Issue #3 December 2009 | Opencast Matterhorn Community Newsletter

Our first preview release Matterhorn 0.5 will be available January / early February 2010.  This release will be a modest one, but along with its bugs and limited feature set comes the unique opportunity to follow our progress, assist us with testing, and provide general feedback.  It's important to us that developers, designers, and thought leaders in media and education join us as early as possible to fullfill Matterhorn's potential as an open source alternative to proprietary media service frameworks, interactive media tools, and lecture capture systems.

The 0.5 release will interest

• individuals managing general academic and lecture recordings.
• institutions that would like to get a first insight into Matterhorn with respect to their adoption strategy.

Releasing by Service and/or System

For 0.5, we will release Matterhorn's existing service components as well as its "out of the box" lecture capture system.  For subsequent pre-releases, we will likely have individual releases per service as well as full releases for the lecture capture system.  For instance, we may release a new 0.6 version of a Matterhorn component, such as the encode service, before releasing a new 0.6 version of the "out of the box" lecture capture system. This approach allows us to offer the latest and greatest components without being encumbered by a monolithic system release.  "Release early, release often" is not only a development philosophy within the Matterhorn project, it's an invitation to the Opencast Community to join the expedition towards Matterhorn 1.0 at any given time. Your feedback will help us reach the summit. 

Orgsona: The Institution as Customer

Our UI and feature set will be geared towards our primary "orgsona",  "The Cobbler", introduced in our last newsletter.  This means that institutions with fairly simple needs and limited or no existing lecture capture systems should consider Matterhorn a complete product.  Developers hoping for more flexiblity and customization will find promise "under the hood", since the service oriented nature of Matterhorn is inheritently flexible.  Nevertheless, we will do our best in future releases to make Matterhorn even more flexible and customizable to satisfy the needs of our secondary orgsona, "The Sophisticate". 

Documentation Draft

Our developers are drafting documentation, so that the community can:

• install and configure Matterhorn's lecture capture system and/or
• develop against its services.

We emphasize "draft" because this documentation will be neither perfect nor complete.  Although we're working hard to provide "good enough" documentation, we will look to the community to let us know when things don't make sense - and hopefully make an effort at upgrading the documentation beyond the draft status.  Only with your input will Matterhorn become more usable for developers and sys admins overall. 

Adoption Strategy

As a funded open source project with community source ambitions,  Mattherhorn needs individuals and institutions to establish a self-supporting help network.  We will do our best to allocate limited resources for support, but a broader support model is the only path to long term sustainability.   The less time the core Matterhorn team spends supporting early releases, the more time they can focus on development of new features and addressing feedback received from individual and institutional testers. 

One strategy for a self-sustaining support model is the establishment of Matterhorn base camps.  These camps will be offered by the community and provide a foundation for inexpensive testing opportunities and regional or national community support.  Thus far two base camps will be established from funded Matterorn project partners, one on each side of the Atlantic, as well as two other base camps supported by enthusiasts from the Opencast Community.  This number may increase before the release of 0.5 and will likely grow as we approach 1.0. 

Software Distributions

VMware Image

A VMware image running ubuntu will be available with the Matterhorn system pre-installed and configured.  Install scripts for GPL licensed components will be part of the VM startup procedure to avoid any legal issues.  This distribution will run on any Linux and Windows platforms using free software called VMware player.  VM fusion for OSX will also play vm images, but this software is not free.  This VMware image is relevant to the "novice" and "intermediate" climber (see classifications), and it should be an easy installation for configurers or general users with moderate technical skill.  If someone wants to get Matterhorn up and running fast, this is the distribution for them.  For institutions without hardware or technical resources, base camps will offer a limited number of Matterhorn virtual machines for free .

Build and Install

A source archive of 0.5 will be available for download.  System administrators and developers will be able to follow instructions in the wiki to build and install this distribution locally. This software is relevant to the "intermediate" to "advanced" climber and users will need some knowledge of mvn, svn, and possibly java.

Capture Install

An installation script for 0.5 will be available for download. System administrators and developers will be able to follow instructions in the wiki to build and install this distribution locally. This software is relevant to the "intermediate" to "advanced" climber and users will need some knowledge of mvn, svn, and possibly java. This installation script will only work for Matterhorn specified capture devices.

Matterhorn Capture Appliance

We do not intend to sell this device, but Matterhorn will provide inexpensive hardware specifications for those interested in building their own Matterhorn capture appliance. Beyond purchasing the hardware components, it's free. No licensing costs. No maintenance fee. Nothing. And at approximately $1000(USD) for an appliance that captures vga, video (H264/MPEG2), and audio, it's a steal!  

A "dummy capture agent" will be available out of the box for institutions interested in testing automatic capture, but uninterested in building a Matterhorn capture appliance on their own.  Additionally, a remote capture appliance will be available for institutions interested in testing a real Matterhorn capture appliance.

We've identified potential roles you may play as you engage with the Opencast community and contribute to Matterhorn.  Which will role best fits you?

Novice Climber

An individual or institution that casually checks out Matterhorn to better understand its features or technologies.  They compare its features with other commercial products and do some form of competetive analysis.  Some demo an existing online version or run it OOTB.  A developer may read the documentation and install it on their laptop to poke around.  In terms of the "community", they generally lurk on lists and occasionally respond to threads.

For 0.5, this group is mainly interested in learning more about Matterhorn by reading high level documentation and looking at a current online demo.  They're not interested in spending resources on Matterhorn, and are just in a preliminary exploration stage.  For 1.0, they may run a small (one class) pilot at their campus or dedicate more resources to determine total cost of adoption. 

Intermediate Climber

An institution/organization that has designated limited resources to install, test, and pilot Matterhorn.  These individuals or institutions have a strong desire to participate in Matterhorn and will likely post questions to the list when they're in need of an answer.  They will depend on documentation when troubleshooting, and they're fairly self sufficient.  This group may already have a basic existing system and/or an established podcast program. The intermediate climber most aligns with the Cobbler orgsona.

For 0.5, this group is interested in testing Matterhorn locally or using a "basecamp" to run a small testing environment.  They will enter feature requests in Jira through Community Feature Requests and bugs if they find any problems. For 1.0, they'll run Matterhorn OOTB for a pilot involving a few classrooms in the Fall.  They anticipate Matterhorn will be a long term solution.  If they're migrating from an existing system, their migration path should be simpler due to the lack of infrastructure and simplicity of their existing system.  They may make minor modifications to Matterhorn through configurations or modifications to the UI. 

Advanced Climber

An institution/organization/individual that is heavily involved in the day to day activities of the community.  They follow and respond to the list frequently, and they log into irc and engage in "low level" activities.  They're willing to get their hands dirty to make things work, and will submit patches to Matterhorn for their local needs.  They may contribute to documentation or initiate conversations on list.  They're comfortable within Matterhorn's wiki, issue, repository, and integration environments.  They have their finger on the pulse of Matterhorn and they see themselves as a contributing to its health.  This group may already have an advanced system and/or the capacity to do a big rollout. The advanced climber most aligns with the Sophisticate orgsona.

For 0.5, this group will provide substantial testing and may push Matterhorn beyond its capabilities.  They will explore it in as detailed a manner as possible to understand integration costs and the total cost of adoption.

For 1.0. this group will integrate Matterhorn with their campus systems, and run a pilot in a few classrooms.  This group may alternatively adopt specific services from Matterhorn and integrate them into their existing system.  They may not migrate to Matterhorn until there is more parity with their existing system. 

Master Climber

This group contributes significant resources to the Matterhorn effort, and are likely committers and/or thought leaders on the project.  They are heavily invested in the long term success of Matterhorn.