Global Gathering 2019 - Day X - Review & Refresh the OFN Platform key focus areas

Hi all,

The global gathering is still some months away, but given how busy we all are it will come around quickly and we should firm up some key topics in the coming months that feel like the biggest and most important to have.

So, I’m kicking off with a pitch for the group that will go into the OFN Platform stream of discussions:

Review & Refresh the key areas of focus set in December 2017

Way back then at the first ever gathering of the global community we set out 4 key areas of focus that we thought were the most important in the evolution of the OFN platform.

It’s been over a year since then, so this gathering just under a year and a half later is a good point in time to stop, reflect on how well and to what extent we have achieved what we envisaged back then, and refresh these based on where the Platform and OFN as a global organisation have evolved to now (Gaps that are important enough to fill? No longer the same level of priority? Achieved and ready to be closed?).

It’s a great opportunity to identify and celebrate successes and determine where we want to steer the ship for the next year or two. Exciting!

Ping @NickWeir @Kirsten @MyriamBoure @lin_d_hop @Jen @tschumilas @sauloperez @luisramos0 @maikel @Theodore @Matt-Yorkley @lauriewayne1 @MSFutureFarm and anyone else who will be either present at the gathering or dialling in from home at all hours of the day/night.

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Thank you for the reminder @danielle.

I think we made big progress on being a single unit and tech debt. It is daunting though how much effort the Spree upgrade is. And there is still a lot of tech debt.

We also added new features like product import. It doesn’t fit into the big four and it actually slows down the Spree upgrade a little. I can’t comment if the prioritisation was worth it. I think it was critical for some enterprises.

The Network is still in inception phase, but that’s okay. We can’t do everything at once.

I think we are in a much better place than in December 2017. We came from prototyping in Australia to now teaching the open source community how to contribute excellent code and having products and services we can charge for. We created value. :sunny:

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For sure @maikel - and I think drilling into the detail and being able to dot point the success indicators and the things that maybe we didn’t hit like we wanted to are a great way to spend a bit of the time at the gathering. Gather data, analyse, make change to make it better :smiley:

Reflecting back on these priorities - I think that we were trying to balance past legacy, with present stress, and future vision. And - we did some things on all fronts - so that is fantastic. For sure we should feel good about it all. Everything we’ve done prepares us for doing more, and doing it better. I think these are very healthy tensions we are discussing. We shouldn’t forget, that many ‘non-tech’ governance processes have been worked on too - and lots of stuff with new instances, user guides, translations…

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just a further thought on this to weave into your face-to-face this/next week: My gut tells me that user/customer support is something we need to give more integrated focus to. And this links to testing and keeping the user guide up to date - but also other on-boarding tools and suppor tools. Plus - I think the gains we have made re: building a cohesive unit (which we are) will serve us well here - we just need to make support more of a global think. Further, I believe (my gut again) we are missing opportunities to connect volunteers who do not have coding, or other dev skills, into OFN. I know we ‘use’ these folks with local marketing/social media and other com things - but I have a gut feeling that there is a huge untapped resource here with user support. Maybe a more/semi formalized ‘train the trainers’ model - where a global team recruits, trains, and supports, a global/distributed OFN support team? Anyway - I think support needs to be a new key focus. Lets not lose what we are gaining - and I think we risk that if we don’t do support and onboarding better.