[webteam] radical simplicity

[Robert Martinez]

Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> On 05/22/2008 6:39 AM, Bart van Bragt wrote:
>   
>> On May 22, 2008, at 5:26, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>>     
>>> I like your attitude! :) Yes, we are fighting for open communication and
>>> freedom of conversation. That's what Jabber has always been about, since
>>> 1999.
>>>
>>> The question is, what kind of services do we need to offer at the
>>> jabber.org domain to achieve those goals?
>>>       
>> I have to agree with Robert. IMO jabber.org (or Jabber in general)
>> doesn't only attract geeks, xmpp.org does. A large part of the people
>> that use Jabber do so because they don't like using one of the
>> proprietary protocols. They want something open, something not
>> controlled by one large corporate entity. Those users are not our aunt
>> Tilly but they are not (all) geeks either.
>>
>> In the Jabber community we have a boatload of nerdy geeks which is
>> great. These geeks can write protocols, implement them, think up new
>> (technically challenging) features, etc. What we need in addition to
>> that are people that can and want to advocate Jabber to non-geek people.
>> We need designers, copywriters, journalists, activists, webmasters, etc,
>> etc. To do this and to push Jabber (Jabber as a philosophy, not a
>> technology), we need to have a community that can coordinate the
>> advocation efforts. This community should be on jabber.org and this
>> community will not spring into existence if we have an XML/XSLT site :)
>>     
>
> I don't disagree with you, but at the same time I don't see a good way
> to get such people involved. It's pretty clear what developers can do to
> contribute (join one of the projects and write some code), what system
> admins can do (run a server), etc. It's not as clear to me what people
> like designers, writers, and activists can do to get involved. There's a
> need for documentation (that's how I got started, after all!) but I
> think most of that is focused on particular projects. There's a need for
> attractive websites and user-friendly software interfaces, but again
> that's mostly focused on particular projects. What can they do at the
> level of the Jabber community in general? I think we need to get clear
> on this before we can figure out what the right tools are.
>
>   
In my eyes this is pretty clear. We are the ones to do the talking and 
showing here!
We need to tell people about their freedom,
We need to show how things in the xmpp world work,
We need to let other people talk to even more people!
... so designers, writers and activists shouldn't get bored on 
jabber.org so

We should not let every project do that job on their own website again 
and again (and probably in lower quality).
They want to focus on presenting THEIR features - not the benefit of 
xmpp in general.
Maybe there is even competition that keeps projects from telling what 
other projects can do - and thus: what is possible with xmpp.
First-time-jabber-people tend to think that jabber is just the amount of 
features the client X provides to them.


Robert