Just like the last year, we are running a survey this year, to get some objective insights into what our users would like to see in the project. Obviously, the developers in the project deal with individual bug reports and feature requests all the time, but sometimes those day-to-day issues distract you from a bigger picture.

This year, we kept some of the questions the same, so that we can see the trend. But we also discussed what we wanted to ask among ourselves and revised some more.

The tricky thing about being an open-source project is that it's not like some of us can actually decide what we'll be working on — in the end it's up to individual contributors to decide what they want to work on. So I can't make promises, but in a way, that's precisely why we'd like to get these objective, measurable, quantitative feedbacks. It lets us discuss how to solve the problem, instead of spending time discussing what the problem is.

Jenkins User Conference 2012 San Francisco is this weekend!

Based on the experience from the last year, we are going to make a reservation for a dinner after JUC. If you are interested in joining us, please RSVP. We haven't decided where to go, but we'll place a reservation somewhere (and if you know a good place to go, please tell us, too!), so that we won't have to spend 30 minutes on the street looking for a place for a crowd.

Eating is more fun when there are more people. Please join us!

It's the JavaOne season again in San Francisco. This year, there are whopping 6 sessions that discuss Jenkins (including myself, which is the very first session in Monday!) Unfortunately some of them happen in the same time, but I for one am looking forward to seeing the mobile app test talk from Intuit.

CON6256 - Large-Scale Automation with Jenkins (Monday 8:30am, Hilton)

Jenkins is the most adopted open source continuous integration server today, and beyond the automated build and test, it is a platform for launching all kinds of automation tasks. As the use of Jenkins grows inside an organization, people are automating complex activities that need to be choreographed—such as deploying an application, running a load test, cleaning up the environment, and then handing over the build to the operation team. Such orchestration of activities is a very useful building block for continuous delivery, a practice promoted in recent years. This session looks at various patterns and plug-ins that deal with this kind of choreography. It also briefly discusses what’s new in recent versions of Jenkins.

As you may or may not know, the Jenkins project has a bi-weekly IRC meeting where we discuss and decide on things necessary to keep the project running.

Next Sunday, we'll bring this project meeting live to Jenkins User Conference San Francisco.

Since this is an unique opportunity to engage people who don't normally come to these meetings, I'd like to encourage everyone to propose agenda items and add it to the agenda page.

The Wiki page lists all the past meetings, so you can get a sense of what it is like. But this time, we hope to have a good number of users to the meeting, not just project insiders. So if you have things you'd like to get users feedback on, or if you like project insiders to update you on things, please don't hesitate to add them.

I still need to work on the logistics, but the plan is to do a cross-over with IRC --- I'd like to show the IRC client projected in the room, so that people in the room can see the conversation in IRC, and I'd like either real-time transcribing of voice conversations to IRC and/or live broadcasting of the room.

... and be a Jenkins CIA agent too! If you're interested in building an active local Jenkins community, read on to learn how. Really, we can sum it up in one simple step:

1. Just Do It!

Admittedly more detailed guidelines can be useful, so hopefully these steps will give you a roadmap and some ideas:

1. Find an organizer or two. This is probably you. If you can draft a friend, colleague, or random acquaintance or three to help, even better. To enlist additional help in your area, put the word out on the Jenkins Dev email list and on your Twitter account using the hashtag #JenkinsCI.