Suggestions for the minimum viable unit?

[barbaracassani]

• Central repository? (decentralizable / downloadable?)
• Mobile app? *
• Desktop app? *

(* to report events? to browse events?)

[padolsey]

I don't think there will really be a concept of a minimum viable concept/unit/product. We'll just have to begin with the foundations and see where it ends up.

Initially I see:

1. Yip being developed as a node app (or similar) which can be downloaded/installed by anyone (for experimentation, private life streams, tech confs etc.)
2. 'Air' being initialised as a single instance of that app (this'll be the public event platform)
3. 'Air' mobile app (or at least a web-app geared towards mobile use)
4. Other integration points: Like tweeting 'Something Happend @ SW1Y #yip'

[barbaracassani]

Broadly speaking, I agree with what you've just written, but I think such a product needs to gain visibility and traction in order to gather both users and more collaborators. Also, we need not to get discouraged and the endeavour itself it's not small. I am a fan of the "divide and conquer" strategy when it comes to make things, and maybe instead of "minimum viable unit" I should have said "first milestone" or "release 0.1". Something to show the world that Yip is not only a brilliant concept, but something that can be used right here right now. If we set the hefty lot as minimum goal, we'll end up like some startups that wait way too long for the first release and risk losing relevance or interest even before they're really born.
Therefore I think we need to figure out what a sub-unit of the endeavour could be that we can actually produce in a reasonable / humane amount of time. Not a prototype, but a sub-unit that can live on its own and be a building block for the whole.
Hope it makes sense! Let me know if you think it's a futile preoccupation, I know I have a tendency to fragment everything in small steps, which can be useful only as long as one doesn't stop to see the forest because they're growing a single tree :)

[padolsey]

I like the idea of developing the whole through a number of smaller modules/sub-units -- but I don't know if these modules will be usable in themselves by the mass public. Do you have any examples of sub-units that can be released separately? Tbh, my feeling is that the concept is still insufficiently built up to be broken down into individual pieces yet.