RFC: Neos agency-listing

The Neos Project Website
#1

Currently it is quite hard to find Neos Agencies which sometimes hinders pro-neos decisions by customers. A list of all Neos Agencies may help convince customers to start using Neos. This list should look professional and support printing.

We @sitegeist could push this topic to get an initial version online. If we agree to this RFC we will take care to implement this.

Please give feedback what points we missed but always keep in mind that this is a first version and will evolve in the future.

The following properties could be a starting point for such a list:

  • Name
  • Logo
  • Description (200 Chars)
  • Link
  • Phone / Mail
  • Country / City
  • Neos References (all references on neos.io handed in by this agency)
  • Neos Support (i suggest to start with values we already have and that we do’nt need to discuss)
    • Conference Sponsoring (1 -> 5: Premium, last and next conference apply)
    • Neos-Funding (1:Bronze -> 5: Diamond)
    • Team Members
    • … we may decide later on additional criteria like sprint-hosting
  • Neos Services (checkboxes)
    • Consultation
    • Support
    • Full Service (Consultation, Ui, SEO, Support …)
    • Website Development (custom websites with neos, re´rerences on neos-io are mandatory)
    • Package Development (third party packages, neos-packages on packagist are mandatory)
    • Core Development (contribute to the core, core-devs are mandatory)
    • Hosting
    • Training
    • SLAs
    • …

Ordering:
To decide on the ordering i suggest to create a support-score by multiplying all values from the Neos support section + 1. That rule avoids multiplication by zero if an agency does not provide support in one specific category but in others.

Phase 2 …
Filtering, Pagination and additional Properties etc. can be implemented in later phases once we consider the list too long.

3 Likes
Team Unicorn Meeting | 2018-12-13
#2

That’s a good idea!
There’s one little thing I’d like to add: It might also be interesting to know where the agency is (zip code, city).

#3

Thanks, i added city and country.

#4

Would you handle Freelancers separately or treat them like a 1-person agency?
Depending on that a type or size field might be good.

#5

I think for now we should handle all agencies and freelancers the same. If the list gets too long we might start splitting it up but not now.

#6

Great initiative!

I’m just not that sure about the ordering. With the proposed ordering, the money side has a big impact. In other words $bigAgency could “buy” a high ranking with higher financial donations. Basically that’s not a very bad thing as that also provides a value to the project. But smaller or medium-sized agencies would not be able to compete on the $$$-side - independent of how much they invest into the project (e.g. by man-power).

1 Like
#7

Not sure how to define the order then. I wanted to make support for Neos the prime criteria. How we measure / calculate this and what factors we measure shall evolve but I suggest to start with properties we already know.

I think we should add sprint hosting and other criteria a bit later since they need a more complex rule-set. Other values like sprint participation are hard to measure and keep up to date. Also I suggest not to use criteria we cannot prove since this will cause community trouble on the long run. If you have suggestions for additional support criteria we can easily determine i gladly adjust the list.

However in all scenarios that do not sort random the companies that support Neos in multiple ways will score well. This does not necessarily depend on size, flownative will score close to max aswell which is well deserved.

BTW: random sorting might also be an option for the start.

#8

A possible adjustment would be to add up the single support scores instead of multiplying them. Not sure how this will affect the order, in theory it should be easier to miss out in a single category but catch up with good values in others.

#9

Great initiative!
What about a random order by default (at least to start with) and a custom ordering (and filtering)?
We already have most of this in place for the Show Case Listing.

I think we should consider a simple “application” form that already creates the required assets & nodes (hidden). We never got around doing so for the Show Cases, but the amount of work that went into manually adding those would have made up for it big time.

And even with a form in place there will be maintenance work with that we should not forget about: i.e. who updates the records if the references/support changes and how?

1 Like
#10

Random order would be fine with me aswell, about updating I suggest to let us run into the trouble. If it gets to much work we are successful and can gladly invest in automation.

Suggestion: Random order by default recalculated every 10 minutes or so plus the option to sort by Neos-support and offered services.

#11

Very cool idea. I think that a phone number would also be very helpful…

1 Like
#12

Thanks a lot for pushing this topic (finally)!
Better have a first incomplete version that none at all!

I’m a bit in favor of the weighted score, as your suggested, but would be fine with random, too. Just be aware that random is a bit cumbersome for all kinds of caching …

A company logo would be nice, also make the listing visually more appealing.

2 Likes
#13

Good idea, i added this to the suggestion above

#14

Thanks for the feedback so far. To decide wether we want random sorting or support-scoring i added a little poll.

  • Agency list with sorting by Neos-support
  • Agency list with random sorting
  • no agency List

0 voters

I suggest to not discuss the list of agency properties or the way of scoring for this decision. We can always adjust the properties and adjust the algorithm later. For now we only need to agree on what we want to start with.

#15

+1 for “automating” things by letting folks input their data in a structured way themselves to save on the ongoing maintenance work’s side for the Neos team.

I’d event automate the annual (?) send out or a validation / review mail to those on the list with the request to click a link within 2 weeks + update the record. If the recipient reacts + either confirms the status quo or updates the entry, fine. And if there’s no reaction to this mail or the user decides to click the “remove from list” button, well, then hide the record from beind rendered on the website.

#16

IMO it would be OK to keep that page at a shorter cache-duration, so that it is randomized multiple times a day, but not on each single request.

Or do some client-side magic by randomizing the single entries on each page load in the Browser to give that “random order” effekt. I know that’s a cheap trick :slight_smile:

#17

Hi,
First of all I want to thank you for that great engagement and the idea to implement such a list. I think as well, that such a professional service listing will help the project itself to grow beyond it’s actual size. If I think about such a list I have to say that a random sortment seems not the best idea and even putting freelancers in the same list seems for me not very useful from a user perspective.

I think you have to care for two values. What does the user need that visit that site and what helps Neos to grow most. (If growing is not you interest at all just delete this post, then it‘s useless :wink: )

From my perspective, it is very necessary to gain more money in the Neos universe. Such a list can be the perfect tool to do so IF it is ordered by that. I would propose to just divide the two things. Building up points for money investment and building up points for „personal“ investment. If you do so, a client could decide what triggers him most and you could order the rank in the list by putting whight to one or the other point more.

And I think freelancers has to be handled different. If I‘m a client I need to be clear, if I talk to an agency or to a freelancer. And for agencies it must be easy to connect to freelancers that could help out, so we have a different target group here for the list.

For me as a person who is responsible for marketing money, I have to say, that in the moment i feel very bad for my collegues who are very engaged in Neos, while I put much more money in an other CMS. But that’s because my marketing output for this investment is much higher. If you want that people raise their memberships you have to help them creating more money with that system or at least more fame arount their own brand.
And I‘m totally with you that this helps the bigger companies. But as I see it, we all have to grow together to become bigger companies and maybe we even have to get bigger companies in the system to grow the system itself. We can‘t say Neos has too less spreading, but we won‘t get bigger agencies in to push the system with their clients.

So my proposal:
• Divide the two points money and engagement
• Sort the list by weight 60/40 Money/Engagement
• Do an extra list for freelancers or at least make it easy to understand

#18

I agree to your reasonings in large part but we also have to factor in what signals are sent to the community. In the end Neos relies on voluntary work and no employer gives enough open source time to be even close to the endless hours and energy we invest in the evenings and on sprints. Keeping community spirit up is always our prime directive.

I think the community easily agrees to sorting by support if sorting at all. I think it should not matter that much if the support is financial, but most support will in the end be kind of financial. Wether you give hours to a core-dev you employ or sponsor-the project or skip payed time in favor of neos as freelancer makes not that a difference and sponsoring will often be cheaper and way more convenient.

The main advantage of financial-support as criteria is that it can be measured that easily. Since we should only use testable criteria to avoid fighting financial support will probably always play a prominent role in the sorting (my initial suggestion would factor that with 2/3 of all points) and companies can easily use this to their advantage. Offcourse it makes sense to allow users to sort the list after the criteria they care about so this will be possible anyways. In the end i think your first two remarks are kind of covered but in a different manner.

Regarding freelancers i have a question. For now i think we should stick to a single list but i agree we need a differentiation between Full Service Agencies, Freelancers and the space between. The question is how to achieve this. I doubt a simple type(Freelancer, Agency, Hoster) will help much since even most companies do not fit 100% into that scheme. Maybe “Contract Work” as an Option of the offered “Neos-Services” could work but i am not sure. What do you think, how can we make small companies / freelancers visible and enable sorting for them?

2 Likes
#19

Also don’t forget we have a listing for financial & team member contributions already which has always shown the entries at random: https://www.neos.io/contribute/donating-to-neos.html

Maybe the same code can be used again or the module just enhanced from what it’s doing now.
It already has filters and stuff.

I think defining some colored labels which can be applied to the entries could already solve the issue with finding freelancers, service providers, hosters etc…

1 Like
#20

That list is a total mystery to me, i never understood the ordering at all and there is neither a link nor any description of the agency at all. O top of that the list is below the actual content and looks like some footer stuff instead of a prominent presentation of our supporters.