Q1 2016 Featured Community Member - Eliza Sachs

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Every Quarter we will feature a special community member who has gone above and beyond with their contributions. This quarter, the award goes to our very own Eliza Sachs, she has been a member of our community since March 2012. We did a short interview with Eliza about her use of the community and she even included some very useful tips. Congratulations Eliza, very well deserved! 

Interview with Eliza Sachs

JS: Tell us a little about yourself, and when and how was your first exposure Jaspersoft’s products?

ES: I started out as a mathematician and attended a PhD program at Princeton, then transferred to Berkeley. I didn't finish my thesis and became a technical writer at the suggestion of a friend.  I am a weekend horseback rider (sadly, I don't own a horse) and I also paint very abstract horses in watercolor and acrylic.I work for Jaspersoft as a technical writer, so my first exposure was when I was hired and on the job.

JS: What do you like the most about the Jaspersoft community? Do you or have you contributed to other open source communities, any similarities or differences in the culture?

ES: For me, as a technical writer, I use the community in two ways: 1. When information doesn't belong in the documentation or didn't get in the documentation for some reason, I can use the community to add/enhance the documentation set and get more information out there. This includes workarounds for known bugs, features we can't support fully in the commercial product but are available to the community, and just links into the documentation set. 2. The community gives me greater insight into the product and how people use it. Sometimes I see a question and realize that the answer needs to be in the documentation set, where people can find it. Other times, I see a great answer or procedure on the wiki and see if we can find a way to add something similar to the doc set.

JS: Do you have any tips for anyone getting started with the applications or community?

ES: Obviously as a documentation person I do recommend spending some time looking at the doc. We work hard to document each new feature and the doc set is fairly comprehensive, although it isn't always easy to find what you want. Also, make sure to check out the PDF versions of the documentation -- sometimes, unfortunately, content gets lost during our process of converting the docs to the web format. You can use the community site search, and it's also worth your while to familiarize yourself with the scope of the various documents, and then you can search directly in the PDF of the relevant document.

JS: What do you see as the next big thing in reporting and analytics?

ES: I agree that there will continue to be more sources of data, including data that we don't even know about yet (compare the importance of Facebook now, when it didn't exist until quite recently). I think this will also mean ongoing challenges getting data into BI tools -- as data proliferates, so will the formats and locations of that data, and that will be an ongoing challenge. Similarly, as BI becomes more "self-service", on the desktop, there will be challenges with non-technical people trying to explore and format data. The challenge there is untrained, un-numeric people will be able to create pretty pictures, but will they be able to present data in a way that is actually meaningful to themselves and others? Will we be able to help users determine good ways to look at the data -- when to use a chart and which one, and when to use a table instead?

JS: Is there anything else we should know?

ES: Despite all the changes, Jaspersoft's founders, Teodor Danciu and Giulio Toffoli, still have a lot of input over where they take their products and their teams are involved in the community. If you have questions, suggestions, or bugs related to JasperReports Library or Jaspersoft Studio, enter them on the tracker. The tracker is regularly monitored by those two teams and they will see your tracker entries and suggestions.