OE Development online Q&A session

Just tried dialling in and getting an invalid meeting ID, same as Tuesday. Could just be I'm jumping the gun, but thought I'd flag it up.

It is working ok now.

Can you try now?

Jean - I missed this session, can you please share the recorded webex session link?

Many thanks
Kandavel

I'm sure he will, but I think he said it would be next week.

RE: OE Development online Q&A session

Reply by Thomas Mercer-Hursh

I'm sure he will, but I think he said it would be next week.

Stop receiving emails on this subject.

Flag this post as spam/abuse.

Great... Thanks

I'm not totally clear on the intended scope for these Q&As.  I thought it was, in this case, Q&A about the language/tools as they are today.  What I heard was a mix of questions about the current product, info exchange-style requests for future enhancements (which is development-related but not the type of Q&A I expected), and feedback on the Community site (which is not development-related at all).  It was a somewhat similar experience in the recent DB Q&A as well.

Jean/Peter/Brian, can you please clarify what you expect in these sessions?  Thanks!

Actually I was being lazy; I meant to say "language & tools"; I wasn't trying to separate them.

I think inevitably when you open the "floor" for questions there's a chance to go off into the weeds.  So while it may not please some people it's probably good to gently enforce some amount of discipline about scope in these webinars.  Assuming that happens, once we do a few of these sessions people will come to understand what to expect and it should become easier keep the conversation on point.

Jean is planning a separate Q&A for Community so I think that's the place to deal with ideas about Ideas, site improvements, etc.  And we get "the road ahead" info in quarterly updates and conference keynotes and info exchanges (which are typically made available after the fact to non-attendees).  

So I would like to see dev Q&A and DB Q&A sessions focused on people's experiences with the products they run today.  Within that scope there's still a lot to talk about: limitations, bugs, how-tos, best practices, worst practices, lessons learned, propeller-head internals, third-party integration patterns, etc.  Inevitably you'll also hear some amount of "I hate feature X", "feature Y is borked", "we need feature Z", etc., and the moderators can funnel that stuff through to PM-land after the fact.  Or the PMs can just watch the recordings after the fact. :)

I guess as you guys say, it's up to the moderator (sorry Jean!) to filter questions that don't meet the scope of the session.

I do think however that things could maybe be handled a little more cleverly in advance. One of the issues on the DBA session was that there weren't many people, and even less questions. Now this may be partly because of the scope thing - people were unsure, but it could also be because people were caught a little cold. As a result the scope was widened by the team to try and stimulate discussions. That's great. Then in the Development session the questions were slow to start, and I suspect people started to worry that it would be another quiet session again.

Maybe there should be the opportunity for folks to submit some questions a day or so in advance so that there is a list of questions to be getting on with answering right from the start of the session to avoid awkward silences. It might also stimulate folks to actually think about what they want to ask in advance.

Hi all,

These online Q&A sessions were also my first ones and let me tell you I very much appreciate all your constructive feedback and input that I'll definitely take into account for the next round. Points I noted from this thread are:

• Webinars to be announced sooner (with reminders).Please subscribe to our Community Calendar and follow us on social networks.
• For Q&A sessions, give a way for attendees to post questions before the webinar takes place.
• Host/moderator to be a bit more "strict without censoring" so the session stays focused.  

As you may have seen through the Community Calendar, we are planning to run different types of online sessions:

• Community Open Discussion: session to talk about the community itself, gather feedback and input from members, answer questions and discuss about what is working well and what could be improved, us sharing news about what's coming next within the community. The format is an open 2 way discussion between the Progress Community team and the community users/members. 
   
• Product Presentation/Tutorial: session to present a product, a functionality within a product and/or share product best practice with community members/users. Depending on the content these sessions will be delivered by a systems engineer, a consultant, a product manager or even an active member of our community. The format may vary but will most likely be using slides and, if possible, demo the product/functionality.  
  
  
• Questions and Answers session: 45 minutes sessions for community members to ask technical questions to product experts. Progress will have product experts online but we would also like to have external experts joining and contributing. These sessions will focus on existing products and functionality.  
  
  
• Product Roadmap: Product Management presenting product roadmap online. Depending on the agreed frequency with PMs, we may cover Product Ideas reviews if/when roadmap presentation are on. Format and frequency to be finalized together with our PM group. Work in progress. 
  

Later on, I'd like also to run case studies and, it would be great to have our Community members also contributing through online presentation where they could share with other members some cool tools they have designed using our products.  

That all sounds very promising, Jean.

I think the Q&A sessions are a great idea and also agree that it needs to be clearer on what everyone is expecting to achieve out of those.

I took a OE Development Q&A as a chance to ask questions about OE Development in general.  The main things being what I can and can't do, and if there any plans for features that help me do the things I can't.

If the Q&A is meant as more of a technical session such as I have this problem,  whats a workaround or best practice etc then thats fab as well.

I look forward to the other sessions that are planned especially the Product Roadmap