User Profile Information

[jemagee]

What information is good to get from the user and what's the best way to ask for it. Some basics I think are:

• Geographical Demographics (purely by time zone?)
• Availability to work
• Preferred ways to work (face to face, online, paired, etc...)
• Skills/Level (this should include not only languages / frameworks but also things like design, normalizatoin, etc...)
• Looking to learn / Willing to teach

Any other ideas? To me this basic information might be enough to try and make contacts.

[blimey85]

For geo locating I like to ask for zip code. I'm not sure how this would work all over the world but I've used it both in the US and in Amsterdam and it worked great in both places. The user registers and then after they login to the site, they are taken to a page to complete their profile. When they save this page, the zip code is geo located so you have the latitude and longitude info. I also pull city and state so I have consistency with those.

I think initially you start with the basics. Have the goal be to get something up and working so you can start gathering feedback. Once you reach that point, dive in to how you can setup searching/matching so users can get connected with each other. Then you can expand the data or make changes based on feedback.

[jemagee]

I think in the beginning perhaps starting with time zones / and country perhaps? I don't want to force people to give too much information, and with time zones online partnership / connection is easier to work out...though then maybe you have to start thiniking about language fluencies as well (this is my problem I just keep thinking about more ideas)

There are some quality 'time zone' related gems out there in ruby that I or someone else could start looking in to - if anyone wants to take that on.