by Bill Willis, Dana Kaufman, and Joseph Yoder
The concept of patterns has been around as long as
we humans have been around. In fact, just about everything we do is centered
on recognition, repeatable processes, and routine. Patterns as a formal
concept, however, are a recent development that relatively few professional
disciplines have begun to leverage – the most active of which happens to be
the software industry. Ever since the now famous building architect
Christopher Alexander made an impression on us, numerous books, articles, and
training courses have emerged to catalog patterns and educate us in their use.
An interesting thing to note is that although many people (especially software
developers) have heard of patterns and have seen the advertised benefits, most
of them still don’t fully understand what they are and how to effectively
apply them in their daily work. Despite the exciting promise of such a simple
yet powerful expression of our experiences, patterns are still a somewhat
elusive concept for many.
One of our goals in launching PatternsCentral was to help address this
problem. We wanted to provide a central place for people to actively share
their experiences with patterns, to find high quality literature, and to plug
into the latest news and events in the pattern community at large. Education,
communication, and even innovation were central to the chartering of this
community site.
This hot topic is all about what *you* would expect from a dynamic
community portal dedicated to patterns. How can we improve it? How can we
integrate it with what others are doing in the pattern community? The
discussion will initially center on the following topics, and we hope it will
generate some interesting ideas and possibilities.
Coordination with other efforts
How can we support the efforts of the Hillside group?
Are there other groups in the pattern community that we should align ourselves
with?
Improving content and participation
What are the most important features for a dynamic community portal like
PatternsCentral?
How do we get more people involved in contributing time and content?
A peer-reviewed repository
How do we organize a peer-reviewed pattern repository (the most requested
feature by far) on PatternsCentral?
Would this repository be a good candidate for hosting work-shopped patterns
and pattern languages?
What would this repository look like and how would it function?
If you are interested in joining us, please send email to Bill Willis (JollyOldBloke@yahoo.com)
along with any specific interests you have.
Note: PLoP is a trademark of The Hillside Group, Inc.