Porque cobramos por media hora?

Para las empresas que recién se lanzan en temas de sopoprte en el mundo del software, y para nuestros clientes que quizás se preguntan porqué cobramos un mínimo de media hora por intervención, me gustaría explicar un poco mejor lo que hacemos.

Nuestro negocio, básicamente, es desarrollar sistemas de información (en particular Chamilo, Drupal y Dolibarr) y dar soporte sobre ellos (esto incluye también cuidar los servidores que los alojan). Toda esta actividad radica en los servicios “humanos” de personas altamente calificadas para brindar estos servicios a quien los necesiten.

Para definirlo de forma simplística, alquilamos actividad cerebral, es decir que damos acceso a nuestros clientes a mentes brillantes para que resuelvan problemas para ellos, y les permitimos alquilar estas mentes brillantes solo cuando las necesiten.

Por lo tanto, también estamos tomando una gran cantidad de riesgo al poner estas mentes brillantes a su disposición (si nadie las quiere por un tiempo, tenemos que seguir asgurando sus ingresos).

También pueden haber cantidades de discusiones sobre la manera en la cual un cierto problema es considerado resuelto o no, pues los problemas de software muchas veces se indican de forma interpretada, dando las impresiones personales de cada uno porque cada uno tiene circonstancias particulares y vive sus problemas de maneras distintas. Mucho de este trabajo no puede ser contabilizado sin generar frustraciones. Por lo tanto, el trabajo de nuestros responsables de soporte, responsables del diálogo con los clientes y de ser más explícitos para facilitar este diálogo, está contabilizado como parte del tiempo de resolución del problema.

Analizando el tiempo necesario para un ingeniero para resolver un problema, aparecen de forma más clara las razones por las cuales se considera un tiempo mínimo de atención. Estos son tiempos mínimos aproximados basados en la realidad de la mayoría de los casos que atendemos. Se considera (en este caso) que la ficha del cliente, indicando los accesos comunes al sistema del cliente ya fueron registrados:

• 60s: Lectura del correo/mensaje del cliente
• 240s: Registro de la incidencia (incluye: clasificación, designación de título claro que permitirá luego apoyarse en esta incidencia para cortar el tiempo de tratamiento de otras, indicación copiado-pegado del detalle del reporte por el cliente, asignación de las personas que deben estar al tanto de esta incidencia, asignación de un tiempo aproximado de resolución, asignación de un momento aproximado de entrega, definición de dependencias con otras incidencias, etc)
• 60s: Conexión al sistema del cliente (o a una copia local) y reproducción del problema
• 60s: Creación de nuevo contexto de prueba que permita reproducir la incidencia en un sistema que no afecte al cliente (para el tiempo de trabajo en este)
• 300s: Investigación y, quizás, resolución del problema (se trata de un tiempo mínimo, en caso de poder aprovechar a su máximo la experiencia de nuestros ingenieros, pero no son raros los casos en los cuales esta resolución pueda tomar más de 2h)
• 120s: Verificar, una última vez, que la corrección resolvió el problema
• 60s: Registrar el cambio en nuestros repositorios de historial para cada cliente – esto implica también vincularlo con el código de la incidencia y darle un comentario adecuado
• 180s: Reportar al cliente (y en la incidencia) sobre la resolución (o no) de la incidencia
• 120s: Terminar, reportar su tiempo consumido, tomar 1 minuto de relajación para pasar a otra tarea

En total, el tratamiento de una sola incidencia representa un trabajo mínimo de 20 minutos, y en promedio (con la resolución de temas más complejos) más de media hora.

Por esta razón, nos es imposible asegurar, en buenas condiciones de seriedad y concentración, asegurar un tiempo de intervención menor a 20 minutos.

Important meetings

Sometimes I like to treat this blog as a personal one and write down things that might affect in fundamental ways our future… or at least my own future, potentially.

Anyway, I’m currently living in Peru and had a series of meeting over the last two months with the new Electronical Government Office (ONGEI). Can’t say much for now (don’t want to spoil it) but I was in a meeting with the Prime Minister who seemed to agree with my proposal (in the big lines) and told me “you’re not Peruvian, are you?” in a kind of funny way (I managed to get the Peruvian accent so much that my Spanish friends make fun of me now). I’d also like to think I’ve been able to bend a little the shape of the future of the One Laptop Per Child project in Peru (on the side of Good) through my contact with the office’s director, but that was mostly a side-effect of what I hope is coming.

On Tuesday this week, I met with MySQL and MariaDB’s founder/creator, Michael Widenius (see picture). I didn’t really expect to like the guy, but as it turns out I felt soooo much related between the experiences of what happened on the MySQL-MariaDB side and what happened on the D0keos/Chamilo side that I ended up passing a good time. Those two historical events (for the projects themselves) happened pretty much at the same time, as well.

This put me in the usual sharing mood, and I thought about Latinux. Now Latinux is mainly a Latin-American group (it’s at the same time an association and a company and an open-source software start-ups cluster) founded by my new friend (or at least close acquaintance) Ricardo Strusberg (*not* the guy on the left, that’s Santiago Gonzales), with whom I met a series of times during the last 12 months, and with whom we’re mounting the Official Chamilo Teacher and Admin Certifications (first one of them is currently in a review process and should be out before our Chamilo Users Day Peru on the 18th of November, so people will be able to come around, go to the workshop and get certified the same day).

So… coming back to the sharing mood. As it turns out, MariaDB suffers the exact same problems Chamilo does right now (and probably LibreOffice, to some extent). It is better than the software from which it moved away, it has most of the influent people in it, but there is no widespread adoption yet, because the original software kept the trademark and is still luring people into them being the best. Furthermore, the job was initially done so well, with so many people involved in the original projects, that it’s difficult to out-rank them with simple good intentions. A considerable marketing effort is necessary to make people know we’ve changed name, and that we are now better.

One of the reason I’m so fond of that certification effort is that it will definitely give a boost to our project, to have the ability to get yourself certified and prove you are a true professional. If we do it, we’re definitely moving one big step forward in terms of promotion. And so could MariaDB. So I mentioned it to Michael, who immediately agreed this was a great idea, and as I’m writing this post (which is two weeks later), Ricardo has been discussing the details of such a certification and they will be launching it at the beginning of next year all over America and France.

This specific encounter (that might shape the future of MariaDB considerably) was casually made possible by the organizers of the Comtel.pe event, who made it possible for us to meet. So thank you guys!

I can’t believe how things can happen so casually, but one thing is sure: if all of this would have been in another, more popular context, I would already have “casually” met with a bunch of the most popular IT people on the planet (in fact, I have a few practical examples in mind involving friends of mine). So, in a way, Peru is a great place, but there are still other (great) places to be out there.

On migrations to production systems

Migrations on production systems is one of the most complex thing there is in the field of software because it requires all-in-one system administration, database administration, software development and quality management, each at a high level of skill. We generally delegate  a certain level of quality management to the customer (because they’re most qualified in telling us what’s wrong) but all the other aspects have to be dealt with, without the smallest mistake, otherwise you don’t get a running system in the end.

Firma de convenio entre la Asociación chamilo y la Univerdiad de Tocantins – Brazil

El 20 de Agosto del 2010 la Asociación Chamilo – Bélgica y la Universidad de Tocantins – Brazil firmaron el convenio de colaboración, a fin de  contribuir a impulsar el crecimiento de la plataforma e-learning Chamilo.

Firmaron convenio de colaboración el Ing. Yannick Warnier, fundador y líder de desarrollo de chamilo; Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS; y el Rector de la Unitins. Gracias al convenio la comunidad de Chamilo se beneficiará de documentación, pruebas y traducciones al portugués.

Del mismo modo en el mes de Agosto la empresa Contidos Dixitais (España) y NoSoloRed (España) también  firmaron convenios de colaboración con la Asociación Chamilo – Bélgica para ser socios oficiales de Chamilo .

La comunidad de Chamilo agradece de manera especial el apoyo y gestiones para estar presentes en Brazil:

• Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS
• Igor Yepes, Docente y Coordinador Académico de UNITINS, y esposa
• Marco Sousa, Docente de UNITINS y Contribuidor de traducciones de Chamilo, y esposa
• Luciana Machado Fraga, Coordinadora del Curso de Sistemas de la UNITINS y esposo.

Los miembros oficiales de la asociación esta creciendo  si de manera personal o su empresa desea ser parte puede escribirnos es nuestra sección de contactos para darle toda la información que necesita.

Taller de responsabilidad estudiantil con el software libre en Brazil

El 20 de Agosto del 2010 se dictó el taller: “Responsabilidades de los estudiantes con el software libre“ dirigido a los alumnos de la Univerdiad de Tocantins – Brazil a cargo del Ing. Yannick Warnier.

El temario principal del taller fue:

• ¿Que el es FLOSS? ( Free/Libre – Open Source – Software )
• ¿Porque trabajar en FLOSS?
• Necesidades del FLOSS
• Los 6 Problemas actuales con los futuros contribuidores del FLOSS
• Trabajo y experiencia de Yannick Warnier en el FLOSS

En resumen según el expositor si quieres ser parte de una comunidad de software libre tienes que cumplir estos siete pasos:

1. Encontrar el software libre que te conviene
2. Usarlo
3. Analizarlo
4. Documentarlo
5. Encontrar fallas
6. Hacer propuestas de cambios
7. Comunicarlo

Si quieres recibir información sobre futuras ediciones de nuestros eventos déjenos sus datos en la sección de contacto.

Conferencia Magistral de Chamilo en Palmas, Brazil

Más de 350 asistentes de las principales universidades de Palmas entre estudiantes, profesores y emprendedores participaron en la conferencia magistral “Estado Natural del Software” , organizado por la UNITINS, fundación de universidades de Tocantins – Brazil, el 19 de Agosto del 2010.

El expositor principal de la conferencia magistral fue Yannick Warnier, Jefe de Desarrollo Internacional de la plataforma e-learning Open Source “Chamilo“. Señalo Leonardo Maximiano en la revista Portal Vitrine “Chamilo es un sistema que se adapta a cualquier tipo de proyecto educativo o empresarial“.

“Tener acceso a una computadora no significa que esté en la sociedad de la información y mucho menos dentro de la sociedad del conocimiento. UNITINS trabaja con un enfoque para crear comunidades de aprendizaje con acceso multi-referencial a la información y Chamilo es ejemplo de una nueva ola de aplicaciones educativas que son el puente entre el contenido y el profesor/estudiante virtual” , señalo Geraldo Silva Gomes Vice-Rector de la escuela de postgrado de UNITINS.

Yannick inicia la conferencia magistral “Estado natural del software libre” haciendo una introducción al concepto de Software Libre y sus orígenes resaltando las ventajas de trabajar bajo software libre para el sector público, sector privado y como particular (desarrollador, profesor, alumno)

Motiva a los estudiantes comentando su experiencia personal de líderar proyectos de software libre y finaliza resaltando su trabajo bajo chamilo explicando sus orígenes, filosofía y trabajo organizado por la asociación chamilo.

“Chamilo, es un sistema LMS, Learning Management System, que gestiona cursos, alumnos, docentes, ciclos, grados, redes sociales e Interconexión con otros sistemas, es solo 6 meses tiene más de 60 000 usuarios es su campus libre y lo escojen por que es sencillo, ligero, intuitivo, organizado y con fuerte presencia de la comunidad” señalo Yannick Warnier, líder de desarrollo de chamilo y miembro fundador de la asociación chamilo.

Yannick Warnier en Tocantins – Palmas, Brazil

Chamilo on to a real good start, translation module almost ready

In just three weeks since the announcement of the split between Dokeos and Chamilo, Chamilo has already received support from many organizations and independents that seem to have thought alike for a long time. We also received about 10 successful patches in this period, which is more than I can remember receiving in the whole year of 2009 for Dokeos.

Finally, we’ve been working a lot this week (kudos to scaramanga and svennie) to get you a brand new translation system that we hope will help you get more productive, faster. For example, you now have a “next untranslated term” icon which lets you do the translation in one straight line, and the possibility to translate to various languages (for those of you who are professional translators, this will probably help you help us a lot more! ;-)

Importantly, you can also download, modify and upload translation files which, in combination with the phpLangEditor plugin for Firefox (from one of the developers of Claroline, by the way), will help you get über-efficient.

We are also gathering new translators and people that will want to get involved deeply into the translations by taking the role of translation coordinators.

Last but not least, Chamilo 1.8.7 will be fully-UTF-8 compliant, which will trigger a massive opening of our community to the East of Europe with known interest from China, Japan, Russia and Arab-writing countries!

If you want to know more, just make sure you watch http://www.chamilo.org next week!

BeezNest and Chamilo

So that’s it, after leaving Dokeos and starting the Chamilo project, I will now be mostly writing on this blog (here) rather than on this one, and will link the Chamilo-related posts directly to the Chamilo website as soon as I get a chance to play with Feeds on Drupal.

Let’s make it clear: BeezNest took part in the initialization of a Chamilo foundation so that they would be no unique company behind the name of the product, and so that we could avoid the same problem to occur again and again: the project being forked and loosing all the marketing assets it had because of the impossibility to both respect the open-source character of the software and the commercial aspect of the business made by technical companies around it.

It would probably have been much easier for BeezNest to take the property of a new name and launch the new project under that name, but that’s not what we want. We want the Chamilo project to produce an open-source software to improve learning all over the world and to compete at equal level with other reknown e-learning software like Moodle, Blackboard products and similar solutions.

BeezNest, however, will probably remain, through the excellent job of the BeezNest Latino team (ex-Dokeos Latinoamérica), the most technically active company working on Chamilo. We have done that well for two years now, and we hope we can continue to do so with your support.

This blog will slowly transform into a real international technical blog, where you will be able to find information in English, Spanish and French. Some of the articles here will be translated, other won’t, but if you would like a translation, don’t hesistate to comment and let us know. We’ll try our best to do it.

Stopped using InPhonex

I started using InPhonex, a VoIP provider for individual customers, about 2 years ago because I needed a professional phone number in Lima, Perú, and there were very little providers for this kind of number at the time. During the first 6 months, I had disconnect problems almost every week. While discussing with InPhonex support, it appeared they changed their codec, then something was supposedly wrong with my internet line (I had another IP line from Belgium working just fine on the same phone, same internet connexion). Finally, I gave up and accepted it would be up 4 days per week, and then unreliable the 3 other days, in average.

This being said, I had a lot of business cards printed with this number, so I was reluctant on letting it go. So finally, two years later, as I managed to use another phone number on all printed stuff and got to make almost everyong forget about it… my number 705 97 28 is no more. That’s US$13.95 less wasted per month. Really… not very happy.

BeezNest Latino is joining the BeezNest team

Starting 1st of January 2010, BeezNest Latino, formerly known as Dokeos Latinoamérica, will join efforts with BeezNest Belgium to provide its customers with a wider set of products and services, as well as regular support in Spanish. BeezNest Latino is composed of 10 software engineers, mostly Spanish-speaking, a web designer, a content creator and 2 testing engineers, specialized in web applications development.

We are currently preparing an update of the BeezNest website (check its new style) in order to show the widened set of solutions we have already developed (password management system, trees/green areas management system, contacts management system, e-learning management system, multi-websites integration, etc).

We sincerely believe this will provide a better experience and level of service, not  only to our customers, but also to the open-source community, as a large proportion of our work is returned to open-source software.