Meetup Will Discuss Survey Results, Project Improvements
Hi all, The openSUSE <https://www.opensuse.org/> Project welcomes our followers to participate in two planned meetups to discuss results from the End of the Year Community Survey <https://en.opensuse.org/End-of-year-surveys/2020/Data> on Jan. 23 and Jan. 30. Both sessions will start at 13:00 UTC on openSUSE’s Jitsi instance and go for 1:30 hours. Members of the “let’s improve the openSUSE learning experience” <https://news.opensuse.org/2020/10/12/join-our-team-and-help-us-imporove-the-openSUSE-learning-experience/> initiative will share results <https://en.opensuse.org/End-of-year-surveys/2020/Data> and analysis from the survey. The meetup is designed to discuss ways the community can improve upon areas identified in the results as either a weakness or needing improvement. Topics that will be discussed in the Jan. 23 session include: * Address pain points * Knowledge transfer * Promotion (How are they learning about projects) Topics to be discussed in the Jan. 30 session include: * Tools driving switchers to openSUSE (Where are users coming from) * Discuss flagship project/s * Expanding global users * Increasing diversity * Increase usage with people under 34 The meetup will take place at https://meet.opensuse.org/EOY2020 <https://meet.opensuse.org/EOY2020>. More details about the End of the Year Community Survey <https://news.opensuse.org/2020/12/19/introducing-the-opensuse-2020-end-of-year-survey/> results can be found on the openSUSE Wiki <https://en.opensuse.org/End-of-year-surveys/2020/Data>. https://news.opensuse.org/2021/01/18/meetup-will-discuss-survey-results-proj... v/r Doug
It might be nice to collect ideas that have sprung up here and there in view of the upcoming meetings. In order of appearance as far as I know there is already: - https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/results-diagnosis-ideas (a first seed in response to Doug's idea of a meeting, with Dougs comments inlined) - https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/creativesquad-pitch (Vinz' ideas shared on our platforms) - https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/r.37d6e97950a6b96124a5898648c20572 (a more polished version of the first) We can discuss them here, or we can just post more, everything goes I think.
Hello everyone, Here are the minutes. I'll add them to the wikis as soon as I find time. Have a pleasant Sunday, Adrien ~~~ # Meetup on EOY 2020 survey results ## Setting * Doug organized the meeting and prepared slides * Ivo recorded the meeting (https://cloud.operationtulip.com/s/jegJmJCQcXRS42K) * 13-15 people attended * Adrien took these minutes ## Context A community wide survey was conducted at the end of 2020. The goal was to better understand the community's needs and to provide a baseline for improvements. ## Goal The goal was to come together on an reasonable understanding of the results, as well as to discuss priorities and ways forward. On the agenda: * addressing pain points visible from the results * improving knowledge transfer * promotion ## Summary Ordered by "most to least discussed". ### Lack of integration The participants agreed to foster changes towards a simplification and better integration of the platforms, catering in particular for new users, in response to the following concerns: * the path from opensuse.org to downloading, finding docs and installing is unnecessarily complicated * information is scattered (docs in particular: wiki and official docs) * there is insufficient structure, making it difficult to tell what's really important from what is less * basic information about the distributions ("more about...") is missing from opensuse.org * the message conveyed by Lives images not being recommended for installation was found confusing * "rebuild" images for Leap were found missing ### Promotion The participants agreed to foster changes towards better promotion, welcomed the idea of press-kits, and several participants expressed their sympathy for a more "aggressive" promotion, in response to the following concerns: * there is generally insufficient visibility of the openSUSE brand, of its value-proposition * openSUSE could better promote its name by having users intervene on different social platforms, or by having influential people featured in live events (podcasts, talks, conferences) * promotional material could be enriched, improved, and made more accessible via "press kits" * both promotion and documentation in general could find inspiration in the August 2019 issue of "Getting Started with Linux" ### Knowledge transfer Even though there was no unanimous endorsement of the ideas, the participants viewed positively the ideas of organizing workshops on specific, technical subjects (i.e. openQA) and of making it easier for certain groups to work with a mentor-apprentice workflow, in response to the following concerns: * there are many skilled people in the community, but onboarding is difficult, and many activities and projects lack visibility * some teams work beyond capacity, and the perspective of learning can motivate new contributors to step in. ## Details ### Lack of integration * Adrien: actionable outcomes of this meeting should go to etherpad (to document ideas) and Progress / Pagure (to act) * Adrien: the survey suggests that making the web platforms navigable is key * Gerald: regular page and wiki are confusing; it is desirable to improve the docs by creating an area where it's official and up-do-date * Lars: we could organize a new survey with free text to better understand harware pain points, also present good points * Chris: opensuse.org mentions tools, but there is room for adding FAQs and the other informations about the distributions * Staciek: easier access to the docs was not a guiding constraint of the new design, but it would help Staciek to have a clear path from entry point to specific things, such as documentation * Axel: more rich content, include Codex and make it more discoverable * Staciek: opensuse.org cannot contain everything about distros, moving distros to another pages is feasible, but spreading each distro under a separate subdomain is not easy for the user to comprehend; also there will be soon a single entry point for each distribution (get.opensuse.org) * AJV: the entry point should disclose the different distributions, one shouldn't have to ask a web engine to find about them * Adrien: feasible to organize "sprint sessions" to improve the web platform? * Staciek: cannot write content alone, but Staciek OK with lightly mentoring a couple of volunteers willing to help with contents and design * Adrien: Why installation + Live? And then why not recommended to install? * Axel: not sure about the argument for not recommending installation from Live image * AJV: the Live images can be much easier to use because they are packaged with more forgiving drivers (usually more up-to-date and compatible) * Adrien to Axel: How to go about this integration change? Where to push change? * Chris: the live installers should run through the same amount of tests * Axel: should include rebuild images (software packages from x weeks ago) as well * Andreas: maintenance and curation of the images (every x weeks, openQA on Leap rebuilds) ### Knowledge transfer * Adrien: as far as knowledge transfer, we could generalize mentoring; time investment at start but repaid for the benefits of all * Doug: could set up workshops on openQA * AJV: an underlying thread in all this is fragmentation: we need to bring resources together, we need less channels so that people can be focussed on where to get stuff, and more integration * Milan: it's not always clear where to find the correct info, about packages, etc.; we should take a page off the arch wiki because it's much more orderly * Axel: we should make it sure that we make the most of channels for what they're good for, and for example support and technical information is difficult to pick up on instant messaging applications * Staciek: using the mailing list out of the browser is user friendly and provides a nice middle-ground between chat and "classic" ML ### Promotion * Adrien: perhaps we could make sure people understand the value proposition of TW * AJV: it's not really a matter of TW / Leap, but we should make sure people perceive the oS "brand" * Chris: depends who you're considering for audience * Maurizio: Fedora converted their wiki into real documentation; what live presence can we offer? * AJV: we could use the material from the magazine as quick start + tutorial and expose this as a entry point for even the newcomer * Axel: the CT magazine could feature us * Adrien: feature ourselves on social platforms or get featured in live events * Chris: Leap releases should be featured on social media * Staciek: press kit need to be made, easier access to branding material * Andreas: people to demonstrate their use of an oS distro, people that show that things work / can be done on oS distros * AJV: it's easier to get good feedbacks when things fall together easily * Ivo: ready to publish video interviews of "special users" on platforms
The minutes of yesterday's session are now available at https://en.opensuse.org/End-of-year-surveys/2020/Discussion#Meetup_on_EOY_20.... Thanks to Doug for organizing and to everyone for participating!
participants (2)
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Adrien Glauser -
ddemaio