4/9/2008 Cobalt conference call notes

the agenda for this meeting is here:

http://groups.google.com/group/cobaltcroquet/web/conference-call- 
agenda---2008-04-9

in attendance:

Craig Latta
Peter Moore
John Dugan
Darius Clarke
Michael Kline
Julian Lombardi
Mark McCahill



topics discussed

1.) Call goals

Act as forum for quick communication/discussion of cobalt - an open  
forum for community - try to foster faster development of cobalt to  
get it to a the point where it is easier to use in K12 schools -  
decide who will do what/assign responsibilities


2.) What technology should we use for the calls?

We will try adobe connect next week, and skype the week after with  
the telephone conference bridge as a safety net/fallback. Longer term  
we want to use Cobalt to host the calls.


3.) Cobalt defined

an application for metaverse creation

4.) Community-based open source development process

We have a mantis bug tracker and a monticello source code repository  
here:

http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu/cobalt.html

Contributions of new features, bug fixes, graphics, etc, need to be  
tracked in mantis (so that we don't lose them) and so that the  
maintainers have one central place to find addition to the  
application. So - to get code or content added to cobalt: report an  
issue in mantis (note that mantis allows for file uploads). The  
contributions area of monticello allows for uploads contributing  
changesets. Please reference the monticello contribution in the  
mantis bug tracker so that we can tie these together.


5.) For discussion/wiki we need something - several options were  
proposed and Darius will research this and report back next week.


6.) frequency of these calls will be weekly for the time being


7.) What are the feature priorities in Cobalt? What do we need to  
polish/fix first?

  - make it easy to interconnect spaces and instance stored space  
templates
  - NAT and firewall traversal
  - working IM/chat
  - avatars
  - authentication/assertion of identity
  - XML-based scene description/persistence  [peter moore/john dougan]
  - rendering improvements [peter moore/john dougan]
  - NPCs
  - scripting


8.) topics for next time:

task assignment
forum for discussion/wiki
review the tutorials - if need to review them
how can we let others know we need help?