{"action":"opened","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/AgileVentures/AgileVentures/issues/5","repository_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/AgileVentures/AgileVentures","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/AgileVentures/AgileVentures/issues/5/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/AgileVentures/AgileVentures/issues/5/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/AgileVentures/AgileVentures/issues/5/events","html_url":"https://github.com/AgileVentures/AgileVentures/issues/5","id":137858011,"number":5,"title":"AgileVentures - thoughts on moving forward","user":{"login":"tansaku","id":30216,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/30216?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku","html_url":"https://github.com/tansaku","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/tansaku/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":0,"created_at":"2016-03-02T12:12:57Z","updated_at":"2016-03-02T12:12:57Z","closed_at":null,"body":"<a href=\"https://github.com/freeranger\"><img src=\"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1401069?v=3\" align=\"left\" width=\"96\" height=\"96\" hspace=\"10\"></img></a> **Issue by [freeranger](https://github.com/freeranger)**\n_Monday Jan 25, 2016 at 20:35 GMT_\n_Originally opened as https://github.com/AgileVentures/WebsiteOne/issues/745_\n\n----\n\n**Developers**\r\n\r\nI think for new developers, there are a few barriers to entry:-\r\n\r\n* I don't know what skills the projects need so I don't know if I could help. If you look at http://up-for-grabs.net/#/tags/ you can zero in on the projects that match your skillset so you find ones more \"relevant\" to you.\r\n* My experience with the technology is a bit shakey so I'm afraid I will commit to something beyond my skillset.  Some projects tag issues with an indicaton of how easy/difficult they are - e.g. https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/labels/status%2Fhelp-wanted - so maybe I start with some easy/quick issues to get my feet wet, get some confidence, and move on from there.\r\n* I'm scared of breaking things - I don't know the project, maybe I'm new to this whole contributing to open source game. Perhaps an experienced team member could guide me through my first issue or two? Maybe there is a sample project for newbies to play around with and contribute to and see how it all works, somewhere they don't need to be afraid of contributing.\r\n* I can't commit to pairing - My availability is all over the place, I'm not sure I can commit to meeting up online with someone at certain times, or my connection is really bad or many other reasons I can't pair, or I just don't like the idea of it. Maybe I know the benefits of pairing and I would encourage people to try it but maybe it is emphasised too much and I want to start off without pairing, submtting pull requests for someone to review. Basically not wanting or not being able to pair shouldn't be a barrier to contributing to a project.\r\n* Limited technologies. There seems to be a clear \"bias\" towards Ruby here, which is fair enough, but what if I am an awesome .NET developer or node.js developer and would like to work on a project using those skills - is this possible? Is AV \"meant\" to be a ruby shop or is that just the way it has panned out?\r\n* I can't easily find projects I'm interested in - I want to find projects particularly about saving badgers, or the most active projects or the newest projects, or the \"hottest\" projects (most ractivity recently? Most developers joinging recently?) - there's no way to do that, I just have to trawl the pages.\r\n\r\n**Charities**\r\n\r\nYou need to attract new business from charities in order to continue to grow, so you need to make charities want to use you, which means it must be easy for them to find you and find what you do and be confident you can meet their needs.\r\n\r\n*Scenario* - I am a charity looking to have a site made, I google for <whatever term turns up agileventures as an option> and go to agileventures.org\r\n\r\nThe first thing I see is stuff about pairing and learning to code and developing my team skills. But I am not a developer, I am a charity - this site seems focused on coders, not on businesses looking for a site to be developed. It doesn't seem relevant to me at all, so I go elsewhere...\r\n\r\nLets say I get past the front screen because maybe you are relevant after all. I want to see what you guys have been doing to gauge if you are any good or not. Where do I go? hmm, I click into \"Projects\" as the most likely place to get a feel for what you do and...I get a random list of projects.\r\n\r\nI really want to see one of the actual sites in action, so I pick one at random, say LocalSupport, (Note, I tried a few other at random such as MetPlus, but I couldn't a link to the site at all in the ones I tried!) in the hope that I will get a link to click on to the actual site. Hmm..nothing obvious - though I notice under the title of the site, the page says \"VAH's Local Support site is at www.harrowcn.org.uk\" but this isn't even a clickable link, so I have to copy and paste it....oh wait, further down the page there is an actual clickable link to the LocalSupport site, so I can finally see one of the sites you have developed.\r\n\r\nBoy that was hard work! Other projects don't even seem to have any links - I have no idea (as a developer or as a potential customer) if these sites are live at all, if they are just at the early alpha stage, if they have even gotten off the ground.\r\n\r\nWhat I would like to see is a very obvious link, front and centre, to the current production site. Regardless of whether the site is live or not, I would also like a link to the latest deployment of the development/UAT instance so I can see what it looks like - for not-yet-live sites I can now see what they are about and for currently live sites, I can see what's due to be released soon presumably.\r\n\r\nIt would be nice to see a thumbnail of the site on the project page also.\r\n\r\nI know you said in the meeting that you didn't think a showcase was that important at the moment, but if you want to attract new customers then you need to make it more customer-friendly and a showcase is one way to do that - or, for now, just spruce up the project pages and make them more \"discoverable\" and easy to see what they look like.\r\n\r\n**Premium Services**\r\n\r\nThere are two potential sources of revenue here - the charities and the developers:\r\n\r\n_Charities_\r\n\r\nFree service gets people working on your site as and when, so don't hold your breath for it to be developed...\r\n\r\nPaid for at different levels can offer things like:\r\n\r\nYour project is promoted on the site so hopefully will attract more developers\r\nWe could offer to pay the developers a small amount, thus likely attracting more people to it. Not sure how you would work out how to pay them - per commit? per lines of code? per feature? If stories were assigned points then a fee per story point? So a 1 point story gets you X, a 2 point story gets you 2X etc?\r\nWe could specifically direct developers to your project\r\nWe could promote your charity (as opposed to the project itself) since after all the website is a means to an end - the charity itself is the main thing.\r\n\r\n_Developers_\r\n\r\nThis is a bit tricky since the developers are already giving their free time to help out on projects and now you want some money from them too? Hmmm...\r\n\r\nThe \"fee\" would have to be quite small methinks because of said donation of time to projects, but the sorts of things you could offer are:\r\n\r\nThey get first dibs on any paid for work - the premium members are made aware of it for a period of time before it is opened out to everyone,\r\nThey get some kind of ranking on your site in the members directory\r\nOther members can \"endorse\" their skills (like on LinkedIn)\r\nMaybe people who have worked with them will write testimonials about them on their member page (can help them get other paid work)\r\nI think the area to concentrate on here would be helping the developers to promote themselves in order to get paid for work elsewhere, since we all need to make a living right?\n"}}