Apache Cocoon web applications;
• an environment to discuss issues of visual identity;
• a repository of press clippings;
• site-wide search;
• a collaborative space to help formulate press releases;
• a noticeboard to raise awareness of community events;
• accessible, standards based design - maximum inclusion;
• a way to publicise key personalities and participating organisations.

Here's my other vision, of a site devoted to Apache Cocoon developers, offering:

• high search engine visibility;
• multilateral expression through rich means such as blogs, forums, pages, polls;
• responsiveness to issues - with a personal touch - caring if you like;
• the ability to collaboratively author structured documentation;
• attractively formatted code snippets / recipes;
• aggregated newsfeeds, drawing on the personal blogs of notable Cocoon developers;
• site-wide search;
• taxonomy / folksonomy, modern information classification, management etc.;
• integration with other community sites such as del.icio.us, flickr, 43things, upcoming etc.;
• accessible, standards based design - maximum inclusion;
• XML feeds for all content.

I sense a fragility about Cocoon that I like. I want to help look after it, and help its community to grow. I want to get this line rising.

If you like my vision too, why not sign up to either site, or both even! If you've written to either users or dev in the last few weeks your account has already been created. Use "Request new password" to get a password. Then you can customise your account how you wish (even enter your birthday on the personal pages if you like). Finally, why not take a look at the tool I'm using to build the site: It's not Cocoon. But then Cocoon is not Drupal. I find lots to admire in both.

Please be amused, not suspicious.

Best regards,
Mark