Avalon 7 Development: Call for Community Participation!

Feb 13, 2018

In Spring 2018, The Avalon Team will begin work on Avalon 7. As we move down this pathway, we want to invite you to join us, and help build a better Avalon!

As part of our commitment to the Samvera Community, Avalon 7 will be developed as a feature-parity-plus re-architecting of the Avalon 6 solution bundle. Rather than developing a stand-alone and redundant Samvera stack, this version will utilize Hyrax/ Samvera as the underlying core. In doing so, Avalon will focus on development of audio and video access and delivery technologies, leaning on the trusted capabilities of Hyrax and Samvera.

Benefits will include:

allowing adopters to learn and manage fewer stacks
allowing adopters to consider utilizing a single Avalon/ Hyrax instance for IR and other repository needs
synchronicity between Avalon and Hyrax development
Avalon development team participating in and advancing Hyrax development
Avalon feature developments resulting in contributions back to Hyrax

We are now seeking members of the community interested in joining us in co-developing Avalon 7.

How you can participate:

Community Sprint Cycles

Sprint Cycles will last about 6 - 8 weeks, broken into regular, bi-weekly sprints, at which time contributors can join us or step away. Community Sprint Cycles will not begin until April, but if you would like the opportunity to become familiar with Hyrax, as well as the Avalon feature set, we would very much like to discuss your interest.

Pull Requests

Further, we are aware that many potential contributors may not be able to work on our timeline or may wish to work in short bursts on particular areas of interest. If you prefer to work on individual pieces of Avalon, even out of band from the sprint cycles, we can certainly welcome the expertise of the community.

For Non-Developers

Developing a system requires the input and know-how of a wide-variety of experts. If you would like to join us in a role such as:

Quality Assurance/ Testing
product feedback
metadata oversight
media or music librarian...

Your participation can help make Avalon a system that meets the needs of an even wider community.

Stay in the Loop

To see what is occurring with Avalon, and to get an idea where we're headed, please visit the Avalon Roadmap.

You may also wish to join our communication channels, or review our project progress.

To let us know you'd like to consider joining us in Avalon 7 Development - please fill out the survey at the link: https://goo.gl/forms/BnhYyHW5xMbBeliR2