Introducing Hangouts and Reports

Over the last few months, we've been testing out different ways to document, share, and respond to your concerns and questions regarding Leaf and its future. We've been using a combination of GitHub issues, Discord, and occasional tweets to keep you updated on our progress. Unfortunately, this has made it difficult for us to keep you in the loop on what we're working on, and for you to share your thoughts and concerns with us. We've been working on a new way to address this issue, and we're excited to introduce Hangouts and Reports.

Our biggest goal is to make Leaf the kind of place where you can share your thoughts and concerns without feeling like you're shouting into the void. While we could sit in a corner and just build features that we think you'll like, we'd rather build Leaf together with you. This includes things like understanding your use cases, your pain points, and how you usually build with Leaf and other tools. We want to make sure that we're building the right things for you, and that we're building them in the right way.

Hangouts #

Hangouts are a new way for us to just hang out with you and chat about anything and everything. We'll be hosting Hangouts every other week, where you can join us to ask questions, share your thoughts, and just chat with us. We'll be sharing what we're working on, what we're planning to work on, and what we're thinking about for the future. We'll also be sharing some of the things that we've learned from you, and how we're using that to shape the future of Leaf.

Our first Hangout was hosted on September 27th, 2024 at 17:00 GMT. We had a great time chatting with you, and we're looking forward to the next one. We talked about a lot of things in our first Hangout, including:

• Our immediate plans for Leaf
• Merging Leaf API into Leaf MVC and our progress so far
• We also talked about our revisions to the Leaf documentation and some of the changes we are making to make it easier for you to use Leaf
• The Leaf Sandbox and how you can use it to quickly try out Leaf without setting up a project
• We fixed a few bugs and talked about the best way to report bugs and issues to us

If you missed it, don't worry! The recording is available on our YouTube channel, and we'll be sharing the highlights in our next Hangout.

Our next Hangout will be on October 11th, 2024 at 17:00 GMT, also on our YouTube channel. We plan to add more platforms in the future, so stay tuned for updates. Our next Hangout will be another opportunity for you to ask questions, share your thoughts, and build features for Leaf with us. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Reports #

Reports are less about a feedback loop and more about a way for us to share what we've done and what we're doing with you. These cover everything from the progress we've made on Leaf, to blockers we've encountered, cool things we've discovered and even fun stuff from the community. We are trying to make Leaf as open and transparent as possible, and we think that Reports are a great way to do that. These reports will be published every month mostly using the Leaf blog, Substack and newsletters, and a quick Twitter digest.

Our first report was published on September 19th, 2024, and you can read it here. We kept it short and sweet, but we're planning to add more details in future reports. If you've not already subscribed to our newsletter, you can do so here.

Finances #

Just as we are being transparent with our development progress, we are also looking to be transparent with our finances. We will be sharing a monthly financial report with you, most-likely in our ongoing monthly Reports. We also have a real-time financial sheet that we are working on that gives you a real-time view of our finances. We have a prototype of this hosted at finance.leafphp.dev, and we are looking to keep it updated as we go along.

The goal here is to give you a clear view of how we are spending your money, and to make sure that you're comfortable with how we're using it. We are currently not funded by any external investors, and we are not running any ads on our website or in our products. We do not make any money from YouTube or any other platform. Our only source of income now is our sponsorship program, and we are using that money to pay for our servers, domain, and recently, our coffee. We have also used some of that money to fund our community events in the past.

This transparency is important to us, and we want to make sure that you're comfortable with not just how we're spending your money, but also how we're getting it. We call this our Open Finance model, and we're looking forward to sharing more details with you in the future.

Sponsoring Leaf #

With all that said, we are looking for help to keep Leaf running. As an open-source project, Leaf has always thrived on the passion and dedication of its contributors and community, but finances have become a growing pain for us. We have Netlify and Digital Ocean that keep our website and services running at no cost thanks to their generous open-source programs, but we still have other costs that we need to cover (which we will be sharing in our financial reports).

If Leaf has helped you in your projects, or if you believe in the potential of what we're building, we kindly ask you to consider supporting us financially. Contributions through our GitHub Sponsors page or OpenCollective can make a significant impact.

With your help, we can ensure that Leaf continues to grow and thrive, supported by a team that can dedicate their full attention to making it the best it can be.

We're excited to see where we can take Leaf together.