OSAF is looking for a software developer to participate in the design and implementation of its desktop application, codenamed Chandler. You will have ownership of the design and implementation of complete sections of the application.

OSAF is also seeking a Software Quality Assurance Engineer for the QA and Release team. This job requires working with QA, Release and Development teams to investigate, report and track defects, and expand the test framework and automated test suites.

You can see details for these and other positions we have open on our OSAF Employment page.

Our last summer intern left last week and it’s noticeably quieter around here. Anthony, Arel, Brendan and Olivier, we miss you. We were glad you helped us out this summer.

We did figure out that we can continue to handle a few interns and would love to have interns year-round, not just in the summer. Some schools allow internships in fall or winter but we’re not sure which. So if you’re interested in an internship at OSAF drop a line to jobs@osafoundation.org even if we don’t have a posting up. Let us know what period you’d be interested in and include a resume and references if you have some. Some highlights of an internship here:

• Paid
• Project-oriented — e.g. Olivier developed a set of performance test suites.
• If you don’t have much experience, we might be able to handle that anyway, particularly in QA.
• We do Python, Java and WebUI development work as well as QA and IT (our biggest needs are QA/IT) so there’s opportunities for a range of skills and interests.
• Open source means that your work isn’t lost to you at the end of the internship.
• Cool office, people and location.

OSAF would like to welcome Bobby Rullo, who joins OSAF as Server Developer working on the Cosmo/Scooby project. Bobby comes to OSAF from New York where he has worked for the last eight years developing software in diverse areas such as the apparel, marketing and textile industries.

You can see more information on Bobby and the other OSAF staff on our People page.

I attended the FLOSS Extreme Usability Spring II in San Francisco last week.

In the words of the event organizers Blue Oxen and Aspiration:

“Extreme usability is a methodology that incorporates usability in a highly iterative and agile development process and that partners usability practitioners with programmers and users as co-designers and co-developers.”

Unfortunately, we were unable to take Chandler there as a project, but I had a great time working with the folks from CivicCRM. The event lived up to it’s name and was an extremely intense 3 days of whirlwind usability.

I’ve written up a short-ish report of the what our group accomplished at the sprint and the process we “invented” along the way.

The write-up in turn generated some thoughts as to the nature of usability and design, both in general and in practice. In particular, it got me thinking about how the vague and intangible nature of designing software for human beings is better suited to Extremely Rapid and Extremely Iterative design methods than the Somewhat Rapid and Somewhat Iterative approach that I’m used to.

Personal take on What is Extreme Usability?

Broader implications on What is Usability?

I also realized that while here at OSAF, we are priveleged to have such a close and ongoing working relationship between Development and Design, there are still many lessons to be learned about how to make that relationship even better.

I’m looking forward to trying out some of the techniques we experimented with at the sprint, in-house. Perhaps to iron out some of the existing design issues we have as well as to generate new ideas for areas of the UI that are still murky at best. I’d like to gain a better understanding of where Extreme Usability works very well and where it works, not so well.

Having interns around always reminds me of those times were, as an intern myself, I had to write reports and how bad at it I could be. I had one strike of good luck though in the person of my mentor Georges Bronner who gave me a terrific 15 minutes primer on technical writing I will never forget (and that was 20 years ago folks…).

I won’t say I never sinned again and committed some terrible documents (have mercy…) but this short set of advice always worked wonder whenever I applied them diligently.

Talking about it with Katie, she encouraged me to write them down. So, for everyone’s enjoyment, here is Georges’ Sieve written down at last.

Thanks Georges!

OSAF would like to welcome Matthew Eernisse who joins OSAF as Web Development Engineer working on the Cosmo/Scooby project, developing a web UI to access Chandler information stored on the Cosmo server.

You can see more information on Matthew and the other OSAF staff on our People page.

OSCON 2005 is next week. This year there will be two OSAF related presentations:

Build Your Own Chandler Parcel This is tutorial presentation for people who want to get a head start on building extensions for Chandler.

Implementing CALDAV, a New Standard for Sharing Calendar Information over the Internet This is panel discussion on the CALDAV calendaring standard being developed at the IETF.

In addition we will be participating in a pair of BOF sessions:

Q&A on CalDAV calendar projects from Mozilla, OSAF, Novell (Hula), and RPI

Meet the OSAF Chandler & Cosmo developers

There will be a number of OSAF staff folks at the conference — please don’t be shy!

OSAF is looking for an experienced web application developer to help build a sophisticated internet calendar application. If you are an old pro with tools and frameworks like Struts, Tiles, JSP, Spring, Acegi Security, and Hibernate, and have implemented an internet protocol client from scratch, we want to talk to you.

You can see details for this and other positions we have open on our OSAF Employment page.

OSAF is looking for an experienced web application developer to help build a sophisticated internet calendar application. If you are an old pro with tools and frameworks like Struts, Tiles, JSP, Spring, Acegi Security, and Hibernate, and have implemented an internet protocol client from scratch, we want to talk to you.

You can see details for this and other positions we have open on our OSAF Employment page.

OSAF is looking for a creative Web-savvy designer to contribute a consistent, professional look-and-feel and usable interactions to a WebUI for calendar access and sharing. The role necessarily involves graphic design and HTML/CSS implementation, but also includes scope for growth into product planning and/or project management.

You can see details for this and other positions we have open on our OSAF Employment page.