Laddr redesign project meeting notes – October 5th, 2017

Meeting attendees: Chris Alfano (CfP CTO), Rich McMillen (Projects Lead), Maria Caruso (Product Owner)

Overall goals of CfP website

1. Connect people with projects (not just developers!)
2. Create an open-source tool for brigade(s)
3. Give teams the tools to ship projects
4. Marketing to drive funding for projects
5. Promote social engagement
6. Advertise relevant community events

Redesign will be broken up into two phases

Phase 1 – approx. completion date of Jan 1st

1. Focus on rebranding/language
2. UX research
3. Basic site map redesign (condensing nav, making access to existing projects/sign-up easier)

Phase 2

Desired Site Features

1. Permissions system: would allow people to PM, restrict access to certain projects, etc. Possibly based on a “reputation” credits system, wherein people receive higher permissions by completing, managing, or contributing to projects
2. Team messaging system: Find ways to make project team communication easier
   1. Possibly nix slack, or restrict channel creation to approved projects
   2. Move existing project communication to Github, reserving slack for initial project development coordination or community related discussions (gig-swap, random, events postings, etc.)
3. Open projects repository: a searchable database of previously incomplete projects, where people can apply to manage a project and submit it for official approval
4. A flow for projects approval: may include things like, documentation on what a good project looks like, an interactive checklist, etc.
5. Project task tracker: Github will be used for this, but we should choose a GUI.
6. Project application page: includes info on what a good project is
7. Existing/in-progress/complete project repository
   1. Includes open-roles
   2. Users who are on the project, or not, can subscribe to updates
   3. Links to Github, displays open tasks that need completion
   4. Press related to projects
   5. Completed project page includes maintenance tasks/press updates

Potential Road Map for Phase 2 Completion

1. Create application process for projects: permissions system may be required for this
   1. Eventually create role requirements integration with profile system (e.g. “This project needs 2 front-end devs, a designer, a UX specialist…”)
   2. Interactive checklist
2. Clean house: determine which projects are “cold” and notify leaders of viable projects of new flow/application requirements. This may require recruiting people to vete projects.
3. Create new profile system
   1. Tags for skills where users can specify their strength in skills. Possibly cap number of skills users can post
   2. Create targeted marketing based on skills
   3. Allow users to search for jobs within their skill set and apply for positions within projects
4. Create Github GUI/project tracker for in-progress projects (example of a friendly editor UI for editing markdown content within a github repo: http://prose.io/#CodeForPhilly/laddr/edit/develop/roadmap.md)
5. Create various searchable repositories (cold/in-progress/complete)
6. Develop targeted marketing campaigns for open projects, sponsors, etc.