(posting here as this is relevant to more than just the ATgeo WG, and I’d love broader feedback)
** tl;dr: do you have any thoughts/wisdom to share on best practices to collect practical, useful feedback from developers to help inform (Geo) Lexicons?**
More context:
During the ATgeo official kickoff meeting on Friday, we agreeed the WG’s output should be above all useful to those building practical ATproto applications. Of course, this means reaching out to developers who’re building or are thinking of building these apps, whether they’re simply adding geo info to records, or building complex use case like events and RSVPs.
Some questions to get the discussion rolling:
What’s the best format to reach out to these developers and collect practical applications?
We’re thinking of putting together a form, any wisdom or thought about what it should include?
Would something more informal like a simple social media post be better, or is the structured format better, even if more cumbersome?
Any level of experience with this type of requirements collection is welcome! Even if you’re a developer (or otherwise) who’s never had to do this themselves, I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you’ve seen people doing it wrong, doubly so!
I really feel strongly that we need to just get people in here.
Message with a consistent atgeo hashtag, bring people here, and support developers who are actively building.
Once we have the marker app up, we can use THAT as a joint learning project, but we should be putting efforts into supporting and understanding devs who are already on the path to building apps in which users can put geo lexicons.
I don’t think a form is the right move – get people used to coming back here, having questions answered, learning how to solve them together, etc.
Hello! I’m a people with a desire to represent locations within an ATProto app! Can I help?
Given that my app already exists in a (functional prototype, non-ATProto) centralised fashion, would it be useful for me to write up a bit about what I’d want to do with locations and why, so the community can use it as a test case?
Ooh I’ve also been digging into this – I run (ran) @watchedsky.social before I had to deal with a cascade of issues and I’m totally revamping it to be less tied to Bluesky directly and more tied to AT Protocol – I’m going to be building an AppView to handle CAP-style weather alerts and I’m debating on whether to include Geo lexicons or just keep them in a SpatiaLite DB. I’d be very interested in learning more.