YSA Project - Developers Conference 2010

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There were three main sections of the YSA meetings at the conference. In the first, we got an overview of what the basic plans are. In the second, we organized into two general teams: the developers and everyone else. Then each of these teams met to work on the YSA project: the developers attacked the code, and everyone else attacked the concept.

Section 1: Overview

The site consists of 3 main parts:

1. Get Connected
2. Be Inspired
3. Stay Strong

There are 3 basic layers:

1. Wordpress
2. YSA WP Theme
3. Custom bits (like LDS Account)

URLs for SVN, WordPress, Jira, our mailing list, Facebook, and Twitter were reviewed.

Jesse presented an overview of the Facebook and Twitter integration plans. He mentioned Facebook connect which lets us use Facebook content within the YSA site.

Jon Edwards explained several points about the purpose and vision of the site.

• The YSA site is supposed to be a thin hub that links many resources including events/causes and other services like Facebook, Twitter, and eventually flickr etc. One of the important points of this is to not recreate all of these great services.
• There have been pilot studies performed that indicate that this is a good idea. Those studies are not available to the general public. One report came from a third party group, who financed a big study about YSA across the world and donated it to the church.

The Information Security Team encouraged us to "Build Security In".

There were many comments throughout the presentation. They have been summarized in Section 3b

Section 2: Organize

This project is being developed with an iterative development approach. The progress is reported to the YSA Council and the a Church General Authority every other week. The YSA Project will always be a community effort due to the importance of community involvement and input.

We chose some general categories including:

• Development: PHP, WordPress,
• Designers: HTML, CSS, Images
• QA: What's good? What does it actually do?

We use JIRA for tracking issues (bugs, tasks, and enhancements). Though important for success, up to the Dev Conference, JIRA has mostly been neglected.

There was an overview on how to use JIRA. We all requested JIRA accounts and got up and running at the conference.

People volunteered for what they felt comfortable with, or wanted to work with. Anthony White was nominated as the "Project Management Lead" after his stellar help in leading Section 3 of the meeting.

Section 3a: Development

To Do: Include notes on what happened here

Section 3b: General Discussion

The basic outline that we've got:

• Start with the area. The area president will be in charge, through delegation, of how the site is run in his area. Priesthood must make the decision about what is needed in their respective unit.
• We focus on Get Connected. Be Inspired comes from the words of the Apostles via the YSA Council.
• Calendaring events is important.
• Connecting YSA is important.

We are hoping for a first public release in July.

We need data and direct feedback.

Stake/Ward Websites

Many of the conference attendees think that the YSA Project should help the Stakes and Wards distribute information about YSA activities. There was a general consensus that we should focus on:

1. Ward
2. Stake
3. Region
4. Area

One of the reasons for this was that if every stake has to maintain their own website, then they will each have to call someone to maintain it that has the expertise required. Not all areas have the luxury of members who are also developers.

Another issue with each stake/ward having their own website is the memo that seems to prohibit them. To comply with Church policy, all of these sites have to make it clear that they do not contain official Church doctrine.

We don't want to shut down any existing websites; We do want to centralize stuff. If things are centralized, then YSA who are traveling or visiting an area can check out the website and see what activities are available for them to attend. YSA are not geographically limited, but wards and stakes are.

Solving the problems of communication between Church units is beyond the scope of the YSA Project.

Ideas

• A map should be on the landing page.
  • Color code events by unit level
  • Also show which events are open to the public and which are restricted to a certain unit.
    • Must be able to restrict an event to a certain unit (area/region/stake/ward) or mark it as public.
• Netflix-like activity ratings. Let people thumbs-up an activity both before and after.
• Calendar
  • iCal export
  • Compqatible with social networks: Facebook/Twitter
• Work with the Institute
• Profile
  • Don't restrict YSA to a certain area - help them connect with YSA in other areas.
  • Don't require a profile
• Notification Feeds (RSS, Email, SMS, etc)
  • Allow following without logging in (or without a profile)
  • Allow infinite customization
    • How often?: Daily, weekly, monthly (max in a time period?)
    • Choose which types of events to be notified about
    • Choose which areas to be notified about
    • Don't spam them, unless they ask for it
  • SMS is really important
    • Need more info: setting up an internal Church SMS service?
      • They want youth to be able to text in questions and get answers
    • Mostly just for notifying people of events.
      • "This event is happening tomorrow night"

v1.0 Priorities

1. Event Input Theme
2. Calendar Integration
3. Mapping Integration
4. Facebook Integration