CSUMB Capstone Presentation

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Gaia InteractiveDeveloper FastStart

Rudolph Jakob HeuserMIST CapstoneiTCD @ CSUMBJuly 29, 2006

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

What is Gaia?

• Social Community

• Gaming, Networking, Chatting

• Just Recently Funded

• Massively Hiring

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Growing How Fast?

• October 2004: 9 employees

• October 2005: 25 employees

• July 2006: 40 employees

• Dec 2006: 80-100 employees (projected)

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Finite Resources

Gaia

Mentor New Dev

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Training? Yeah, Right

Your New Developer(Week 1)

Your New Developer(Week 4)

The Fruits of 2 Mentor’s Efforts

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Self Training Failures

• Paper-Based - Got Lost

• Online “Intranet” - Kludgy To Use

• Gaia “Wiki” - Even Kludgier

• Mentoring System...A “Long Tail” Approach (They’ll get it eventually, right?)

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Problem Source?

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They Think Different

Resource Work

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Really Different

Resource Work

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Get In The Workflow

1. php.net

2. Google

3. “Sneakernet” and “Meatspace”

4. E-mail

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The “Must Have”s

• In Browser

• Searchable

• Practical Answers

• Current

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FastStartTutorial For Programmers

(And all the challenges that entailed...)

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Dokuwiki

• http://wiki.splitbrain.org

• File Based

• Collaborative Tool

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Instruction via Wiki?

• Linear tutorial

• Searchable reference

• Resource beyondweek 2

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FastStart Tourhttp://www.felocity.org/tmp/capstone/devs/developer_faststart

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Challenges

• Lack of time for testing, development

• Used new developers as guinea pigs

• Lack of time for SME review

• Practical Testing. Material should work.

• Code changed seven times

• Get software installed quickly, let SME update

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Successes

• Wiki so successful it became new Intranet

• Contributed to Open Source Project

Has lessened new developer curve (4-12 days)

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Going Forward

• Improve FastStart based on feedback

• Support Gaia Intranet

• Educate SME’s on content process

• Self Maintaining Documentation

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References

• Sierra, Kathy. “Creating Passionate Users”. Retrieved from http://headrush.typepad.com

• Katherdante. “Attention span of 3 squirrels”. Retrieved from http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35870171/

• Wikipedia.”Wiki”. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

ThanksDerek Liu, James Cao, John Loehrer, Kathy Sierra, Rosalie Strong, Eric Tao, iTCD Faculty and Staff, Gaia Interactive, splitbrain Dokuwiki mailing list

Rudolph Jakob Heuser

Questions

All graphics © 2006 Gaia Interactive unless noted.

Used with Permission.