Tomorrow is the first official Habari Bug Hunt. If you're interested in helping code, test code, write documentation, proof-read documentation or otherwise contributing to the project, stop by #habari on freenode.net on IRC tomorrow and see what's up. If you're interested in learning more about Habari and how or community functions, this would be a great chance to stop in and say hi.

There is a lot of discussion happening on the Habari mailing list about the design of the Administration interface. And it's the kind of thing that we're going to have to watch carefully to prevent it from getting ugly. With all the progress we've made, this is one of the first major tests of the strenght of the Habari Community. My own experience in theater has shown me that design is complicated, and the more designers you have working on something, the harder that gets. At some point, when working with other designers, someone's concepts are going to have to be subordinate to another's. If you're putting on a production, and the scenic designer is designing a setting in modern New York City, while the costume designer is basing their designs on 1940's Europe, and the sound designer is using 1970's protest music as their base, you're going to get a mess on the stage. This is why, in theater, it's usually the director who provides the over-arching vision, and a production manager is responsible for coordinating the elements and keeping lines of communication open.

But even so, while it's easy to say "We're going to need X amount of lumber to build this platform." Chosing the shade of blue to paint that platform is something that everyone can have a different idea about without anyone being "wrong".

In Habari we face the same issue. We can agree that a particular bit of code works or doesn't work. And it's usually easy to quantify what's "better" in the code. Does it use less memory? Fewer lines? Is it more secure? Easier to use in multiple places? But things like the width of the text entry fields can have a different answer for every user. In the case of Habari, we've also eliminated one of the simplest ways to resolve these issues. We don't have a person who is "in charge" who can simply say "Do it this way." We don't have a "director" and we like it that way. But this is when removing that centralized authority creates difficulty for the project. We must come up with a model that will allow us to come to a community consensus as to what Habari will look like. Because there is no "best" when you're dealing with something that is primarily subjective, a "veto on technical merits" isn't an option. The common element between where we are in Habari, and what I've learned from theater, is that it's an issue of communication. Designers, coders and users speak different languages and there's always the risk of things being lost in translation. Building common vocabulary is where we need to start if we're going to succeed. We have to take a large number of ideas and somehow create something that is visually appealing, user friendly, innovative and comfortable all at the same time, and we must somehow do this without sacrificing our primary principal of community inclusion.

This is our first big test. I don't know how we'll work through this, but I think we will all benefit from the lessons we're going to learn about how to design by community without ending up with something that looks like it was designed by a comittee.

The Habari Community is an interesting blend of people, and the fact that I was honored with membership in the Project Management Committee means that, in the eyes of the the other PMC members, I bring something important to that community. I feel that it would be useful for me to articulate what I see as my personal philosophy for what I bring to the Habari community, and why. I'm not much of a coder, and my visual design skills are no where near the level of many of the other community members, but what I think I do well is articulate what "typical" users look for, and help look at the long term results of decisions we make.

I feel that the overall goal of Habari is to become the best blogging platform available. This means that Habari needs to meet the needs and expectations of users. It also needs to be a stable project that has a responsive development community, and long-term support. In order to achieve these goals, we must build a system for supporting and encouraging growth, while maintaining high standards within the development and support of the application. I feel that, at this stage in Habari's development we're not just building an application, we're building Habari as a whole. The software, the documentation, the community, the process, and the ethics are all a part of what makes Habari what it is. We need to develop all of these in order to see Habari be what it truly can be. The software is the base on which it's built, but the rest are what bring people to the code and keep them involved. While the development of Habari is driven by the people who write the code, the growth of the community is dependent on the users. We must always keep the users forefront in our minds when making decisions about the directions we go with Habari; not only the users we have now, but those we will have in the future. If we are to write the best blogging platform, we need to be sure that the code isn't the only aspect we're developing with each release.

I'm proud to release an updated version of Aiden's Theme for Habari. This version will work with the newly released 0.3DR. Feedback is, of course, greatly appreciated. Click the screenshot to download.

The third development public release of Habari is now available. Once again, I had the privilege to write the official announcement. A lot of people put a huge amount of effort into this over the last three months. It's been a fantastic learning process to, as the project has grown. We've learned a bit more about working as a team, and the next release should be even smoother from the point of view of the development team.

I've already upgraded this site from the public release .zip file, and it was as smooth as I could have hoped.

Congratulations to everyone who has worked on Habari thus far.

As of today, I am officially a member of the Habari Project Management Committee. In all honesty, I'm a little overwhelmed with the trust that the other members of the committee have placed in me, and I hope to live up to that trust. I'm excited to be a part of this project, and hope to be a part of its future in any way that I'm able.

I am not a coder (or at least not much of one), which is, I think, an illustration that the PMC is focused on the best product for the user, rather than the best product for the people writing the code. What I hope to do is help make sure bugs are tracked well and acted upon and make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that most users aren't coders and don't really care how a given feature works, as long as it does work.

Thank you for your faith in me, fellow members of the PMC. And to the rest of the Habari Community, I'd like to say thank you for creating an environment where it's fun to be active and it's easy to keep up the motivation to work on this project.

TBWITWW and I are rapidly approaching our 5th anniversary. It's been a heck of a long 5 years, but lucky for me she's still hot. (Okay, she is, but all of the things that are actually more important are being saved for an acutal mushy, sickeningly sweet sort of post a few weeks from now.) (And, she's totally hot.) Anyway, we decided quite some time ago, that with the credit cards paid off, and our finances in better shape than they've ever been, we would actually go on a trip for our anniversary. The question of where to go was a bit harder to decide on. We're not the resort type.

When Skippy and Chris J Davis suggested that I should try to come to Ohio Linux Fest I looked at the dates and said "I somehow doubt that TBWITWW is going to want to go to a Linux convention on the day after our anniversary." But I had forgotten one detail. She is, in fact, TBWITWW.

Seriously. Here she is getting me a beer, the pressure was low, so she decided the thing to do was to squat down on the floor to get the nozzle below the top of the keg. I was just going to wait till it was repressurized.

On with the story... Later that evening, she was looking over my shoulder at the computer and saw, in the IRC window, the converstation. She said "We could probably do that. We can find fun stuff to do in Columbus as easily as anywhere else." So, with my geekyness, and her closet geekyness and desire to meet these people I talk to more frequently than people I've actually met in real life, We're going to OLF.

I'm looking forward to this trip for a lot of reasons. It's first real vacation that we've taken where we're not worried about if the money it's costing is going to hurt us down the road. We'll be able to relax and enjoy ourselves, knowing that when we get back, we won't have bills waiting that we're not sure if we'll be able to pay. It's also a chance to meet some people that I consider friends, but have never been in the same city as. And, as a firm beliver that community is more than a buzz word, but rather the fundamental requirement for civilization, it's a chance to strengthen my ties to a community that's made me feel more accepted than almost any I've seen.