CodePlex Weblog : community

The CodePlex Jump – Trip Report from TechEd Australia and New Zealand

saraford — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:44:28 GMT

Last month, I had the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream of going to Australia to speak at Microsoft TechEd. However, little did I know this trip to the Southern Hemisphere would take me to new heights at TechEd New Zealand.

The link to the full version is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcc4KRrZpI0

Special thanks to Sky Jump! for lettings us film and TechEd Online New Zealand for making the jump happen and for putting the full edited video together.

Photos from the Southern Hemisphere

Above: CodePlex overlooking the Gold Coast and the Convention Center in Queensland, Australia

Above: “A Tour of CodePlex” TechEd Australia attendee after the breakout session

Above: TechEd Australia attendee proudly displays his support of CodePlex on his HP Mini notebook. TechEd Australia attendees received a HP Mini notebook running Windows 7.

Above: CodePlex at the Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter.

Above: Me just a few seconds before I screamed “Go CodePlex” louder than I ever thought humanly possible

CodePlex Interview on Channel 9

saraford — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:53:00 GMT

The Channel 9 team met with Sara Ford to go over the state of CodePlex, where the site has been and where it is heading to.

Link to video: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/NicFill/A-chat-with-Sara-Ford-CodePlex-turns-3-reaches-10000-projects/

CodePlex Turns 3 years old; Breaks the 10,000 project mark

saraford — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT

On Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 2pm, CodePlex surpassed the 10,000 project mark just shortly after our 3 year anniversary. Congrats to SharpFitter, a Visual Studio 2008 C# Add-in that dynamically loads plug-ins, for being our 10,000th project.

We hope to see this incredible rate of growth continue to bring more open source development to the Windows platform.

Check out the Port 25 post for more coverage on what’s been happening on CodePlex.

CodePlex Statistics

Below, you can see the upward trend of new projects each month over the past few years.

When people ask me why CodePlex has such great traffic growth, I say it is because of the quality of our projects. Happy project owners = Happy users and site visitors. Our overall site traffic stats reflect this upward growth trend as well. In fact, this will be our 7^th consecutive month of record breaking traffic.

It was recently in the news that the MS-PL is now in the top ten of OSI license usage. Here’s a breakdown of which licenses we’re hosting.

Along with 10,000 projects comes a lot of source code, approximately 160 million lines hosted across 10 Team Foundation Servers.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 7 file types we’re hosting.

Special thanks to all our project owners and our users for making CodePlex a success!

Looking for a charity for CodePlex project owners to donate advertisement revenue

saraford — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:05:52 GMT

One of the things we’ve been planning to do with The Lounge as our new advertisement provider is to allow project owners with a single click to opt in to have their advertisement revenue go to charity. We believe that pooling individual projects together would provide a nice charitable donation.

However, we haven’t been able to finalize on a charity yet. We’re thinking maybe a non-profit that’s focused on Open Source or education in IT? But maybe people would prefer a charity like Habitat for Humanity? We wanted to get your input what charities come to mind that we should check out.

Will Code for Green contest

saraford — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:50:12 GMT

Developers, got a green open source app? Live Search and Gnomedex are sponsoring a Will Code for Green contest. Make the world a little better, win $10,000 + get featured at Gnomedex! Create a green open source app using the Live Search API (search results, phonebook, video, images etc.) with any tech platform or language! You can enter the contest at http://willcodeforgreen.gnomedex.com

CodePlex projects now indexed by Koders and also available in Black Duck Open Source Knowledge Base

saraford — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Black Duck Software announced this morning that CodePlex projects are now searchable via Koders.com and have also been incorporated into its open source Knowledge Base repository.

You can find out more information in the Black Duck / CodePlex press release located at http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/releases/2009-05-19

and on Port 25 announcement at http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/05/18/microsoft-teams-up-with-black-duck-software.aspx

A new record: 115,646 visits in one day!

saraford — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:42:38 GMT

Just wanted to share a landmark day we recently had on the team. This past Monday (March 23, 2009), we broke our all-time record for the most visits in one day: 115,646.

Our new record is less than 10% over our normal traffic levels, indicating we’ll have a new record for monthly visits as well.

Our success depends on the quality of our projects. Happy project owners = happy users. A huge Thank You to all of our CodePlex Project Owners for making CodePlex a success.

Introducing the CodePlex Tips series

saraford — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:50:13 GMT

Last year, I ran a series called Visual Studio Tip of the Day on my personal blog. The 382-tip series was very successful, and each post usually got several comments from users.

Today, I’ve started a similar series for CodePlex Tips on my personal blog, where I’ll explain the ins and outs of the CodePlex software, while collecting user feedback on how to improve the site. I’ll also share future UI designs for specific tips that I have designs for.

You can view the CodePlex Tips series at

http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/tags/CodePlex+Tips/default.aspx

Introducing the Open Source Club on CodePlex – Project of the Month: Rawr

saraford — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:28:00 GMT

What is the Open Source Club?

The Open Source Club (OSC) is a group of volunteers who contribute what they can to the specified open source project each month. If you’ve ever wanted to contribute to an open source project, but didn’t know where to start or didn’t have much time, this is your chance.

Even if you just spend 20 minutes just writing up a bug report, a “how-to” user guide, or a blog entry about the tool, it counts! It’s about making the most of the time you have right now to contribute.

Project for March: Rawr

Rawr is a program for comparing and exploring gear for characters in the MMORPG, World of Warcraft. It has been designed from the start to be fun to use, and helpful in finding better combinations of gear, and what gear to obtain. (.NET, WinForm, C# 3.0, XML)"

The Rawr project is looking for

Issue Tracker management - going through the issue tracker, sorting out bugs from what should be on the discussion boards, figuring out which bugs are still reproducible, and so forth
Writing documentation for the end user
Software Testing – for those familiar with World of Warcraft
C# and .NET WinForms developers to fix bugs and help with features
Blogging about Rawr and getting the word out

If you have time to help, go to the Rawr project and jump in. Contact Astrylian for any help getting started.

Special thanks to Rawr for volunteering to be our first project!

We’re looking for projects!

If you’re a project owner that could use an extra set of eyeballs on your project, or if you know of a cool project that could benefit from this, please let us know.

Projects must meet the following criteria:

Uses an OSI-approved License
Is active on CodePlex
The project owner wants to participate =)

If interested or want to nominate a project, contact Sara Ford.

Why did we started the OSC?

We started the Open Source Club because we want to help Open Source projects become as successful as possible.

Why a “club?”

It’s been our experience that many consumers of open source software would like to contribute back some way. It’s just a matter of finding the right project with the right needs at the right time, which can at often times be challenging. There’s also a matter of time commitments. Even if a potential contributor finds the perfect project, he or she may not have enough time to commit to finishing the task. Thus, projects are left without contributions, and potential contributors are left wishing they could have helped.

One solution is to harness the potential of as many contributors as possible and focus their combine efforts into just one project at any given time. For example, imagine if 20 people wanted to contribute just an hour once a month to a project. That would be the equivalent of nearly 3 full-time days of contributions to a project.

Similar to a book club model, the Open Source Club will announce a project for the month. Then people in the community can choose how to assist that one project in whatever way makes sense for him or her.

How is a project chosen?

Since we’re just getting started, the OSC Leadership Team (Jim Holmes, Leon Gersing, James Avery, and Sara Ford) will select the project of the month.

Thanks to Jim Holmes, Leon Gersing, and James Avery for sharing these ideas with me, knowing good and well I would be “called to action” to make these great ideas happen!

CodePlex 2008 – A Year in Review

saraford — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:50:55 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I attended CodeMash 2009 in Sandusky, Ohio - my second time attending as Program Manager for CodePlex. The first year, I spent 2 days sitting non-stop with project owners and site visitors, collecting feedback about the site. Their feedback would play a significant role in determining the priorities for upcoming features. Now that a year has past, we wanted to share with you how CodePlex has grown.

Site Traffic	2008	2007	% increase from 2007
Visits	19,493,502	8,891,178	+119%
User Hours	2,804,898	1,237,356	+127%
Unique Visitors	9,811,365	4,532,440	+116%
New Registered Users	66,553	38,651	+72%
New Projects	4,542	2,130	+113%

New Features

Over 2008, we had 12 new releases of the CodePlex software, with the following top 9 features:

Subversion client support – server hosted SVN Bridge allowing SVN clients to “just work” against the CodePlex TFS servers
Site redesign – new look and feel, upgraded UI. The end of the nuclear waste green era.
Silverlight hosting – okay, technically not deployed within 2008, but who’s counting =D
Project statistics – see daily statistics of page views, downloads, and visits
Ratings and reviews – rate and review project releases
Project Discussions mailing lists – get notifications and discuss projects via e-mail alongside the online discussion boards
AJAX Source code browser – easily browse source code before download with file tree view and source code syntax highlighting
Search improvements – added sort by relevance or ratings, search by development status or license type, and search term highlighting
Discussions rich text editor – write Discussions posts using a WYSIWYG editor

Top New Projects of 2008

These are the top Open Source projects created in 2008, by page view count:

WPF - This is the main site for updates on the WPF roadmap and the portal for accessing the WPF Toolkit and the WPF Futures releases.
Silverlight - The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle.
CompositeWPF - The Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client applications.
MVCSamples - This project is for prototype and sample ASP.NET MVC Sample applications.
Unity - The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection.
White - Automate windows applications

And as for 2009?

We’re waiting to hear your feedback! Let us know what we can do.

Video from CodePlex Town Hall meeting at PDC now available on Channel 9

saraford — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:22:19 GMT

As mentioned previously from my PDC 2008 trip report, we had our first CodePlex Town Hall meeting.

The video is at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/CodePlex-Town-Hall-at-PDC-2008/

Thanks to Dan over at Channel 9 for filming and posting the video! And thanks again to Tamir Khason, Kevin Dostalek, and Joseph Guadagno for doing the demos!

PDC 2008 Trip Report

saraford — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:01:00 GMT

update 2 dec 2008: The Town Hall video can be found at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/CodePlex-Town-Hall-at-PDC-2008/

PDC 2008 was the first time we had a CodePlex-branded booth, and it was the first time we did a CodePlex Town Hall.

I was very happy with how the CodePlex Town Hall turned out. I had never conducted a “town hall” before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We got great feedback from our users about the new codeplex.com homepage designs and the documentation tab feature. And thanks to Channel 9, specifically Dan Fernandez, for not only hosting the event, but also for filming! Can’t wait to see it on Channel 9!

Thanks to Tamir Khason, Kevin Dostalek, and Joseph Guadagno for doing demos of their (or their favorite) CodePlex projects!

I closed the town hall by thanking everyone in the audience (we started with about 5 people and ended with 20-30) with the CodePlex fleece jackets. It is always fun to watch a rugby scrum break out over swag, as I told everyone to come up and grab one from the boxes. =D

The rest of the time at PDC, members of the CodePlex team worked the booth. We had a great time meeting with users, learning about their projects, collecting their feedback, and answering their questions.

The CodePlex t-shirts went fast on Day 1, and the found XL box of t-shirts went just as quickly on Day 2. The CodePlex stickers were a huge hit too, but there’s nothing quite like giving out t-shirts on the first day of a conference.

Considering I’m the Program Manager, I made sure to have women’s sized swag made, like the track jackets below that Tracy Bannon and I are wearing. It’s about time I have swag I can wear!

CodePlex Community Meetup at PDC: Weds from 1:30pm – 2:30pm in Channel 9 lounge area

saraford — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:30:00 GMT

Want to showcase your CodePlex project or your favorite CodePlex project at PDC? Channel 9 and CodePlex are sponsoring a CodePlex Community Meetup in the Channel 9 lounge area. We’re looking for volunteers to give 5 minute demos of their projects or how they are using their favorite projects.

After the demos, the CodePlex team will be demo’ing new features and collecting feedback, in a town hall / open space format.

We’ll have prizes to give out, and thank you gifts for those who demo projects.

If you can’t make it to the get together, we’ll be at the CodePlex booth towards the back of the Microsoft Pavilion hall on the left-hand side as you enter the Partners and Sponsors section all week. Come by and say hi. We ::heart:: our users.

CodePlex session at ReMix08 in Brighton, England

saraford — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:08:00 GMT

Update 24 Sept 2008: Slides are now posted. Sorry for the delay.

Last week, I spoke at the Microsoft ReMix08 UK conference in Brighton, England on CodePlex and on Visual Studio Tips and Tricks. You can read more about the conference overall, the extensive jet lag, and the VS Tips talks on my blog.

I did a 1 hour presentation on CodePlex covering

Why we built CodePlex
Demo of CodePlex features and the new SVN client support
How we build CodePlex using agile

Slides are attached at the bottom of this post.

My little camera couldn’t handle the lighting in the Community Room, as this photo doesn’t capture the pure awesomeness of the room. (yes, people could see me. I just couldn’t see them.)

After the conference, Dave Sussman and Phil Winstanley, the two Community Room track owners I have to thank for inviting me to England, another attendee whose name I can’t recall (i really need to write stuff down), and Travis Leithead (from IE team whose blog i can’t find) went down to the beach in Brighton for Ice Cream. Thanks Travis for taking the photo!

Below is the CodePlex flag at Big Ben. I’m having way too much fun taking this flag around the world with me. Thanks to Scott Guthrie for taking the photo!

CodePlex in the Deep South

saraford — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:56:00 GMT

For the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I went home to spend time with family, and thought why not speak to as many user groups as possible while I was down there. Little did I know I would be dodging hurricanes and tornadoes the entire trip.

Nonetheless, I spoke about CodePlex at DevLink in Tennessee, and in various states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I also spoke to a computer science high school class at Rummel high school in New Orleans about open source and CodePlex. When did high school students become so young?

Here are some pictures from the trip.

on the farm in Houston, Mississippi (outside Tupelo)

at the birthplace of Elvis in Tupelo, Mississippi

at Elvis’s childhood home on the swing where he played the guitar

at the Waffle House where you can get your hashbrowns smothered, covered, scattered, diced, topped, peppered, capped, chunked…

at the Cracker Barrel – a popular restaurant chain in the South.

at the .NET User Groups for Birmingham, AL

at the Alabama rest stop crossing the Mississippi – Alabama border on I-10.

at Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans

at the Acadiana .NET User Group (Lafayette, LA)