[Charlug] SVN and other stuff (wuz: Tuesday night meetings)

[Leam Hall]

C. Michael Pilato wrote:

> Sure.  Certainly I have reason to believe that Subversion is present, if
> only in small, not-sanctioned-by-the-CTO-type installations in a majority of
> organizations of all sizes.  So, in theory, there's a potentially huge
> audience of folks who would appreciate face-to-face contact with someone who
> is as closely tied to Subversion's use and development as I am.  But
> Subversion also has a pretty flat learning curve.  Do you think a
> "Subversion pizza party" would find success and bring real value to its
> attendees?  Are people struggling with how to make this tool work for them?
> 
> Maybe I overestimate how easy it is to become a Subversion expert, and
> underestimate the level of general interest in Subversion as a discussion
> topic.  That's the flip-side of being "on the inside" of the community, I guess.
> 
> I am always willing to speak about Subversion, demo it, and field questions
> about its use, strengths and limitations.  I guess I've been assuming that
> talks and events aimed at Subversion newbies (covering the basics) would be
> mostly wasted for lack of newbies, and that talks and events aimed at
> growing new Subversion experts are just hard to organize because once you're
> at that stage, the types of things one person cares about learning could
> vary wildly from what the next guy cares about learning.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 

I've seen SVN in lots of places and with the knowledge of both technical 
and business leaders. It has generally failed to gain traction because 
the internal advocates cannot demonstrate, within a reasonable amount of 
time and effort, that SVN can solve enterprise issues.

The issue is less in the abilities of SVN but in the talents of the 
internal advocates in making it work past the simple parts. How do you 
coordinate 27 different teams? How do you decentralize group policies 
but centralize backups and access? How do you get reasonable 
requirements from the user community and answer there questions without 
impacting your other task assignments?

The sad part is that SVN will lose to a commercial product that performs 
poorly. Additionally, a new internal team will have to be formed to 
support the commercial product, lots of consulting dollars will be spent 
with the vendor, and the COTS doesn't integrate into anything else 
already in use.

So the pizza party is not a newbie event but "SVN meets the Enterprise". 
  Participants should probably come with some SVN experience and skills, 
and the projected task discussed beforehand. That way folks get their 
brains engaged on an enormous task early and you can skip the first 45 
minutes of problem introduction.

Leam