Community Server Roadmap and Vision
A lot of people have been asking, 'What is Community Server?' We've been quiet on details, but we're now at a point that we're ready to start talking more about what we are doing.
The easiest description of Community Server is: an online collaboration and knowledge management platform designed to allow people to share information and ideas more easily.
We believe that the majority of people are ready for web based solutions that don't require a software developer to setup, run, and maintain. While the inner workings of our system will be potentially complex and cutting edge, such as our exclusive use of compiled ASP.NET server controls, we want to build a platform that is simple, just works, and doesn't require any technical knowledge to setup and use. At the same time, we want our technology to be something that developers can use, learn from, and appreicate as well designed software.
To build this collaborative platform we are fully integrating several of the most popular web based systems (forums, blogs, and a photo gallery) into one system. Our premise is that an integrated solution is exponentially more valuable than these same 3 technologies as stand-alone solutions. We do mean integrated, not interoperable, e.g. where adding discussion capabilities to a photo gallery just works.
By integrating together - rather than building as stand-alone solutions - we believe we can build a simple, easy to manage, and flexible platform.
To reiterate, we are building Community Server as a platform. Meaning we are desigining it to support add-ons related to knowledge managment and collaboration - such as our Knowledge Base add-on. We are not building a portal solution, but instead look to portal technologies such as DotNetNuke or Microsoft Sharepoint as the container for Community Server; although we can run as stand-alone.
One of the unique add-ons that we are building as a commercial product is an integrated email listserv. Email is the natural collaboration technology, but from a collaboration point of view leaves a lot to be desired. For example, have you ever been on an email distribution list and wanted to search old posts or view a user's profile? Or, how nice would it be to create a new blog post using your offline email client and have that post added when you re-connect? Or how easy would it be to explain to someone that to add a photo to your gallery you just 'send an email'. We're doing some more interesting things here and we'll share more details about this in the future.
From a Roadmap perspective:
Community Server 1.0
Fully integrated systems of Forums, Blogs, and nGallery with forwards compatibility with Microsoft's new Membership, Roles, and Profile features. Integrates into DotNetNuke as a portal container (which will share the forwards compatible Membership, Roles, etc. work). We may move backwards in features for this 1.0 release as we focus on quality, stability and more importantly integration. We will cut features if we have to to get the integrated solution completed.
Community Server 1.1
Point release with bug fixes, performance work, and introduction of Knowledge Base add-on. Potentially have reporting/statistics package available.
Community Server 2.0
Integrated ad system that serves targeted contextual ads. Integrated store for easily adding the ability to sell products.
Some of the add-ons that we're looking at
1. Better offline capabilities. Email is obvious and described above, but we would like to also have the ability for Forums/Blogs to act as a NNTP news server and ability to read/post to NNTP newsgroups
2. Incredible email integration and ListServ support
3. Usage of peer-to-peer technologies to allow distributed peer forums.
4. Full Web services backend with rich Windows Forms/Avalon management tools.
5. Newsletter management, subscription, creation, and archiving.
6. Publishing of articles with workflow.
...and much, much more.
Through our partner program we are integrating some key partner capabilities, such as a chat application or Passport authentication, into the platform so enabling these capabilities is simply a matter of adding the appropriate .dll and everything 'just works'.
To validate much of this work we'll be rebuilding www.asp.net with Community Server as the foundation. Much of what we build for www.asp.net will make its way back into Community Server as either part of the core platform or as add-ons.
We've tried to put together a team of thought leaders in these areas to build this platform. We use our own technology on a daily basis and work with clients to implement and understand how they use it -- allowing us to feel the pain points. Our team is distributed world-wide, and this is a trend we hope to continue. With technologies such as Community Server distributed development and collaboration are simply easier.
Hopefully this helps answer some questions about our plans and our vision, although it's still the 'tip of the iceberg'. We're really excited about what the future holds and we look forward to working with all of you in our awesome Community Server 'community' as we evolve this technology.
The easiest description of Community Server is: an online collaboration and knowledge management platform designed to allow people to share information and ideas more easily.
We believe that the majority of people are ready for web based solutions that don't require a software developer to setup, run, and maintain. While the inner workings of our system will be potentially complex and cutting edge, such as our exclusive use of compiled ASP.NET server controls, we want to build a platform that is simple, just works, and doesn't require any technical knowledge to setup and use. At the same time, we want our technology to be something that developers can use, learn from, and appreicate as well designed software.
To build this collaborative platform we are fully integrating several of the most popular web based systems (forums, blogs, and a photo gallery) into one system. Our premise is that an integrated solution is exponentially more valuable than these same 3 technologies as stand-alone solutions. We do mean integrated, not interoperable, e.g. where adding discussion capabilities to a photo gallery just works.
By integrating together - rather than building as stand-alone solutions - we believe we can build a simple, easy to manage, and flexible platform.
To reiterate, we are building Community Server as a platform. Meaning we are desigining it to support add-ons related to knowledge managment and collaboration - such as our Knowledge Base add-on. We are not building a portal solution, but instead look to portal technologies such as DotNetNuke or Microsoft Sharepoint as the container for Community Server; although we can run as stand-alone.
One of the unique add-ons that we are building as a commercial product is an integrated email listserv. Email is the natural collaboration technology, but from a collaboration point of view leaves a lot to be desired. For example, have you ever been on an email distribution list and wanted to search old posts or view a user's profile? Or, how nice would it be to create a new blog post using your offline email client and have that post added when you re-connect? Or how easy would it be to explain to someone that to add a photo to your gallery you just 'send an email'. We're doing some more interesting things here and we'll share more details about this in the future.
From a Roadmap perspective:
Community Server 1.0
Fully integrated systems of Forums, Blogs, and nGallery with forwards compatibility with Microsoft's new Membership, Roles, and Profile features. Integrates into DotNetNuke as a portal container (which will share the forwards compatible Membership, Roles, etc. work). We may move backwards in features for this 1.0 release as we focus on quality, stability and more importantly integration. We will cut features if we have to to get the integrated solution completed.
Community Server 1.1
Point release with bug fixes, performance work, and introduction of Knowledge Base add-on. Potentially have reporting/statistics package available.
Community Server 2.0
Integrated ad system that serves targeted contextual ads. Integrated store for easily adding the ability to sell products.
Some of the add-ons that we're looking at
1. Better offline capabilities. Email is obvious and described above, but we would like to also have the ability for Forums/Blogs to act as a NNTP news server and ability to read/post to NNTP newsgroups
2. Incredible email integration and ListServ support
3. Usage of peer-to-peer technologies to allow distributed peer forums.
4. Full Web services backend with rich Windows Forms/Avalon management tools.
5. Newsletter management, subscription, creation, and archiving.
6. Publishing of articles with workflow.
...and much, much more.
Through our partner program we are integrating some key partner capabilities, such as a chat application or Passport authentication, into the platform so enabling these capabilities is simply a matter of adding the appropriate .dll and everything 'just works'.
To validate much of this work we'll be rebuilding www.asp.net with Community Server as the foundation. Much of what we build for www.asp.net will make its way back into Community Server as either part of the core platform or as add-ons.
We've tried to put together a team of thought leaders in these areas to build this platform. We use our own technology on a daily basis and work with clients to implement and understand how they use it -- allowing us to feel the pain points. Our team is distributed world-wide, and this is a trend we hope to continue. With technologies such as Community Server distributed development and collaboration are simply easier.
Hopefully this helps answer some questions about our plans and our vision, although it's still the 'tip of the iceberg'. We're really excited about what the future holds and we look forward to working with all of you in our awesome Community Server 'community' as we evolve this technology.
posted by Arcadia at
9:05 AM
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