Update on the Bug Squad

One month on..

It is a month(ish) already since we started the Bug Squad (call to join the team through the Symbian Developer Forums).  I am pretty pleased with the participation so far and also with how much the Symbian team is learning from this programme.

I think the participation numbers tell an insightful story: The forum entry received 1,087 reads and we twittered our mailing list link to +1K followers. This resulted in 45 people subscribed to the mailing list (including about 5 symbian staff) .  Since then , 7 squad members have scored points for contributing to the bug squad efforts.

My conclusion here is that  to match your initiative with an active contributor you need to reach 100 interested and relevant people from the community. This is a match-making exercise, as different people will be interested in participating in different initiatives (or not) for different reasons. We used already established channels to reach our community, otherwise I guess that the ratio would have been more like 1000:1

Clearly, it helps if you have inside knowledge. Hence, initiatives like Wild Ducks have proven how much more efficient is to use informal networks to find people with the common itches to scratch.

Leo the Yellow Gecko

To provide recognition and track participation of squad members we created a kudos system that awards points (Gold Coins) to participants based on their activity. There were good reasons to choose “Gold Coins” as our currency. First they are not too formal or lofty, second “Gold” has an international association with “value”. So there you are… not just a random decision.

Squad members progress through different experience levels (not unlike a RPG). Each member starts as a “White Gecko Level”,  reaching the “Yellow Gecko” Level with 9 gold coins and “Black Gecko” with 81 coins.

Leo Zheng is the first member to reach the “Yellow Gecko” level, and others a very close to join him. We would like to see at least five members reach this stage by the end of June!

Gold Awards so Far..

And here are the 39 gold coins:

Week11
Tyson Key- 1 Gold coin for raising bug 2238 (we are looking for someone to help finding the cause of this error)
Juha Ristolainen – 1 Gold coin for adding log files to bug 1486 that lead to pinpointing where the error is occurring. (Anyone fancies
trying to fix this one?)

Week12
Bug 1972 : Juha Ristolainen* was provided 3 Gold coins for providing a patch for this bug. The additional good news is that, the patch has
already been verified and accepted by the Package owner. This is the
first bug fix by a member of this community and will soon make it into
the Symbian code base.
Bug 2238 :* 1 Gold coin for *Dejan Benedik* for provided the log files for this bug.
Bug 2316: Tyson Key gets 1 Gold coin for identifying this bug and reporting it in the Bug tracker.
Bugs 1751 : Leo Zheng gets 3 Gold coins for providing a patch for this bug.
Bug 2295: This bug was triaged by *Richard Gunn* and *Dejan Benedik* and both get a Gold coin each for their efforts.

Week13
Members who take an active part in a Test Day get 1 Gold coin each, so Martin J, Richard Gunn, Irfan, Dejan and Tyson Key all get a gold coin.
Enhancements: Irfan contributed a very detailed document on possible usability enhancements (2 Gold Coins).
Bug 1692: Leo confirmed this bug was no longer valid and the bug is now marked ‘Resolved-Invalid’ (1 Gold coin).
Bug 1705: Leo provided a fix for this defect and the patch has already been reviewed and accepted by the PkO (3 Gold coins).
Bug 1726: Leo provided a fix for this defect and the patch has already been reviewed and accepted by the PkO (3 Gold coins).
Bug 1838: Tyson managed to replicate this bug and also provided additional logs (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2409: Richard Gunn identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin) and Tyson provided additional logs (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2410: Richard Gunn identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2416: Dejan identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2417: Dejan identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2427: Irfan identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin).
Bug 2428: Irfan identified and filed this bug (1 Gold coin).