The IDE of Open Source Software Growth

We're launching version 2 of the Jovo Framework next week. While working on this large update, we've been talking a lot about what types of features and improvements we should focus on for wider adoption.

In my opinion (at least for our current phase), we can grow best by focusing on IDE:

• Integrations
• Docs
• Examples

Integrations

This is the biggest improvement that we've been working on for v2 of Jovo: to make it as open and extensible as possible. By making it easy for developers and teams to integrate it into their existing workflows, we can be adopted from the bottom up, without a buyer or upper management ever having to be involved.

Jovo v2 will come with an architecture that makes it easy for us to quickly launch integrations to analytics, database, and content management services. This also allows us to do great content partnerships that fuel adoption. If someone searches for something like "Alexa Skill with Airtable/Contentful/GraphCMS," we want to be found.
 

Docs

This is something we've been focusing on from the beginning on, and something I can't understand many software developers dismiss as an afterthought. If you have an open source software product, a Documentation is very often the first touch point with your potential users and customers.

Outsourcing your first touch point means giving away control from one of your potentially most important competitive advantage. This is why we decided early on to not use tools like Gitbook (althought they're great!) because we would lose flexibility.

Here is the current work-in-progress of our v2 Docs, many pages are still a little empty though: https://www.jovo.tech/docs/v2/quickstart
 

Examples

When diving into new technology, many people want to see how others have solved specific problems. Especially in a new space like voice app development, where there are not a lot of established best practices, it can be helpful to provide guidance with well-documented examples.

This is something we need to improve. We offer templates, but many of them just scratch the surface. Our users have been asking for more complex examples that go beyond the "Hello World" and this is one of the main areas we will focus on after the v2 Launch.

 

Anything else I'm missing?

Wish us luck with the launch!

Thank you,
Jan