Who are you?
Andrew Petro
Senior Software Engineer
Unicon, Inc.
(Previously a casual systems programmer with Yale University ITS Technology and Planning)
Contact information
There's a contact form on Unicon.net that will be routed to me if your message is so addressed.
You can also email me at apetro at: unicon not-dot-com dot net.
What roles have you played in the uPortal community?
I have served as release engineer for the uPortal 2.5.x branch through uPortal 2.5.3 and for the 2.6.0 release. I now share release engineer responsibilities on the 2.6.x maintenance branch with Eric Dalquist.
I currently work for Unicon, Inc., with responsibilities including technical leadership in the cooperative support program as it applies to uPortal and consulting gigs from time to time.
Andrew, how can I get you to help me with my portal? And how can I support your being available to help out in the uPortal community?
I generally try to answer questions posed on the JA-SIG uPortal user and developer lists as time allows. Time does not always allow.
Unicon's new uPortal technical support program needs customers, and you probably need uPortal support, so I'd appreciate if you'd go ahead and buy that from Unicon. Thanks. This is a way to get help with your uPortal not just when I and other developers happen to get around to it, but on a more consistently timely and structured basis. Support cases that I am best able to work are routed to me under that program. Under the auspices of Cooperative Support, I regularly write knowledgebase articles and edit the JA-SIG wiki to improve documentation related to a support case worked. That word "Cooperative" is not just a marketing buzzword – it conveys the flavor of the program. We provide quality, personal, attentive, responsive technical support to subscribers to meet the needs of individual subscribers, absolutely, but we strive to do so in a way that cooperates with the larger context of the open source project. Where a question stems from a more general gap in documentation, we look to fill that gap. Where there's a bug, we look to open a Jira issue to document it, at the least, and if the customer chooses to fund development of a patch, that patch goes right into public issue tracking and/or source control. Further, the program affords a modest bandwidth of "cooperative development". We have a neat online facility whereby program participants can vote for the real public Jira issues, and these votes drive a priority queue of no-additional-charge community-participation development funded under the program, wherein Unicon looks to work those most important issues towards resolution.
The kind folks at Unicon do pay me a salary and thereby allow me to participate in uPortal as much as I do, so, if you're interested in supporting that participation, the thing to do is to go look at what Unicon's offering and see what you need. While it's not my department, I'd have to say the web developers who brand and skin uPortal and Sakai instances do a fantastic job. Give your portal a facelift and you can announce that you've released a whole new version. Feel free to add a line item "Support Andrew's work on opensource uPortal" to any statement of work you'd like.
I am regularly involved behind the scenes in Unicon consulting services gigs, so if you contract for services you just might be getting my assistance there too. From time to time I serve as the primary consultant on a project, especially smaller projects well-aligned with my interests and experience.
I understand you've written a few words about uPortal. Where might I find them?
Unicon has rolled out an exciting new hip website including blogs, so I'm now blogging there. I have written in the past off and on at Base Action URL, my personal blog about uPortal. For now, all new blogging is happening on Unicon's website. I also write knowledgebase articles.
I've written extensively on the JA-SIG email lists, which have public searchable archives.
I've written some of the content in this Confluence wiki and (probably more often) harvested from email discussion to create wiki pages. Though I spend far less time working on it than I would prefer, I am very excited about the uPortal Manual wiki space initiative.
I've been a frequent contributor, usually behind the scenes, to the JA-SIG Newsletter.
Is it true that Eric Dalquist was injured by beads at a JA-SIG Conference?
Yes. And there's a photo to prove it.
What are you currently working on in JA-SIG?
I'm currently between major initiatives. I got uPortal 2.6 out the door to deliver a modest evolutionary increment of presently available goodness and provide a good base for Eric Dalquist and others to pick things up to fix some further issues to deliver a 2.6.1 (look for that any day now) and to re-formulate the uPortal 3 initiative in terms of carrying uPortal 2.6 forward. I now fill in all sorts of administrivia, including serving on the JA-SIG Winter UnConference Committee and on the uPortal Steering Committee.
