Notes from the MDN product advisory board meeting, January 11-12 2018

chrisdavidmills · January 22, 2018, 10:45am

Hi all,

The first MDN product advisory board face to face meeting happened on January 11-12 2018 at the main London Google offices. It was really productive and we had some great discussions. You can find the (very lengthy) meeting notes here:

github.com

mdn/pab/blob/master/meeting-notes/2018-01-notes.md

# Meeting notes — MDN PAB F2F meeting, London Google Office, Jan 10-12

## Attendees

Ali Spivak (Mozilla), Kadir Topal (Mozilla), Chris Mills (Mozilla), Robert Nyman (Google), Meggin Kearney (Google), Dominique Hazael-Massieux (W3C), Erika Doyle Navara (Microsoft), Daniel Appelquist (Samsung), Patrick Kettner (Microsoft).


## Day 1

### Topic: MDN 2017 numbers in review

**ACTION** [Kadir]: For metrics, comparison US vs. Europe as a whole would be helpful

Q: Can we get numbers of % of developer population per country?
A: There really aren’t reliable sources, we generally look at what the big survey companies provide for total developer population, then look at the percentage of Stack Overflow users who identify as web developers (roughly 16-18m estimate)
Could use more, better sources for developer population. If anyone has suggestions we’d love to all use the same metrics (no real answer here)

Q: Does the MDN team know what are the growth opportunities across the globe?
A: We do have data on this we’ve connected for MDN, it’s a sliding scale as far as need of English. Some populations are more comfortable working in English (e.g. Germany, Scandinavian countries, India) than others (France, Spain, China). We do know contributions are proportional to traffic, as a general rule. The way MDN backend is designed there isn’t a robust review system for localization

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Bear in mind that these are only discussions — none of this will become reality before it has first entered into the appropriate discussion and evaluation channels.

We are interested in your thoughts.

Pike · January 22, 2018, 11:46am

@atopal, I’d love to be looped in when you guys discuss localization, in particular when it comes to content on github.

end3r · January 22, 2018, 2:04pm

API card game (include API flashcards/data) - kickstarter to fund. Cute characters for each API. AR stickers.

Would be awesome to be able to create an HTML5 game with those as part of the cross promotion too!

atopal · January 22, 2018, 4:09pm

Thanks for calling that out, Axel. Will definitely involve the L10n team for this conversation.

sheppy · January 22, 2018, 10:12pm

I’m pleased this meeting went so well. For me, it’s gratifying to see how well these groups with their own concepts and plans are able to come together and talk about building a common documentation suite. It’s been my dream for a decade or so, and seeing it starting to happen is really, truly awesome.

Right now, my biggest questions are:

Will the ideas eventually be turned into actionable plans?
What level of direct involvement with creating MDN content and Kuma project code will we wind up seeing from PAB members?
Will the people/organizations who offer to handle a given project actually do it?

Right now, I have high hopes. Enthusiasm is clearly high, and at least some of the ideas seem like they may have some degree of direct engagement involved.

Time will, as always, tell. But it looks good right now.

I’m genuinely giddily excited about this!

Sheppy

chrisdavidmills · January 23, 2018, 7:06am

Here’s some quick answers:

All the ideas brought up in the PAB will eventually be put into the MDN opportunity assessment, and assessed in the normal way. So yes, if they are deemed high priority enough.
We already see some direct involvement in creating code from PAB members — especially around BCD and the like. I think this can only increase. In terms of Kuma features, I think the involvement will be less, but it is certainly possible.
Well, I’d hope so