Technologies:

The Workshop uses a wide array of technologies and innovative tools from the world of free and open-code software such as:

Jquery, Coffee Script, gtw and django for website development infrastructure, and display tools like Sencha Touch, bootstrap and jquery mobile for cellphone applications. Other preferred tools are git for decentralized configuration/form control, postgresql for rational data bases and mongodb for non-rational data bases, nginx servers, and mechanize for scraping data from unfriendly sources.

The technologies for each project are selected by the project leader and the software development team. It’s a creative process that balances between curiosity to try cutting-edge innovations, tools that have the best fit for the job, and technological considerations of the other projects.

The development process:

We’ve gained quite a bit of experience at the Workshop. Our development process is rapid and is adjusted to volunteer-run projects – rather than spending time writing lengthy specification documents we interact and cooperate closely with the user community.

Every project has an “owner” who lead the development and is responsible for its progress, for code control and for training new developers. Every developer takes responsibility for the project domains they are most interested in. We meet once a week for a shared development session (and to drink beer) and once every few months we hold a weekend Hackathon. In between these meetings, we consult and correspond via forums and distributions lists.