In the weekend of november 26 and 27, 2011, Moyo Web Architects (that's us!) drove to the Nooku Jam 2011 in Leuven. The full programming staff was there, along with over 20 other enthusiasts. Here's our story.

The venue - Flanders DC

Flanders DC is located smack in the middle of Leuven, conveniently near our hotel. it features a true creativity lab, which is basically a wide open space that is dominated by three smartboards and a bright green floor of artificial grass. To keep the creativity going, both the coffee machine and the refrigerator were working overtime, as well as our personal catering service, who provided us with the famed Belgian sandwiches. 

One of the attendants at the jam was actually working for Flanders DC. He has been included as an honorary member of the Nooku team. I am sure that the Nooku jam could not be held in a better place. Thank you Peter!

The talks

This jam was not a conference per se. It rather followed the more informal barcamp format, which relies on spontaneous input by all the attendants. The attendants were to come up with their own ideas for talks, along with things they would like to hear about. These poles of ideas were quickly refactored into walls of ideas. There was a stability issue. The post-its kept falling off.

Saturday was mostly filled by 30 minute sessions where people could do their talks. Although it was mostly enough to touch on the subject at hand, some of the sessions had to be cut off. I have a sneaky suspicion that a number of new interesting discussions will be popping up on the mailing list. In this case, I do not mean interesting in the Chinese sense. The community still has a lot of things to talk through.

Please note that tens of little talks were held. I am only picking the ones that were of particular interest to me or to Moyo.

Documentation

One of my ideas to talk about was documentation. The wiki is honestly cluttered, some juicy bits of information fragmented or lacking. Although 30 minutes was a bit short for a group discussion, a nice start was made. I for one am looking forward to helping out here.

ACL brainstorm

Currently, Moyo is in the process of creating an ACL structure for some of their projects. Among the people who were there, there is a good amount of knowledge and ideas on how to tackle this tricky subject matter. A rudimentary version was demonstrated, a number of variations was discussed. 

Backend GUI design

This was a small exchange of insights on how to freshen up the backend template. A number of CSS frameworks was discussed, along with a number of ideas on making the backend GUI clear and pretty. 

Dynamic module injection

In this talk they showed us how we could inject modules into the frontend without having to create a complete module itself. Basicaly you create a module on the fly and user it.

Basic Authentication

A small presentation on how to "control" content on the website without having to be on the website itself.

CLI voor nooku server

A Neal-Stephenson-esque nerdgasm: https://gist.github.com/1309230 Nuff said.

Fun: lightning talks

A 30 minute session was held on tools of the trade. Of course, mamy many apps, applets and programs were discussed, ranging from development tools to project management and planning tools. Furthermore, some hardware was discussed and even a paper fan that is supposed to help inspire people.

The road ahead

As with any good conference (or in this case: unconference), a quick peek into the near future was given. There will be an Gentoo-esque version numbering system. The first part of the version number will be the year of release, whereas the second part will be the milestone for that year. The aim is to have three such milestone releases a year, starting January 2012. A conscious decision was made to skip backward compatibility. This is to ensure a certain measure of quality control. 

Of course, there is a certain dark side to this. Every once in a while, you will have to do a search and replace on all of your public components. Time to learn the sed and grep man pages by heart. 

The community

A good community is nothing without a proper way to blow off steam and enjoy some good food and drinks. All in all, there were 25-ish people, each one passionate about the thing they do. For three nights we ate and drank together. An introductory course about Belgian Beer Culture was cobbled up, but unfortunately it failed to properly start. Let us suggest that we try again next time. Fellowships were forged or reinforced and the overall vibe was one of inspiration and companionship. It is a good thing to see that the nooku community is healthy and growing.