I don't have regular office hours. I start work anywhere from 12-1pm and stop anywhere from midnight-5am. Sometimes I take days off. Sometimes I'm too busy to answer the phone. My schedule for something like this is pretty much unpredictable.
Proposal: rather than specifying hours, just let me specify here / gone like a regular IM client. If it looks like it's going to be a slow day, I'll turn on the tap, and if things pick up I'll turn it off.
I can understand your situation, but I like their proposed approach (if I understand it correctly). A lot of people like to make appointments in order to be able to plan their time. During YC, you can schedule a 20 minute block of time with PG where he talks to you one on one. A lot of people find it to be useful, and I think it would be great to have something similar for HNers.
Some people like to be able to say "I have 20 minutes from 11:00-11:20 scheduled to talk to this person on this date about my project". Personally, I've always felt that scheduled appointments feel more "serious" than IM conversations. If I've made a commitment to talk with you for 20 minutes, you're much more likely to get my undivided attention during that time. Plus I can prepare for our conversation. If I can't make it, I'll just reschedule.
so actually i imagined it as being available to people who wanted to do 1-off office hours, "I will be available tomorrow from 5-7 CST."
theli0nhearted and i had a short discussion on IRC where I think we've concluded that it makes sense to have a "Currently available/unavailable" flag anyways even for people who do have regular office hours, so I think you'll be pleased with the plan.
Basically even if I have office hours, I need to be able to mark that I'm currently occupied with someone, so I'll turn off my "available" indicator.
That could work for you as well. Basically you're usually just unavailable. If you feel like talking you can be available.
Is there some way to scrape that IM client status from iChat, skype, gchat, facebook, or whatever else? People could configure that in their contact information/profile. The master switch would be on this site though.
Have you guys seen Aardvark? Aardvark sends questions to friends and friends-of-friends via IM and/or email. If HN readers all linked together as friends or friends-of-friends, then your questions would be routed to the appropriate people based on interests. And if no HN people are available to answer your questions, they get routed off to the rest of the Aardvark network.
Even if people don't like this idea, it wouldn't hurt to look at how their UI and features are set up, since they're one of the pioneers in doing exactly the same kind of thing the "HN Office Hours" app is trying to do.
You can link to me here: http://vark.com/s/UR0C -- everyone who links to me will be a friend-of-a-friend and will be auto-networked by Aardvark, assuming they all use an IM program compatible with Google Chat or Yahoo IM. Or if someone else wants to volunteer to be the "hub" of HN users, feel free to post your link here.
But then you have to deal with the annoyance that is aardvark. I turned that stuff off when I got five questions in a row that literally were first page google results.
IRC room with a site mapping persons profile to their nick would be less bothersome, however then you have the distraction of yet another conversation in the background....
Please see if you can combine something with http://hnhackers.com/ and/or http://www.hackernewsers.com/ It would be a shame if a third site comes along that does something related (even slightly) without working together!
I am so amazed by how frequently people come up with the same idea. I have been thinking about making an office hour app 7-8 months ago and been talking to everyone I know for feedbacks. Fail on me for not being able to execute it sooner. Good job for taking the initiative, guys.
sometimes it just takes someone to get the ball rolling. we'd honestly really rather have this be "everyone's project" instead of "our project". Please contribute. This is ideally going to be a very open process with lots of people committing code and ideas.
It would be a waste to ignore whatever ideas you came up with in 7-8 months of thinking about the app.
hey guys, ezl from pybrew here. So we're basically a python shop, but we'd really love input/collaboration from anyone.
The primary reason we're trying to approach this as a group project is we think it'll be fun to collaborate with new people; so even if you're not a Django guy, please feel free to contribute. We definitely need people with design savvy, UI advice, people who just click around the site and look for broken things, etc.
Don't feel like you have to stay the whole weekend or anything. Hop in and say hello. Any advice/suggestions are welcome.
It may be that many of us have google voice accounts, and I believe there is an easy way to embed a "call me" widget. (Just letting you know since I didn't see it in the list on the front page)
Are you guys only looking for local help? I am in India and would love to chip in but this weekend isn't the best time. Can't this be an ongoing, online thing. We can all chip in and host it too - a community developed/run/managed app?
I believe this is great. I have one comment (really one wish) to make. It would be absolutely fantastic to see some screencasts of HNers in action. In particular, how you get the skeleton of a project up and running. I, for one, would pay for content like this.
By the way, I haven’t tried PeepCode. Do you guys recommend it? Again, along the lines of getting things started. I look, for instance, at the App Engine documentation and (even though they offer a launcher) I wonder how professionals give the first brush strokes in less than several hours. How can I avoid constantly going back to the documentation?
This is part of a larger set of community features that I've been working on for a couple of weeks and will be deployed soon. It looks like we've had the same idea
it is editable by anyone with a github account. if you have any ideas, please feel free to contribute (leave your HN username as well with your ideas so we can contact you if there are questions)
Neat. I might start up my office hours again. For anyone thinking of starting their own, it's totally worthwhile. I wrote about mine a couple of years ago:
1) I hope the final product will be OSS
2) To keep spammers out, we could enable a karma threshold parameter.
3) As about UI, I've always been looking for an excuse to look into SproutCore ('course, this is free) or Atlas (which does cost).
UI Design / Adobe CS guy here. Email is in my profile if you want specific design help. Got a fairly busy weekend but I've got 3-4 hours to contribute.
I'm into using CSS3 (w/ fallback styles) in production so that would be cool.
I was working on a similar idea "Flash Mob: Help a Startup Out", but the specifics were to have a live chat at a given time, and have everyone (available and willing) throw their 2cents in.
It might be a good idea to have some restriction on users so that the service is not overwhelmed (a yahoo answers-type situation might not work out well).
i'll be around this weekend, would love to help out. not much of a python guy but pretty well versed in MVC and can prob contribute on the design /js end of things as well
[+] [-] drewcrawford|15 years ago|reply
Proposal: rather than specifying hours, just let me specify here / gone like a regular IM client. If it looks like it's going to be a slow day, I'll turn on the tap, and if things pick up I'll turn it off.
[+] [-] hooande|15 years ago|reply
Some people like to be able to say "I have 20 minutes from 11:00-11:20 scheduled to talk to this person on this date about my project". Personally, I've always felt that scheduled appointments feel more "serious" than IM conversations. If I've made a commitment to talk with you for 20 minutes, you're much more likely to get my undivided attention during that time. Plus I can prepare for our conversation. If I can't make it, I'll just reschedule.
[+] [-] rguzman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
so actually i imagined it as being available to people who wanted to do 1-off office hours, "I will be available tomorrow from 5-7 CST."
theli0nhearted and i had a short discussion on IRC where I think we've concluded that it makes sense to have a "Currently available/unavailable" flag anyways even for people who do have regular office hours, so I think you'll be pleased with the plan.
Basically even if I have office hours, I need to be able to mark that I'm currently occupied with someone, so I'll turn off my "available" indicator.
That could work for you as well. Basically you're usually just unavailable. If you feel like talking you can be available.
[+] [-] gkelly|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SomeCallMeTim|15 years ago|reply
Even if people don't like this idea, it wouldn't hurt to look at how their UI and features are set up, since they're one of the pioneers in doing exactly the same kind of thing the "HN Office Hours" app is trying to do.
You can link to me here: http://vark.com/s/UR0C -- everyone who links to me will be a friend-of-a-friend and will be auto-networked by Aardvark, assuming they all use an IM program compatible with Google Chat or Yahoo IM. Or if someone else wants to volunteer to be the "hub" of HN users, feel free to post your link here.
Just a thought. :)
[+] [-] cullenking|15 years ago|reply
IRC room with a site mapping persons profile to their nick would be less bothersome, however then you have the distraction of yet another conversation in the background....
[+] [-] user24|15 years ago|reply
Here's another thread inspired by kentf's submission; http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198 and there's a collection of google docs here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1517198, you might want to build your database around the type of infomation people want to share.
Also, minor proofreading thing on the homepage: "want to build a site to those facilitate interactions"
I'm not a django guy otherwise I'd be offering to dive in.
I can offer space and bandwidth on my dreamhost "unlimited" shared hosting plan.
And I love beta-testing things!
(note to HNers, please save the discussion about what "unlimited" really means for another time.)
edit: another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516015
[+] [-] rguzman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilian|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rguzman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxwin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
It would be a waste to ignore whatever ideas you came up with in 7-8 months of thinking about the app.
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
The primary reason we're trying to approach this as a group project is we think it'll be fun to collaborate with new people; so even if you're not a Django guy, please feel free to contribute. We definitely need people with design savvy, UI advice, people who just click around the site and look for broken things, etc.
Don't feel like you have to stay the whole weekend or anything. Hop in and say hello. Any advice/suggestions are welcome.
[+] [-] DTrejo|15 years ago|reply
http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
[+] [-] kashif|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim_dot|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahmud|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ez77|15 years ago|reply
By the way, I haven’t tried PeepCode. Do you guys recommend it? Again, along the lines of getting things started. I look, for instance, at the App Engine documentation and (even though they offer a launcher) I wonder how professionals give the first brush strokes in less than several hours. How can I avoid constantly going back to the documentation?
Thank you, and sorry for the ramble!
[+] [-] duck|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phpnode|15 years ago|reply
This is part of a larger set of community features that I've been working on for a couple of weeks and will be deployed soon. It looks like we've had the same idea
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
it is editable by anyone with a github account. if you have any ideas, please feel free to contribute (leave your HN username as well with your ideas so we can contact you if there are questions)
[+] [-] wooster|15 years ago|reply
http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2008/10/30/office-hours
[+] [-] samratjp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
It absolutely will.
[+] [-] proexploit|15 years ago|reply
I'm into using CSS3 (w/ fallback styles) in production so that would be cool.
[+] [-] alain94040|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartror|15 years ago|reply
I was planning on spending the weekend holed up coding Django anyway so I will put my hand up to own a feature!
[+] [-] ezl|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] companionsphere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rguzman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sukotto|15 years ago|reply
Are there any existing wave-alikes (FOSS maybe?) to leverage?
[+] [-] foxtrot|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevelosh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kadabra9|15 years ago|reply