| [technology-pmc] ACTF Community Development: Status & Response to Wayne Beaton |
Hi Wayne -
Thanks again for working with us to enhance the visibility of the ACTF project. In a previous response, Kentarou Fukuda explained some of our activities. Chieko and I would like to provide additional details based on your questions:
Question: Who is your target community? Are there companies, universities, organizations, individuals of an ilk who should be interested in the project?
We have targeted companies involved in accessibility tool development and web/software accessibility services. However, most of our interested community lies among universities and individual interest. Our primary focus is to get to application tool developers.
Question: Who are your current adopters?
Thusfar, early adopters involve those who are interested in the project.
The Paciello Group (TPG) is using the tools and looking at ways of enhancing the framework as part of the service offered to their clients. A few clients, including CA and Ramada are looking at adopting open source tools for accessibility.
The University of Manchester (UK) is working on the development of rules-engines for web validation against EU accessibility standards. Additionally, they are developing new visualization features on top of ACTF.
Still, overall adoption is low, suggesting that we need to increase awareness. Chieko and I are focusing on increased efforts to reach out to adopters. Again, we believe that our early adoptors are tool developers and/or companies looking to imbed the ACTF tools into their Q/A processes and test suites.
Question: How do you reach out to people? Are there forums that you can participate in, conferences that you should attend to meet these people?
Until now, we have used conferences and email listservs as ways of reaching out. However, to be perfectly honest, we have not been proactive. So we sincerely appreciate your prodding.
Last week the project committers met and determined that there were a few key conferences that we should be participating in including ASSETS, CSUN and possibly RESNA. We are conducting a 1-day workshop at ASSETS in October. We recently attended the Eclipse conference. However, only a few people attended the session put on by Kentarou and Mike Squillace. We are continue to look at other conferences and forums and welcome your suggestions.
Question: Does anybody on the team have a blog aggregated on Planet Eclipse? Is the blogger active? Are there other blog aggregators that you can hook up to?
We do not have a blog attached to Planet Eclipse -- and this has become an action item for Chieko and myself. There are many bloggers in the accessibility/software world. Only a few who talk about open source and none who talk about development on the Eclipse platform. However, we can certainly create interest through our blogs and generate attention via Planet Eclipse.
Question: Are you keeping an eye on the newsgroup? Are questions answered in a timely manner?
I believe Kentarou answered this in his email to you, but in simple form:
Yes to both quesitons.
Response to Your Recommendation: Make things as easy as possible for those people. Make sure that your site is up-to-date; especially your plan. Make sure that the conversations you have about the project are captured in a public forum such as the mailing list or wiki.
We have been doing exactly this, thanks to Kentarou. He recently updated the project plan that includes our interim releases. Thank you for the suggestion on the public forum, mailing list, and wiki. We will follow through on these suggestions.
Question: Is at least one committer from your project on the technology-pmc mailing list (due to privacy restrictions, I'm not able to find out myself).
Up until now, Kentarou and Mike have been following the technology-pmc mailing list. Both are committers. I just subcribled to the listserv this week, as noted by this post. We plan to be active in our response and activity on this listserv as well.
We are open to all your suggestions and would be happy to talk by conference bridge anytime.
Regards and thanks,