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5:42 pm
April 12, 2010
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antinode
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I propose this improved site structure that places emphasis on the missions. It includes the proposed "Technical Report System"/"Document Library" and "Engineering Process"/"Project Management". It is by no means perfect and I've probably worded things badly and left some things out. Please provide feedback, suggestions for changes, and ask for clarification if needed. I am wiling make this happen and welcome anyone who'd like to help.
 
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6:38 pm
April 12, 2010
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Luke Maurits
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This looks really good to me. I agree that a reorg of the site could be quite beneficial, and I would especially like to see the projects have more of a visiblity outside the Wiki. A nice, clear donation system with per-project and overall-org options would be a great thing to see as well. I am also keen to see the TRS or whatever-we-come-up-with take shape, because I think getting stuff written for that is a big help for us and is something I am keen to do.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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1:21 am
April 18, 2010
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Rizwan
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This does indeed look good. I will start work on this within the next few days as soon as my office renovation is done.
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7:23 pm
April 18, 2010
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antinode
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| Member | posts 37 |
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This would be a multi-stage change as it'll require a bit of custom back-end code and configuration. For now if you could just change the site navigation as it's currently confusing with the ambiguous "Join Us" and "Get Involved" items. Are there any plans for a custom site design or is everyone happy with the current template design?
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9:50 pm
April 18, 2010
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J. Simmons
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It looks like the proposed changes you are discussing include features for managing the engineering projects at CSTART beyond the services offered at open source code portals like sourceforge. A few of us at Mach 30 have been discussing what that might look like since we are going to need somewhere to host projects as well. In particular, one of our goals is to start a site like sourceforge, but with tools and licenses focused on openly licensed hardware to promote open design both in space related projects and in general.
Not sure if this is the right place, but I would love to chat with folks about hardware project hosting to continue to get a better idea about what a hardware project hosting site needs and to see if there is any overlap in need that we could leverage into a joint project.
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11:07 pm
April 18, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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I agree that we should not rush into these changes and plan things carefully. In particular, if we are still interested in using Elgg for some features, we should probably hold off on a lot of this restructure until Elgg is up and running: that way we can decide whether certain things would best be handled within the existing Wordpress framework or the new Elgg framework. My instinct, based on some quick perusal of their website, is that Elgg will be extremely handy for this. The voting system might be well implemented as an Elgg plugin, for instance.
J. Simmons, it's great to see you here (for those unaware, J. Simmons is on the board of directors of Mach 30, our latest Friend of CSTART). I too am extremely keen to talk with more people about how to best support the collaborative, distributed design of hardware online. You can read what plans we have so far in our Engineering Process: it is currently quite rudimentary and there are definitely aspects of design that it won't be able to handle. Although there are currently no plans for CSTART to function as an "aerospace sourceforge" (although the idea has been informally raised before), we also have a rough process for deciding how to handle the creation of new projects, which may be of some interest to you if you are considering a sourceforge-esque approach. You can read about them in our Project Lifecycle Process.
I warmly encourage you and anybody else at Mach 30 to use our forums to discuss these and other issues with us. We are very interested in improving our organisational infrastructure (which is currently quite ad hoc), and if we can help and/or learn from others in doing so then that would be fantastic. 
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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9:28 pm
April 20, 2010
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J. Simmons
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Thanks for the links into the wiki, and the warm welcome. Looks like the forum threads related to those wiki pages might be the best place to continue the discussion about distributed collaborative hardware design and development. I'll post what we have been working on at Mach 30 over there as soon as I get caught up on the posts already in the thread.
One small clarification. Our goal with the project hosting site is to include more than just aerospace projects. I am hoping we can attract all sorts of open designed hardware projects (arduino projects, furniture, cars, tools, wheel chairs, who knows what all). The way I see it, more projects from more areas of design mean more recognition and acceptance of the open design process in the eyes of the public and industry. And I hope this will help smooth the way for the work at Mach 30 and at CSTART to be better understood eyes of the public and industry.
You know, sometimes when I tell people at conferences what I am doing (starting an open design space non-profit), and I am asked, "but what happens if someone steals your work?" I was quite stunned the first time it happened, but then I replied, "I actually hope they do take our work and use it. It is actually the point, so it won't really be stealing. Besides, the more people there are building spaceships and businesses around spaceships, the better the world will be."
Oh, there is one other thing about the open design project hosting site (we are calling it "Open Design Engine", a nod the old names for machines: engines). Even though we are working to get it developed and launched, it is our plan to spin it into its own organization, one that can better represent the entire open design community than we can with a mission so tightly focused on one particular use of design and engineering.
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9:49 pm
April 20, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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Sorry for misunderstanding the scope of your intended Sourceforge-esque project. A completely domain-general open hardware project site sounds like a fantastic and noble operation. Better understanding what you have in mind, it occurs to me now that you may be interested in the Open Manufacturing Network. There isn't much to see at that website, but the mailing list associated with OMN is very active and is filled with people interested in the open source design and manufacture of all sorts of things. There are some people there working on projects aimed at having large online repositories of hardware component designs in formats compatible with various small-scale manufacturing systems (they call this "apt get for hardware"). I am sure that if you introduced your plans on that list you would get a lot of interest and valuable feedback.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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11:00 pm
April 20, 2010
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J. Simmons
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Great link! These do sound like the kind of people we need to be talking to. Thanks.
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11:41 pm
April 20, 2010
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antinode
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The general software and practices used in existing revision control systems can and have been carried over to hardware development. The main issue at hand is how decisions will be made regarding what tasks need completed and who will complete them. There are plenty of existing software solutions for this, and it is unnecessary to roll our own solution from scratch. The first decision should be whether to use existing open source solutions and self host it, or use hosted services like Google Code and Basecamp. While either would work just fine, self-hosted has the benefits of lower cost, more control, and customized integration. I'm working on a mockup that employs the concepts of these solutions and of concepts proposed in the Engineering Process and the Project Lifecycle that I'll post in this thread within the next few days.
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11:25 pm
May 3, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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Still strongly in support of significant restructuring and still really looking forward to seeing your mockups. :)
Came across this today: the website for DIRECT, an unofficial human spaceflight architecture designed by a group of NASA employees, contractors, and a few other people, who are trying to convince NASA that their proposal is better than the Ares-based Constellation program (as an aside, this is a pretty impressive thing for a small group of people to do, and suggests a good "business model" for CSTART – politely pressuring space agencies to adopt our plans as their own. Obviously NASA are not going to be interested in CLLARE, but smaller, poorer space agencies might be).
Simply put, the homepage of this site is really nice. It's very clear and minimal, everything you need to know is laid out right there with convenient links to things regular people want to see – videos and presentation slideshows – as well as a few links to technical specs. This could, IMHO, serve as a good guide for what pages like http://cstart.org/projects/ohkla and http://cstart.org/projects/cllare should look and feel like.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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3:53 am
May 4, 2010
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antinode
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| Member | posts 37 |
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Sorry for the delay. I'll be posting some mockups on Wednesday evening.
It's appropriate you bring this up because it covers something I'm trying to figure out. I'm torn between having the main project pages be highly graphical landing pages (like your DIRECT example), or having them be the project dashboard that focuses on recent activity (like a Facebook profile). Pretty pictures are attractive for casual visitors, but having the activity feed in the forefront would also be good as it shows the openness of the project. Separate pages are an option but it creates a barrier that we don't really want in an open project. It comes down to how much of a separation there should be between marketing and development. I'm currently leaning more towards dashboards. There will be dashboards either way though, so maybe we should just discuss this once you see my mockup.
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4:11 am
May 4, 2010
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1229 |
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It might be best if I wait for the mockup before making any comment so I can be fully informed and make specific reference to your work. I agree that we need to strike a good balance between marketing and development, though.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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7:17 am
May 4, 2010
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Kurouma
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antinode, you did really good work with your flowchart up there, couldn't have organised it better myself. The missions really pushed up onto the front page is something pretty important, I think, not only from an appearances sense (more professional?) but for the sense of purpose.
Would a dashboard-life feed on a project page show up blog posts, or forum topics, or amin tweet-like updates, or a combination? What's the intended use/audience? Casual yet interested visitor, or astro-entrepeneur seeking open source mission specs? (Obviously both, I guess…)
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9:35 am
May 15, 2010
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Rizwan
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Any updates on the mockup, antinode? Not trying to push you or anything, but if we have a general consensus on the site structure changes we can start work in that direction. CSTART needs to get out of this coma.
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