Next Developer Call will be on 09/09/2015 - Guest : Alex Hawkinson

Maybe next year, Tim Cook will be on the stage with SmartThings announcing a new era of openness with Apple products—when they finally embrace standards instead of making new standards.

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ha ha… got it. I can see where you are coming from…

Any future for bluetooth window blinds control?

Just watched the Apple live stream and that’s what I learned about homekit.

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I’m sure Alex will have a good answer for you, but also make sure you familiarize yourself with the resources on our Knowledge Base.

It appears the meeting URL in incorrect? However, this URL works: https://bluejeans.com/551112646
omitting the 31 at the end. Is that right?

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OMG that bluejeans software is the worst piece of crap - won’t install, and WTF… a plugin??? This is 2015!

http://bluejeans.com/mobile
There’s an app for it.

Not a question , but some suggestions. Assign a paid SmartThings Employee to be the meetings notekeeper. Methodically address each and every question / concern brought up in this thread and have the notetaker publish the answers given in the thread with annotations to the original questions.

This is good data that is lost if not captured in one place. Why miss an opportunity to satiate some of the community concerns.

Develop QGA’s (Quarterly Goals and Achievements) for support staff. Reward if goals are met - Hold accountable if not met.

Publish (in one place) a list of priorities that relates to issues that are brought up by the community. List the importance of each priority and use strike throughs to indicate that an item has been addressed and resolved or is still pending. DO NOT bow to public pressure (stick to your guns) and devote resources to issues that are of low priority and make it known.

It would be fantastic to visit one Thread or location to understand what is high on the priority list and authentically being worked on and what is never gonna happen.

I see Ben pop into threads quite often and offer updates on what and what is not on the roadmap. These are all scattered throughout multiple threads with no easy way to discern where to find this information. A locked thread that only super user access personnel can solve this.

Leverage Samsung as a partner in these endeavors where possible.

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I’ve suggested this a few times, but was recently convinced it is not in SmartThings’s best interests.

Unfortunately the company needs the flexibility to change their priorities with minimal negative impact, and a published roadmap would be either a constraint or an embarrassment. It would give their competitors an edge.

I’m totally reversing my own request for this. Personally, I’d love it and wouldn’t mind a few slips and changes in the direction of the roadmap. But… The world is “agile” these days and changes are much more likely than honoring promises. Assume every promise made in the meeting today was made in genuine good faith, but that nothing is a real promise as of the moment it was said.

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We need to strike a balance between flexibility to change priorities with sharing those priorities with the community and public at large. We are learning that committing to dates does not work, but committing to a direction is another thing.

Also here is the video from the call last night:

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Huge thanks for getting this up so quickly, @Ben!

Also thanks to @Alex, @hagins, et. al. for taking part last night.

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This is a great distinction @Ben. In short don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just because committing to timelines per issue is doomed to failure. Describing a prioritized direction of your strategy both those being implemented serially and in parallel helps the community level set expectations placed on your developers. Further I would assume it helps the wonderful group of community developers we have spend their energies more efficiently by knowing what issues are most likely to linger based on the stated direction.

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Thanks for the video link! Informative !

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