[Koha] Summary of Global Signoff Day 2011-06-15 - more to come?

[Magnus Enger]

Dear Community!

* GSOD #1

Our very first Global Signoff Day (GSOD) was held on 2011-06-15.

During the 48 hours that make up a day in all available time zones, we
reduced the number of bugs that had status "Needs signoff" from about
76 to about 45. (There were some bugs that got the "Needs Signoff"
status during the day, which complicates counting somewhat...)

You can see a more or less complete list of what bugs were changed here:
http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Global_sign_off_day,_2011-06-15

See the bottom of this page for some more numbers, and keep in mind
that the dates there are relative to UTC:
http://bugs.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/progress.pl

As far as I can tell we were about 6 people signing off on things
during GSOD #1, which is not an astronomical figure, but i still think
we made some good inroads into the queue. (A number of the remaining
bugs are actually ones that depend on other bugs that have failed QA,
so they are not really available for signing off.) Imagine what we
could have done if there were more of us... ;-)

* GSOD #2

BibLibre have said all their staff will dedicate half a day every two
weeks to signing off on bugs and similar tasks (woohoo!). I would like
to propose another GSOD to coincide with their first such day, which
is scheduled for 2011-07-08. Motto: "The more, the merrier"!

Some questions spring to mind:

- How can we get more people involved?
- Should the name of the "event" reflect that other activities (such
as closing bugs) are encouraged too?
- How can we make it even more fun?
-- Better/other lists and visualisations?
-- Could we have the huginn bot on IRC annonunce new signoffs, the
same way it does "needs signoff"s?
-- Could we use some kind of VoIP/videoconferencing tools to make the
social interactions seem more um... "real"?

Or is GSOD a really bad idea, would it be better to channel our energy
into making signoffs (and similar activities) look more like an
ongoing task, and less something you only have to think about once a
month?

Best regards,
Magnus Enger