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Official Announcement: I'm Gonna Go For It

I feel that my weblog is probably the best place to make an announcement like this (more people probably read this than anything else I write) so, with that, I'd like to announce that I have decided to make the leap into building a developer community learning website. I haven't even settled on a name yet, but I have a few ideas.

Why am I announcing this right now? Why so early? (I haven't even registered the domain yet.)

Because I believe in word of mouth marketing and promotion. But, that's not all. I also believe that in order for this venture to be successful (according to me) I will need to gather input from the people I'm going to be building it for. Developers.

You might be thinking I'm just trying to build YADCW (Yet-Another-Developer-Community-Website) like CodeProject, DeveloperFusion, VBCity, or ASPAlliance, et al. Well, not exactly. It's going to be different. In fact, I don't think anyone has done a site for developers like this before. That's one of the main reasons why I'm even going ahead with making something of the idea. I think it's original. Unique. And, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

What I'm going to build is something that will allow you to learn development technologies from start to finish. Come with an empty cup and leave with it overflowing. If you have no clue how HTML works, I want you to be able to come to this site and start with who Tim Berners-Lee is, and be able to follow it through to CSS, XHTML and JavaScript if you choose. I want the topics covered in as much depth as you'd get from taking a semester long university course on the subjects. Hello World examples of technologies will not be found here. I don't want someone leaving with holes in their knowledge because the content wasn't thorough.

I am also going to try and develop the content such that it will cater to different styles of learning. If you're not someone that learns well from reading an article or book, we'll have animated flash tutorials for you to watch also. Probably some video content mixed in as well. I hope to be able to explain things in a way that makes the complex topics as easy to understand as possible. I think I have talent in this area.

I know there are a lot of great developer learning websites out there. There are a lot of great books on the shelves too. There are a lot of great trainers, college professors, and speakers too. One thing that I have always felt is lacking though, is effective organization and delivery of all this great information in a way that's really easy to understand. For anyone. That's where I hope to be able to change things.

So what kind of topics do I plan to cover? As crazy is this is going to sound,.... everything. Anything less and I don't think I would be living up to the idea of it. As far as the format goes, I am thinking of organizing things much like a university does - into the following structure (so far..this might change):

  1. Departments: (highest level) - Programming Languages, Internet Development, Database Technologies, XML Development, etc.
  2. Courses: (under Departments - Programming Languages for example) - C, C++, C#, Visual Basic, Perl, Java, Python, etc.
  3. Levels (under Courses - Visual Basic for example) Visual Basic Level 1  through Level (n)...
  4. Lessons (under Levels) - the number of lessons per Level will vary greatly I presume depending on the breadth of information there is to cover.

There's lot of enthusiasm in me at this point and I hope to be able to maintain it and see the site through to completion and growth. If you have any comments or ideas, no matter what they may be, please send them along. I know I won't be able to please everyone, but I'd like to try. Hey, I'm only 23. I've got a lot of years ahead of me.

Posted: Apr 21 2004, 09:44 PM by jamauss | with 15 comment(s)
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Comments

Stefano Demiliani said:

A good idea but not too simple to maintain I think... a big work. Good luck! It's interesting...
# April 22, 2004 4:29 AM

Wim said:

Jason,

Interesting idea. I think you do need to scope it more. How realistic is it to want to cover everything?

Don't forget that a decent amount of good quality content covering a limited set of topics is better than a huge amount of low quality content covering too many topics.

Which brings me to another point - content. The site you have in mind will only be successful with good content. How are you going to get this, and also - how do you think you can keep growing this with so many topics to cover?

Lastly, you need to make sure that on launch, you already have decent content up on the site, otherwise people will check it out and not come back.

My couple of cents,
Wim
# April 22, 2004 6:13 AM

Datagrid Girl said:

Wow, are you going to develop all of the content yourself?

Just curious :)
Marcie
# April 22, 2004 10:26 AM

Jeff said:

What you're suggesting is a good idea, but it's also a herculean task. It has also been done before on other sites, just not organized well.

I launched http://www.uberasp.net a couple of months ago and as soon as I got knee deep in a paying project, my updating of it stopped. I feel like I've got something out there now that's just another URL of neglected junk.

Not saying you'll have the same problem, but sites like these are content intensive and not easy to keep up.
# April 22, 2004 10:29 AM

Chrisg said:

Good luck, some ideas for you
- get volunteers to provide the content - with the best will in the world steve doesnt write *all* the articles on aspalliance ;O)
- make it easy to manage and update, you want to put most of your energy into building content and community not editing html and fixing problems
- see if you can get an ISP/hoster on board - if it is successful your bandwidth requirement will be huge
- what about starting with one topic then growing to cover everything, ambition is great but you dont want to get disheartened by the magnitude of it
- to make it worth your while you need content, visitors, and reward. I am guessing your reward will be ads as well as praise (<g>) so consider what people are looking for, make your site search engine friendly and think about talking to steve about the aspalliance ad network

Slightly controversial point: If you have this much energy you could always write some of what you described for an existing site then when you have enough content take it with you? Speak to the site owners, might save you a lot of hassle ..

Chris
# April 22, 2004 11:51 AM

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# June 16, 2004 1:18 AM

Damien Guard said:

If the content is going to be written by volunteers I assume you'll be putting it all under some form of open licence?
# June 16, 2004 5:02 AM

Jason Mauss said:

Damien - that's a good question. I'd like for DevCampus to retain (and possibly share with the author?) a copyright on the lesson material/content - I'd like for the authors to be able to publish the content they write anywhere they please, since one of the advantages I think DevCampus would hold is that of all of the information would be centralized in one spot. It's something I still need to give some thought to though. Thanks for the question.
# June 16, 2004 2:44 PM
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