So I guess there is no way back. Speaking clearly, I wonder what weight in people's opinions (in the polls and the board meembers) had the Qt branding in badge, towel, roll-up ad in the main entrance, etc. Many GNOME people said they didn't felt 'at home' in such context. But that is something easy to solve in future editions.
For the rest, I was personally moderately happy. Yes, lots of room for improvement but we know this is something expected in any first release. Actually many GNOME people that was not enthusiastic about a second joint summit mentioned that one of the problems was that the agenda didn't help meeting peers with similar interests from the other side. Something that could be achieved with a better organization of the agenda, based on this year's experience. The board knows well what GNOME and GNOME 3 need in the next GUADEC. Still, two things keep me worrying beyond any plans of organizing specialized hackfests: - So where is the right place to meet people and discuss topics relating to freedesktop.org in a wide sense, beyond the limited scope and participation of a hackfest? The Desktop Summit was a promising venue, now it's gone. Linux Plumbers is (logically) too close to the Kernel alone. Desktop Architects Meetings are as limited as hackfests. - And what is the relevance that "the desktop" alone (that is, purely what GNOME and KDE cover) is going to have in the next years as opposed to full operating systems / distros or the Linux Kernel and neighborhood. Sure, the current GNOME members feel attracted by the idea of going to the next GUADEC. But what about growing the interest of new developers, from the media, from sponsors and event organizers? It is hard already for a full co-located Desktop Summit and I believe it will be harder for separate GUADEC / aKademy. And then the practical details of organizing a conference. Organizing 1 event for both communities takes less efforts and less risks than organizing 2 separate events. Another way to put it: organizing a successful GUADEC takes the same effort or more than co-organizing a successful Summit. In this sense, one important opinion would be that from the potential organizers of a following edition next year. Did they show up? Did they have any preference for a co-located Summit or GUADEC or aKademy? -- Quim Gil /// http://flors.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
