Conference App Launch

[dpaola2]

Background

We were given a giant opportunity by being selected to build the conference application for the inaugural Rails World conference in Amsterdam in 2023. The team came through in flying colors.

We have some questions:

1. What's the future of The Agency of Learning?
2. What is the future of the conference application?

The Future of The Agency of Learning

After almost a year of operations, The Agency of Learning has come a long way. We have high caliber individuals, each interviewed and possessing of high agency and motivation to learn and grow. We have a proven track record in the Conference app and a reputation in the marketplace. These are all long-term assets, and they exist solely because of the people who have contributed directly at The Agency and those who have helped us along the way.

The Conference App

We will not rest on our laurels. The Conference app is an opportunity. The Rails Foundation is our first customer. Perhaps there are more. We will be pursuing a business model for this application that aligns with our values, fulfills promises we have made, and allows us to give back to the folks who helped build it and who will continue to build onto it and maintain it in the future.

So, we will pursue a once.com style license, which will ship with source code and one-click deploy for a one-time price $149. So while this application will not be open source per se, it will allow interested parties to examine the code and use it at their own conferences, and modify it to their hearts content under the MIT license.

Lastly - we need a good name. Shami suggested one long ago that we're going to stick with - Confer. This is a name that has a spirit of professional collaboration, is associated with the context of decision making and progress. And it's short and available.

Profit Sharing & Ownership

We'll be transparently saving the revenue that we draw directly from the conference app.

In the case where the app is successful and garners lots of customers, the revenue will first be spent on funding our tools and subscriptions that keep The Agency functional - things like Discord, Balsamiq, Github, etc. We will then save the rest of it in a special category we can use to decide later how to best invest; some ideas so far include buying conference tickets for our members, professional development resources, or outright distributing the profits according to some as-yet-to-be-determined scheme that is fair to all contributors.

I want to balance the incentive to contribute to Confer and other experimental products with a simple setup that isn't overly onerous to implement.

Apps, apps, apps

I believe we should continue to build new applications. But they should be applications that we need and will use ourselves. To date, PairApp hasn't proven to be something we use ourselves, as fun as it is to develop and as educational of a product it has been. There are a few features that I believe we could extract, such as the application experience, and potentially a version of the post-pair-programming-session feedback. These things should be standalone products of their own, that we scope ruthlessly and ship quickly. But we need to prioritize things that we will use.

I've heard lots of ideas for these types of projects, and I have a few of my own.

Importantly - each project will need a leader, someone to step up and coordinate not just the technical aspects of the product but more importantly the definition of what problem it solves, the problem definition, scope of the solution, and identification of rabbit-holes and more.

Being a project leader perfectly aligns with the mission of The Agency - to be a supportive, professional developer network that helps you build real-world skills to jumpstart your career. If you have experience both developing and also leading projects, you will be an asset on any team you join. And it's something we have experience with ourselves, so there is plenty of mentorship to go around!

Got a project idea? Write a 1 pager and let's talk about it.

Casa

Ruby for Good is a terrific organization, deserving of our attention and energy. Casa is a worthwhile application to contribute to and forms a great environment to learn skills such as familiarizing yourself with a new codebase, moving from one task to the next, making changes to an unfamiliar data model, fixing tests, on a just-barely-out-of-date version of the Rails framework (with some wonky JS to boot). It's also a really great first experience for Agency members as they join. Think back to the first experience you had pairing with another AOL member on the Casa app - more of that is a very good thing.

So, Casa will be our "default track". At any given time, if we don't have enough active work on our project (currently just Confer, potentially more soon), then your job at The Agency is to push Casa forward.

Confer

Now that we got that out of the way - what's next for Confer?

Appetite & Features

It's worth investing in this application, and we have the firepower to make this happen. What can we get done in the next 6 weeks? Take a look at the following and see what you think we can get done if we pair up:

• Which license to use, and why (MIT)
• How to distribute the app (including deciding if we should keep the git history or wipe it)
• How to support customization - color scheme, logo, domain name come to mind, but there may be other ways users will want to customize the app
• The onboarding experience
• A simple landing page that showcases the features, the people who worked on the app, its stack, pricing, and photos from Rails World
• Test our pricing in the market and course correct if necessary
• Guerilla marketing campaign - how to get the word out? how to best optimize our chances of success?

For now, we should focus on these things that will let us announce this new approach for any conference organizers that want to use it. Then, we can focus our efforts on the next set of features we can add to the app to make it even better, potentially in time for Rails World 2024 in Toronto.

Starmap

There are a few things that we feel strongly about including in the future, such as:

• Design enhancements
• Turbo-enabled mobile apps on iOS and Android
• Push notifications (web + mobile)
• CFP Feature

I'm sure there are others. Once we've launched the first version of Confer, we can figure out precisely which of these we want to begin working on next.

Next steps

Here's how you can participate:

1. Think about which of these you'd like to contribute to. Casa or Confer. We'll also need a lead for Confer - interested? Talk to Dave.
2. If you have a project idea, either an extraction from PairApp or a new project, write a 1 pager. I like to follow Shape Up's structure but any format that includes problem definition, solution, and MVP scoping will do just fine to start!
3. Find a task on the Casa board and get to work with a buddy!

[dpaola2]

Feedback from Amanda that I will respond to:

Rails Foundation would of course use this for Rails World 2024. That's an amazing price (you could go higher).
What are you going to do with the design? I recall from our last call that that was the one thing that needed some work to make it a bit more fresh, since the Rails World 2023 branding translated into web design didn't work so well (in hindsight).
Bonus points that it's a PWA, since Rails is adding more support for that in v8. 💪🏻