Marketing Minutes 2007-05-01
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URL: http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/Marketing_Minutes_2007-05-01
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OpenAjax Alliance Marketing Working Group meeting minutes 2007-05-01
Attendees
- David Boloker <boloker(at)us.ibm.com>
- Jon Ferraiolo <jferrai(at)us.ibm.com>
- Ted Thibodeau <tthibodeau(at)openlinksw.com>
- Michael Cote <mcote(at)redmonk.com>
- David Frankel <david.frankel(at)sap.com>
- Robert Lepack <robert.lepack(at)icesoft.com>
- Chris Erickson <chris.erickson(at)icesoft.com>
- Ted Thibodeau <tthibodeau(at)openlinksw.com>
- Seshubabu Simhadri <ssimhadri(at)gce2000.com>
Original Agenda
- Agenda
- Marketing Working Group approved
- OpenAjax Product Selector
- Quick and dirty mockup: http://www.openajax.org/member/sandbox/product_selector/
- Questions for this meeting
- Should we adopt a mashup metaphor for this application?
- If so, what suggestions do people have for how it should work?
- Background
- Goals with product selector (presented/discussed at previous meeting)
- Help developers and IT managers navigate through the Ajax tyrrany of choice. This application would be a tool to guide them to the commercial products and open source projects that meet their needs.
- Show OpenAjax interoperability technologies in action
- Show Ajax's value proposition
- Showcase toolkits that take the time to participate in the product selector
- Goals with product selector (presented/discussed at previous meeting)
Minutes
Topic: Marketing Working Group approved
Jon: Just a reminder of an announcement that went out to all members. Any questions or comments?
Topic: Product Selector Application
http://www.openajax.org/member/sandbox/product_selector/
(Jon reminds people of discussion at F2F, mentions discussion Ted and Jon has two weeks ago when meeting did not happen)
Jon: Four objectives: (1) Put Ajax on our site, (2) Fulfill decision by this group last year when we decided that we should only put Ajax on our site when we can showcase OpenAjax on our site, (3) Help promote OpenAjax agenda, and (4) Showcase and promote the products offered by our members.
(Jon goes over the four sections. Section 0 allows user to choose which toolkit to render the other 3 sections. Idea is that Sections 1-3 would be defined in some sort of high-level XML that defines the desired human-computer interaction such as ARIA or XForms. You would transcode into vendor-specific presentation markup, maybe using XSLT. Section 1 mirrors our architecture breakdown from the white papers.)
Michael: Pretty snazzy. Would it be possible to download? Would be handy.
Jon: Depends on whether it requires data services. Obviously, with a small amount of programming, sure, could extract databases into JavaScript data structures.
Jon: How about the feature list idea at the bottom. Too much to bite off?
Rob: Could have collapsible UI where expanded is vendor-specific UI.
Ted: Collapsibility might be one of the features. I expect the vendors would use the best presentation approach they could.
Seshu: Vendors have their own Web site with the details.
Jon: So maybe just a link.
Jon: How much investment would people make into custom development for this page?
Rob: Top-level sorting would be interesting, but further down, toolkit details, maybe better to push to individual web sites
Seshu: I agree. Link to Web sites for details.
Ted: But is should not take that much effort to customize the UI
Jon: Yes, especially if we can drive things through XSLT
Ted: Most challenging thing is defining the XML files
Chris: Maybe we should talk about 3-6 higher level sorting details. If more than 50, need to branch to web sites
Jon: Makes sense. Let's talk about that now.
Chris: Company level: whether in OpenAjax, whether commercial, whether open source. Server vs client. OAH support should be at top level. Next 3 or 4 might be more difficult to agree on.
Jon: Here are some that come to mind: declarative vs procedural, IDE support, mobile support.
DavidF: Can any toolkit be 100% declarative.
Jon: None so far. It's either 100% procedural or combination declarative and procedural.
Ted: Maybe we should use a wiki to add categories/columns and fill out.
Jon: Is declarative vs procedural important to customers?
DavidF: I think so. Maybe ask if declarative markup for layout? Don't ask "versus procedural".
Jon: How about IDE support?
Chris: I think that's important. Maybe we should talk about company-level characteristics, such as member of OpenAjax, commerical, open source. Then have architecture. Then features. Maybe architecture is simply features that are really important.
Jon: At conferences, I say that a prime target customer for OpenAjax is the mainstream developer, with assumption that early adopters are already figuring things out. Mainstream users need whole product, not just technology. Maybe company-level can be generalized into whole product.
Chris: Yes. And reinforce with the white paper.
Jon: Yes. I am assuming that we will keep alignment between product selector and white paper breakdowns.
Chris: Another thing is that the app is a black box now where you click on items and more is revealed. Developer wants to gain perspective but also participate in the process. I think IDEs will be very important to a large team. Start at high level but if we want to go too deep we are likely to find we start to disagree.
Ted: I think a lot of this would shake out with a wiki approach.
(unminuted discussion about mediawiki limitations)
Jon: Any wikis that support interactive Ajax?
Ted: Ours probably does, and probably do other vendor's products, but then we run into the favoritism issue.
ACTION: Jon to create a wiki page for collaborating on high-level characteristics. (Done: see http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/Product_Selector_Application_Breakdown_Categories)
Jon: Next meeting in two weeks.
