Alan Z. talks about the challenge of evolving the EDN to serve the needs of our communities.

A challenging question

What is the EDN? You might think the answer is obvious... but no, it’s not a web site.

From my point of view, the EMC Developer Network is just that, a global network of developers. It is (or should be) about people… developers working with EMC products and technologies.

Our members generally work for companies that use EMC products, for partner companies, or are independent contractors. Some are just looking around to see if our products are right for their projects.

The challenge the EDN team faces is finding the right mix of services for each community. We manage developer web resources, content, partner programs, conferences, contests… and the list is expanding.

Communities

Communities emerge when a group of people have a common interest and/or are trying to accomplish a particular goal.

Some developer communities (particularly those focused around collaborative development) are all about evolving a particular software project. Others might be product centric or industry focused. Communities can range from a handful of members to thousands of people participating. They can be long term entities, or temporary (perhaps a group of developers who are attending the next EMC World).

The needs of the communities differ. Some might benefit from file downloads or development servers; others might only need a place to talk among themselves.

Stepping up to the challenge

Historically, the EDN web pages have been used to read articles and download files, a very typical Web “1.0” environment. We added CodeSearch to make it easier to locate relevant sample code.

Then we introduced the EDN forums, where you can discuss EDN content and all aspects of the development projects. We’re experimenting with using the forums as a place for members to collaborate on best practices. For example, we are publishing a series of design patterns, and encourage members to comment on the article, so we can update the document to reflect their input.

Moving forward, we want our members to be able to be involved with, and do, more things.

2008 is going to be an exciting year for the EDN. Our team is actively working on the next generation EDN. It’s all about what we can do to become an enabling platform for a wide variety of developer communities.

A fly on the wall of our team meetings would hear us asking some interesting questions:

• How do we make the EDN more community focused?
• How can we enable new (often ad hoc) communities to get up and running quickly?
• How can members easily get involved in collaborative software projects?
• How can members “show the love” to other members and reward them for doing good things?
• How can we make it easier for members to hear what subject matter experts have to say?
• How do we make it easier for members to contribute and participate in the community?
• How can “best practice” and “design pattern” documents be kept up to date with member input?
• How do we encourage (and facilitate) members to “connect” with each other? Social networking can be a very good thing!
• How do we supply the right infrastructure components/services needed by each community?
• How do we evaluate the health and success of a community?

I know this is a bit of a tease… but it gives you some insight into what we’re working on. Besides, talking about EDN futures is one of the perks of being editor.

I’ll post these questions on the EDN forum, so we can discuss them. We want to hear from you about the communities you are involved with, would like to participate in, and what you need to be successful.

Our first Developer Challenge

The Documentum 6 (D6) team told us that developing and deploying content applications in a SOA framework would be easy.

So, we issued a D6 Web Services Challenge where developers were given up to 30 days to create applications using the new Documentum 6 Foundation Services. With $100,000 in prizes available, developers applied their ingenuity, and really impressed the judges. Congratulations to all who participated, and in particular to the winners!

• Click here to see details about, and demos of, the winning entries.
• You can discuss the winning projects with the developers on the EDN forums.
• Wouldn’t it be great if you could download the code, and even participate in expanding the projects? Yes, it’s another tease, but this one is well underway, so stay tuned.
• You can see a short video of the award presentation at Momentum Europe for the winners of the D6 Web Services Challenge, and for the Design for EMC partner application of the year. Bring your binoculars... the video was shot from the back of the room, but the audio is interesting.

Expanding scope

At this point, most of our members are focused on the various areas of content management. This is pretty reasonable because the EDN grew out of the Documentum Developer program. As EMC broadened its scope of software and hardware platforms, we recognized that the EDN also had to broaden its horizons. This gives you the opportunity to explore technologies and products that might not be in your day to day scope.

As a first step we added a Resource Management (RM) Developer Center to the EDN earlier this year. However, I believe that most of our members still don’t know what Resource Management is.

So, I sat down with Patricia Florissi, the CTO of the EMC Resource Management Software Group, and recorded a conversation where she talked candidly about managing storage, network and application resources, as well as what RM means to developers, now and in the future. You can listen to it here.

For storage systems, we incorporated the Centera Lighthouse for Content Addressed Storage (CAS), and are working on adding more storage centric communities. We recently posted information about EMC’s involvement with the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S). We’re also preparing information about the emerging eXtensible Access Method (XAM) specification.

My challenge to you

There may be thousands of people in any community, but most of them are lurkers… watching what others are doing. The real stars of the community are the “committers”, those who actually submit code, articles and feedback that benefit others.

This month, I’ll highlight two members who are sharing their knowledge and expertise:

• Laurence Hart has authored the most recent edition of our Service Station column, where he talks about things to consider when upgrading Documentum installations.
• Mitch Bird submitted an NLS Translator Tool for Documentum which assists in the creation of localized NLS files not included in the Documentum Language Packs, and for all of your custom applications and objects, so long as you used NLS files for their strings.

So the challenge is for you to get involved. Share your experiences with others in the community. Share code, best practices, and things to avoid.

Let’s talk about what you need and want from the EDN. Our team has some pretty ambitious goals. You can help shape the EDN, but only if you get involved. Our forums are the perfect place to continue this discussion... or you can reach me at edn_editor@emc.com

Alan Z.

Click here for an index of all "From The Editor" columns.

You can discuss "From the Editor" articles on the EDN Forums by clicking here.