[Incubator] Review Of MapBuilder incubation artifacts

[Jo Walsh]

dear Jody, all, (apologies for the cc list spam :( )

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 11:19:41AM -0700, Jody Garnett wrote:
> - project documents, what are we looking for here indeed. I am looking for
> a) link to OSGeo
> b) correct use of OSGeo logo
> c) OSGeo contact information on official docs such as pdf installation 
> instructions etc
> d) correct use of fonts and branding on official documents
> e) since the viscomm / webcomm have not facilitated this I would like to 
>1 see mapbuilder have a plan for documentation / website upgrade

What is needed here? 
- Description of logo usage guidelines - what is "correct"?
  How close are people collectively between VisCom and WebCom members
  to getting this ironed out?
- Styling / layout guidelines/dictionary. I think Mpg has been
  organising in the scope of VisCom a new professionally produced
  set of logo artwork for multiuse, I dont know how much the scope of
  their budget also applies to things like CSS styling, drafts of
  layouts, maybe not at all.
  There is a small proposed budget for design work also in the
  infrastructure migration plan. This is imaginary right now.

> already available for example, it would be also be wise to have a 
> feature matrix. While the web and vis committees have not figured out 
> what the exact requirement is I can not hold MapBuilder responsible for 
> its lack.

>From this old page I see "feature matrix comparison" vaguely within
VisCom's remit. While this is the sort of thing that
visibility-oriented people should be facilitating I think the
responsiblity for putting that together really is more with the
projects. I bet some people already have feature matrices in their
documentation that a more complete matrix can be extrapolated from. 
I suppose people would want to fill in a spreadsheet, or something. 

It's the sort of thing Jason might want to work on, or might not. It's
the sort of thing Chris might want to help with, or might not. 
Committees are fine when you view them as Parties, collections of
people who have more or less common and intersecting interests. But
asking or expecting a *Committee* to do something is like asking a car
to drive itself. Someone has to do the work and you have to be able to
connect to them to get what you want out of them, that's about it. 
You make more effort when motivated by personal interest and the
Foundation is about interconnecting personal interests into something
exponentially more interesting. Is the committee structure really
facilitating that or is it just balkanising concerns?

> Why this feedback and why now?
> 
> My thinking is this, when the process grows we will need to ensure the 
> incubation committee provides information to the next people in the 
> chain. We need to make sure that a graduating project actually is ready 
> for graduation with all the materials available needed by other OSGeo 
> committees.  I understand that some of this is hard due to visual 
> standards not being defined yet, setting up an adoption plan or a 
> responsible memeber of the MapBuilder commity will need to prove sufficient.

Having seen the lack set out so clearly, perhaps those people equipped
or enabled to fill in the missing pieces could chip in in the nearish f.
It would make a lot of difference for PR backup if, when a couple more
projects spring out of the OSGeo incubator, there's a good visual
consistency and range of supporting docs available for the projects,
something that provides a template for new projects coming in.

thanks,


jo