Posing a question for the good of the Omnis community – want to move to STACK EXCHANGE?

Hi everybody.

This question is about moving the knowledge that is contained in this list else where, specifically STACK EXCHANGE. I know the notion of using something else comes up once in a while .. so I hope my fellow listers will bear with me as I describe why the time might have arrived to do something different.

First – let me say that I love this list. I love the way it comes together and helps. I’ve been using it since the days of AOL and I as I recall, a special forum that was my main introduction to email some decades ago. and each time the topic of making a forum surfaces, I have generally not been in favour because I do like the one-stop-shopping and sense community engendered by the list.

but I think the time has come….. and let me explain the reasons so that there is complete transparency.

(i.e. please read to the end of the note and lets have a discussion — one more time on this subject).

There is also no offence intended to our List-Mom (Fred H, as I understand). The list is a wonderful service provided to the community for many years. For new reasons, it is time to begin looking outward.

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of being in Hamburg as a representative on the Omnis Technical Committee. This was a full day meeting with Omnis (Bob & Brigit) and about a dozen developers from around the world (Australia, US, Canada, Italy, Germany, England, France, Canada were represented), some corporate, some vertical market, some consultants. it was a nice mix and a good team.

The goal of this committee are to help Omnis in a few ways. Eg to suggest
— features that the community wants and needs that will keep omnis alive for a long time
— how to improve visibility of the product
— how to bring on new developers
— how to create a vibrant community.

The meeting was excellent and, perhaps not surprisingly, a fair degree of agreement around the table of what some directions should be.

One of the Italian developers at the meeting (Simone, to give credit where credit is due, and forgive me if you wanted to be anonymous) asked a really simple question.

WHY ISN’T ALL THE KNOWLEDGE ON STACK EXCHANGE? Thats where I go to get answers! (paraphrasing Simone)

Well, of course, that got us all thinking – a really good question.

Reflecting on this, I find that when I want an answer to a technique or a tough problem, especially with postgres, javascript, python, freenas, linux or what have you, I ask the question on google …. and at least one answer invariably shows up on STACK EXCHANGE .. so I tend to trust what it said

That was the general concensis of everybody in the room. Stack Exchange has become the go-to-place to get things answered. Simone even had a comment ‘I want to meet HorseWithNoName — since he always has the right answers for database things’.

In other words, the answers on Stack exchange are:
can be one or more options
typically highlighted by reputation of the provider of the answer.
often enhanced beyond the original in some cases to get best practices
can have code snippets to copy
and more.

anyway… WHY DO THIS?? short answer — its part of helping omnis become more mainstream and more recognized.

if we look at various initiatives and the change that is happening within our community, I am seeing:

a push to use git hub
— to be able to share code snippets and open source some things for the good of us all
— make omnis a more recognized tool and more mainstream

Simones question about ‘why not Stack Exchange?’ has the same kind goals:

— to be able to share code snippets AND BEST PRACTICES
— make omnis a more recognized tool and more mainstream

One of the questions that came up at the Tech committee — Can we have the Linux Server set up for us as Docker VM’s?

The purpose of that is to simplify deployment so that we all don’t need to be linux installation experts. And so we could pull Docker VM’s into any tool that supports it (widows, freenas, rancher, cloud what have you) — and just have a scaleable linux server running omnis (of course I’m simplifying the overall tech involved).

BUT… the purpose is similar
— to be able to share full VM’s for easy cloud deployment
— make omnis a ore recognized tool and more mainstream

and each time we, as a community, create visibility, there can be good effects. The more people that see the tool, the more that are likely to use it. the more that use it, the more that it will grow and we can find trained developers.

I believe omnis is, bar none, one of the best GUI tools out there – so it makes a

and so we need to play our part in telling the world about this —

hence, the proposal, as so eloquently put by Simone — why not shared our knowledge that we do day in and out .. and move it from this list to STACK EXCHANGE. It would also mean that the omnis portal that some use … also moves.

Making Omnis more visible is something that we can all take part in .. and its far better accomplished if there is general community agreement.

Comments .. thoughts.

Doug Easterbrook
Arts Management Systems Ltd.
mailto:doug@artsman.com
www.artsman.com
Phone (403) 650-1978

see you at the third annual users conference
tickets.proctors.org/TheatreManager/95/online?performance=29086 <tickets.proctors.org/TheatreManager/95/online?performance=29086>

_____________________________________________________________
Manage your list subscriptions at lists.omnis-dev.com
Start a new message -> mailto:omnisdev-en@lists.omnis-dev.com