Forming Our Group

This week our group decided on a project. We decided to communicate through an Instagram group chat and set a regular meeting time on Wednesdays from 8–9 PM. Our first meeting was held in person on March 4.

During this meeting we mainly focused on getting organized and making sure everyone was on the same page about expectations. One of the first things we completed was our group working agreement, which outlines how we plan to communicate, collaborate, and keep each other accountable throughout the semester. Having this agreement early on helped make the project feel more structured and less chaotic.

Deciding on a Project

Before the meeting, everyone looked through a few possible open source projects so that we could come prepared with ideas. During the discussion, we compared different options and thought about things like how active the repository was, whether the documentation looked approachable, and whether we could realistically make contributions within the time we have for the class. We have considered Itch.io and even applications like Godot Engine.

After discussing several possibilities, our group decided to work on AFFiNE, an open source productivity and knowledge management tool. The project seemed interesting because it combines elements of document editing, organization, and collaboration, which makes it somewhat similar to tools like Notion. It also has an active repository and clear documentation, which makes it a good candidate for beginners trying to make their first contributions. Though, we probably would need to use it first to understand how the entire application works.

As a group, our biggest accomplishment this week was setting up the basic structure for collaboration and deciding on our project.

Next Steps

So far we haven’t hit any major blockers yet, but we expect that the biggest challenge will likely be the development environment setup and understanding the structure of the project’s codebase. And good news, we have already setup that environment.

Our short-term plan is to start small. Over the next week we plan to explore the application itself, read through the documentation, and identify smaller beginner-friendly issues that we might be able to contribute to.