Let's start up a group!

It's not Call of Duty for me.....it's Skyrim!! Though I do really enjoy when the code works after putting a lot of time and effort into it, learning with other people is always easier. So yeah let me know how I can help.

I'm down to join the group. I'm still a newbie :-(

It seems to me there is a demand for a service that would enable informal teams to collaborate, communicate and share together. Such a space could be specific to Web developers and offer tools we would find useful.

Would a service like that satisfy what you're looking for?

Cade, if you designed a platform for connecting Web developers in this way, what would that look like?

Apparently, Treehouse is working on something for collaboration. However, if it's only for members that still leaves a wide world of disconnected Web developers who just want to work with a few other people towards a common goal, even if that goal is just learning.

This sounds great! I would definitely love to join the group and grow together!

Totally down for a group. I just signed up yesterday and I'm not even positive what I want to make yet, I just know that I'm dying to build SOMETHING and Treehouse seemed like a good fit for me.

Keith, I'm really liking your ideas you've put out there. This could become something amazing. I'm no pro at RoR, but I'm trying. What you are explaining sounds to me like RoR would probably be the best way to go about building something as interactive as that. That would definitely be an undertaking.

I'm glad so many people are posting here and expressing their desire to get involved in developing together. I'm currently setting up a blog on my site so we can have a place to collaborate together. I'll inform everyone once it is set up. From there, i think we can swap more info, come up with some ideas and goals, and set out on our adventure.

Although I am fairly new to the web dev world (I am slowly teaching myself RoR) I would love to get involved with something like this.

I was looking for someone to get together with to work on the Social Network that we build on treehouse. I was hoping we could work together to build extra features and stuff like that. I think it would be pretty fun.

Jack i haven't made it that far yet but i am good at web design so I'd love to help in anyway

Would be COD for me but I got hacked and lost my gun - grrrrrr

What are the logistics of this?

G

Alright, i've set up a blog. Unfortunately, the webhost service is a bit silly, and the address is a bit long. I hope to switch it over to an easier name sometime soon. But, for now, this should do.

The blog is located here.

Head over there and get registered. I'm not too familiar with WP, but i assume once you register i can easily give access so you can make your own posts. For now, just make sure you can post comments. I have some questions for everyone to answer. Let's get this show on the road!

Hi Cade,

sounds like a great idea... Im still new in the game but slowly making my way through building my first RoR app ! Definately would like to socialize with like-minded people and possibly create something fun... Ill go and have a look at your wordpress blog now...

Regards,

Olivier

We are using the space that Cade setup for further discussion and collaboration:

http://blog.cadeward.westhostsite.com/

Is this collaboration still active or have y'all decided to discontinue it? I noticed nothing has happened on the blog in months.

By the way, Cade, I think we live in the same city.

I don't know, but if you do want to collaborate on a project let me know. I'm just working on the apps and ruby projects.

I'm still interested in collaborating and building something.

But first, has anyone found a service like this? I discovered a site that looks really promising but it turned out to be dead (Build It With Me). It shows one possible implementation of such a service.

Cade Ward, what do you think? Are you still interested?

I'm doing some research to find similar services. There's no sense in building it if it already exists.

CodePen has a "Collab" feature where up to 2 or 6 people can collaborate in real-time on a single web development project. It includes chat. To get the Collab feature you have to sign up and pay $9 per month.

1st Web Designer has a blog post that lists the "30 Greatest Online Project Management and Collaboration Tools For Easy Communication!". This is about project management. None of them, that I saw, offer web developer collaboration tools.

I'll update this post as I find more services.

I believe you can do it with GitHub.

I guess there are a few services wrapped up in this idea. Let me try to define how I understand this discussion.

• Project management and collaboration tools
• Sharing code
• Finding other designers/developers to work with
• Help setting project goals and scope

1. Project management has been done...a lot. Just take a look at the blog post I linked to earlier. It would be ridiculous to build project software.

2. Sharing code has been done via Git, GitHub and others. As I mentioned, there are various other services like CodePen.io and Koding (Koding isn't finished and I'm not sure if it supports teams).

3. Where do you find and connect with other designers and developers who want to start a project? Build It With Me looks like a great service. However, the developer has stopped supporting it and the service no longer accepts new people. Take a look at his implementation for an example, though.

4. Once you find the person and team how do you decide on project details? There is a lot to think about before your team can begin coding. Who makes the decisions and what decisions need to be made? A service to fill this need should walk your team through all the things you need to think about before you start coding.

So, if left to me, I would say 3 and 4 haven't been done, or done very well, and should be integrated into one service.

Maybe such a service needs to be built...

In the meantime, do we have anything useable, even if not ideal?

To find other team members and help define project scope? No. Not that I've found yet. Treehouse can work as a place to find interested people to help.

To communicate and collaborate? Skype or Google Hangouts work. If everyone had a Google account we could setup a private G+ community and (invite only). The Google+ Community is my preferred option.

Sorry for the late post, busy weekend. Let's just give ourselves a little project and throw ideas back and forth, I personally would like to make a little game, but other people may want to make a handy app or a social networking site with a specific theme. Before we even start coding we need to have an idea of what our goal is and figure out how to get there and what we need. So let's just throw some ideas around (even if the sound silly) and start building something.

So let's build it.

A service that helps connect designers and developes for the purpose of completing a project together. The service would walk the team through fully defining the project before they start coding. It would also help the team communicate by providing a simple news feed and persistent chat.

This type of service would enable individuals like us to come together with an idea. After going through the process we would have our idea fully defined and ready to code.

What do you think? Why don't we use this as the first project we work on?

I'm in.

I'd be down for a game too...

Here's what I think the service should do. What do you think?

DISCOVER

• Find a project that needs partners and request to join it.
• Find an individual who has the skills you need and invite them to join your project.

CREATE

• Start a project.

DEFINE

• Follow the guided tour to complete all sections of the Project Definition.
• Export the Project Definition to standard formats (Doc, PDF, etc).
• When the project is fully defined it's time to start coding.

COMMUNICATE

• Post updates or questions to each section's feed.
• Use the persistent chat which spans all project areas.
• Schedule email reminders for when the team will meet next.

BROWSE

• Browse a list of public projects which are either defined or are being defined but which are not looking for partners.

I feature that might be worth consideration is a process for delegating responsibilities in a hierarchical fashion. You should probably have one person who is the leader of the project and has control over everything. The project leader could give rights to others for certain parts of the project (UI design, server-side scripting, client side scripting, or whatever else). That way you could have a clearly defined structure and leadership for the people working on the project.

Good point, Mark. The person who creates the project should have full control. There should definitely be a role system.

I've been taking the UX course by Allison and it seems there's quite a lot to consider. Definition is just the first step out of a few before we would start to code.

I'll update my post as I learn more. It seems that software and web development take a lot of planning before you can launch into the code.

With this idea I am deliberately not getting into project management. What I envision is a service to help developers fully define their project before they code.

The team aspect would enable up to 5 stakeholders (core decision-makers) to come together for the purpose of developing a comprehensive plan. Once created, the team would use a different service for managing production (when they would actually write code and assign tasks).

A core service of the idea is to walk the team through things they should consider before they code.

If I may refine my earlier post, the two core features of the idea are: Define and Discover. Everything else falls under these services:

• Define the project.
• Discover a project or discover a partner.

Do you think the service should allow for casual development and in-depth development?

For users who want to work on a simple/casual project the guided definition process could be abridged.

I think having options would be a good thing.

Mark Wardle someone has setup a Google Community for collaborating.

Find it here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101449294826409884764

Request to join.

Cool. Request sent.

wow! great too see something actually sparked from this post.

The idea you have is really neet, especially for people like me who are looking to build a portfolio and learn to work with others in the industry. This is a great idea for portfolio building.