Meeting:Board meeting 2009-07-30

Roll Call

In attendance: John Poelstra, Matt Domsch, Dimitris Glezos, Josh Boyer, Mairin Duffy, Paul Frields, Bill Nottingham, Tom Callaway, Ricky Zhou, Dennis Gilmore, Christopher Aillon

Regrets: Mike McGrath

Last meeting

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:Board_meeting_2009-07-23

Website redesign - downloads/spins/torrents

• mo: current site is very helpful for new users, but confusing to more experienced users
• paul: current design is a jumble of lots of different things
  • No clear instructions or path to spins
  • everyone is fighting for the same space
  • goal: we want new and experienced users to have an easy way to find what they want
    1. have some sort of spins property that is attractive and is customizable by spins group that owns it
    2. want a default page that is comprehensible by anyone (lowest common denominator)
  • One "default spin" that goes on get.fedoraproject.org
  • All "other spins" + "default spin" (all equally advertised) go on spins.fedoraproject.org/<my spin>
• Spot says: We want a URL that is easy for SIGs to use to advertise their Spin

Major concerns:

• Ideas or specifications for the people we're looking for
  • People who are jumping from another distro?
  • People jumping from another OS?
  • Students? Professionals? Slow internet connections?
• aka "target audience"
  • Spot: the newest "computer-aware" user
  • Chris: if default spin is desktop then site should focus on desktop users
    • better way of stating this: The default get-fedora page should target an audience compatible with the default spin
  • Bill: slow internet connection does't work well w/ Fedora -- don't target those people
    • More sophisticated users (those with Linux experience) will feel comfortable navigating spins.fedoraproject.org
  • Paul: not targeting people that need to do lots of after-install tweaking and customization
    • not targeting the Gentoo/Linux-from-scratch userbase
    • not targeting non-x86 architectures
      • should the spins page handle this? (for f12, probably. after that, we'll see)
  • Ricky: one challenge is string freezes and not sure how translation will be done if we go the Zikula route
    • website is pretty easy to add custom content
    • Does not need to be conflated with the CMS right now -- can look at this later
• Bill: Do we have the resources to get the spins pages done in time? If not by F12, when?
  • Mo: Probably, if we no longer block on the spin *creation* pieces -- there's not a lot of different templates we have to work with to make this happen
• Ricky: How is this going to transition to community?
  • Paul: The board is setting the requirements and is responsible for the project. The board empowers Design and Websites (represented here by Mo & Ricky) to implement it with the community. If there are conflicts, excessive arguments, disagreements with the requirements -> Board.
• Mo Needs: (simple bullets who it is for and who it is not for)
  1. kind of users we are looking to attract are:
  2. kind of user we are NOT looking to attract with this page
• The crux of making this work well is for the board to specify the "requirements" and for Mo do the "design" If people have objections to the "design" the discussion then centers around whether or not the design meets the requirements. If people critcize the requirements then they will take those up with the board (not with the design).
• Make clear what our goals are for setting the requirements of the new design--this will help provide a more productive discussion
• Chris: When does Design need the final word on these requirements?
  • Mo: In a week, have enough to get started, 3 weeks to have all requirements finalized
  • Ricky: Text has to be done by string freeze, but this deadline sounds good for requiremnts.
  • Spot: In two weeks, have things finalized on FAB and then hand it back as done.

Next meeting

• PROPOSED: (Public IRC meeting) Thu 2009-08-06 UTC 1600