Mini-beta rollout and problems

[Michael Allan]

I want to share what I foresee for the rollout of the beta, and a
couple of problems standing in the way.  I picture the rollout in
three legs:

  1. Deliver single sign-on.
  2. Hang out the running software.
  3. Hook it into the real world.

Single sign-on is not the only item pending for the mini-beta, but the
others can probably wait [1].  I hope to code single sign-on within
the 22 days originally estimated [2].

The first problem is with leg 2.  Here we hang our user interface
where people can engage with it directly.  We stage the home page, for
instance, and the mailing list [3].  Partly the aim is to attract
potential users, and partly to frame the overall presentation of the
project and invite collaboration, etc.  The problem here is that the
stage is currently black outside of a particular poll.  For example:

     http://zelea.com/w/Wiki:Main_page

Apparently we need a navigation track that cuts across pollspace.
Earlier I proposed a poll track and a talk track, and either would
suffice for this purpose.  But the mockups I drew aren't good enough:

     http://zelea.com/project/votorola/s/gwt/stage/_/mock/home-1.xht
     http://zelea.com/project/votorola/s/gwt/stage/_/mock/

Thomas said they made his screen look broken, and I guess he's right.
Even knowing what the individual symbols mean, I cannot extract much
useful information from rows of them.  So we have a poor visual design
for leg 2.  What would a good design look like?

The problem with leg 3 is bigger and harder to pin down.  We know that
the overall technology will eventually engage with the real world, but
we don't know where, when or precisely how the leading opportunities
are likely to present themselves.  We have little control over this.
How should we deal with it?


 [1] A proper mini-beta also needs automated creation of initial
     position drafts and count corrections on stage.  But maybe we can
     start the rollout without these and let them catch up.  They're
     not especially risky or problematic.

     The original estimate [2] also included pin ups in draft pages
     (now dropped as unecessary) and a bug under Chrome (now fixed).

 [2] http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2012-June/001384.html

 [3] http://zelea.com/project/votorola/_/javadoc/votorola/s/gwt/stage/Stage.html
     http://zelea.com/project/votorola/_/javadoc/votorola/s/gwt/stage/StageV.html

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/