The Model Driven Software Network
Raise your level of abstraction
Is this community dead already, and what does that mean to MDSD?
I've noticed that despite the increase in members, the activity is steadily decreasing. If it wasn't for me, Vlad and some others, this community would be certainly dead already...
Does this mean that:
- MDSD practitioners are not very communicative?
- MDSD practitioners are too busy?
- MDSD practitioners are secretive about their work, and are only willing to listen, but not to speak?
- MDSD is a dying subject?
- MDSD is too complex to be grasped by the majority?
- MDSD is not seen as "the way"?
- This is a secondary community and there another, primary community?
- The community's service base (Ning) is cumbersome?
I'm confused and disappointed with the lack of activity here.
Does this mean that:
- MDSD practitioners are not very communicative?
- MDSD practitioners are too busy?
- MDSD practitioners are secretive about their work, and are only willing to listen, but not to speak?
- MDSD is a dying subject?
- MDSD is too complex to be grasped by the majority?
- MDSD is not seen as "the way"?
- This is a secondary community and there another, primary community?
- The community's service base (Ning) is cumbersome?
I'm confused and disappointed with the lack of activity here.
Views: 14
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ed Merks on
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It certainly seems that MDSD practitioners aren't very communicative but of course most people are very busy, especially people with things worth saying. You have to stop and think about what's accomplished by coming here. Preaching to the converted is a bit pointless. I suppose we could definitely share ideas, but, in my case, my involvement in the Eclipse Modeling community is already beyond my capacity to track properly. If I'm going to talk about my work, an article or blog seems far more likely to produce a valuable artifact that would a posting here. And yes, Eclipse is my primary community so that's where I need to focus my attention the most. I find it very hard to follow the threads on this site: no easy overview of what's new in terms of discussion and no good indicators of what you've not read since the last time...
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Permalink Reply by Michael Osmond on -
Rui,
I suspect it takes time and effort to get these groups going and growing, and also quite a large body of people to sustain it. So, it may be as simple as there is not enough people yet to really get this going.
I think that you will find various degrees of commitment to any community or group, which will show up in the fact that some comment more than others and many not at all. But that lack of comment does not mean that it is dead yet.
Finally, for many of us I suspect, although we are doing MDSD in one form or another, our day to day work may well be very humdrum with not a lot to comment on. I know that most of my day is spent dealing with customer problems, test environments, setting up builds, managing servers, there's not a lot of inspiring MDSD questions in all that.
So far the discussions have been generally interesting, and as you point out, thanks to Vlad for posing so many questions.
Michael
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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on
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Hi Rui,
I think it's a bit premature to declare the community dead - especially as it's only really been going for a couple of months.
In any community only about 1/3 of the members are really active posters, 1/3 are occassional posters and 1/3 lurkers. As Ed knows I've been working behind the scenes to set up some online 'events' where we can come together to see what each other is doing. I'd also like to see if we can do some collaborative writing projects.
Ning has its weaknesses but I see it as a platform that has momentum behind it and so these weaknesses will be addressed sooner or later.
As Ed also notes, we are all busy people - hence no MSDN digest from me - too busy putting the CG2009 program together and making sure it gets promoted.
Mark
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Permalink Reply by Jorge Ubeda on -
Not so fast to kill us...;-)
It is a very useful community, and will make good contributions indeed.
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Permalink Reply by Rui Curado on -
Thanks for all those who answered, and for those who just read it. I didn't declare this community dead, far from that, but was a bit disappointed that the activity frequency here has been better than in the present days...
I understand people are busy. I am too. But I was expecting more enthusiasm, more curiosity.
I too could be a better poster, though.
Long live the MDSN!
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Permalink Reply by Sean Kavanagh on -
I agree it is far too early to condemn this site. I suspect there is too much diversity in skills/interests for the number of members at the moment and I agree with Ed Merks that the benefits of posting here are currently a lot less than posting a blog. I'm working full-time on 100% model-to-code generation methods (Shlaer-Mellor and Executable UML) and tools. However, I don't see anyone else in the group with a similar interest so I haven't started any discussions to date.
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Permalink Reply by Jon Hurwitz on -
Perhaps the community needs to grow bigger before we find uses for it, other than guaging what others in the field are up to, which is useful in its own right. I've recently been looking at the LinkedIn MDA group, and despite it's 1700+ membership it doesn't seem to fare any better than here - either having a far higher percentage of lurkers, or a secret strand of conversation I'm not privvy to.
There is obviously interest in the subject, but perhaps we haven't identified common technical goals. It certainly seems like there are several approaches here. Perhaps discussions on non-technical areas, such how to grow the MDD pie, would fare better - a plan for action. Perhaps turning some of the more technical disussion into marketing speak, so that others can grasp the general proposition in a way that makes the decision seem the no-brainer that it does to me.
I'm not really suggesting an alternate-OMG because they are just too impractical, too focused on common standards instead of common interests - Err... perhaps I am.
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Permalink Reply by Rui Curado on
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"Perhaps the community needs to grow bigger before we find uses for it, other than guaging what others in the field are up to, which is useful in its own right."
Perhaps it is a question of critical mass, or a "catch-22". This community needs a certain level of activity to prove attractive to subscribers. On the other hand, people tend to participate as a reaction to others.
"I've recently been looking at the LinkedIn MDA group, and despite it's 1700+ membership it doesn't seem to fare any better than here"
Yes, I have to agree with that. LinkedIn groups are not very active. I check some of them regularly.
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Permalink Reply by Marcus Munzert on -
I understand your feelings. And yes, there are only a few members, like Vlad, you and some others, that keep discussions going. Thank you all for this.
I would say there is a danger of death for this and any other community: a big number of people starting to think or feel that being part of this community is not of any value for them. As far as I am concerned, I find it too early to assess that. I'd be happy if I were able to spend more time on taking part in discussions and (hopefully) say something that is of any value for the community. Maybe some day I'll find enough time to leave the "occassional posters" group and join the "really acitve posters" group. Let's keep this community going.
Regarding your questions, as far as I am concerned, I would say the following
1. I am communicative
2. I am busy
3. I am willing to speak and to listen, see 2. though.
4. I think that MDSD is a living subject, as long as MD lives in harmony with SD and MDSD does not "fight" against SD and SD not against MDSD (see also How to make MDSD more attractive ...).
5. I think that MD does add a lot of complexity to SD. And altogether it may be something not to be grasped (easily) by a significant number of IT-people. However, as long as the majority of stakeholders benefit from applying MDSD, I don't see a big problem here. This is also a question of how to communicate the value and the complexity of MDSD and how to educate and deploy IT-people (and not only them).
6. I myself don't see MDSD as "the way". I rather see MD as an enrichment of SD, that, if certain conditions are met, boosts efficiency of software development.
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Permalink Reply by Angelo Hulshout on -
It's certainly a little bit more alive with CG2009 just behind us.
However, the fact that I didn't notice this discussion until now certainly shows how busy I (and presumably other members) are with other things. Best way to resolve that: use the site to communicate things that may interest all of us. For one thing: you are working on your own tool, what can you share about that?
Question to Mark: is there a possibility to have an automated aggregation of external blogs and other sites on here, so that this site becomes a sort of portal to more info?
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Permalink Reply by Rui Curado on
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"For one thing: you are working on your own tool, what can you share about that?"
I am developing two things: A methodology (named ABSE) and an IDE (named AtomWeaver) that implements ABSE.
ABSE official site is at http://www.abse.info
AtomWeaver official site is at http://www.atomweaver.com
AtomWeaver's site is still empty, but ABSE's site already contains an outline of it's major features. It's still vague (on purpose).
I am now concentrating on having the IDE ready to demo, and then later to release. My timeline for 2009 is:
- July : ABSE info release
- August : Early access program
- September : AtomWeaver Solo 0.9 (CTP version)
- November : Official launch / AtomWeaver Solo 1.0
I'll start blogging about it very soon, and expect a progressive flow of information about it starting next month.
I am not asking for inclusion on your list yet since AtomWeaver is, for all means, a non-existing product at this time.
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Permalink Reply by Angelo Hulshout on
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Great! Let us know when you start blogging - the information on the site is indeed limited (but sufficient to make people curious).
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