Hi, following the discussion on the foundation list about changing the name of GUADEC, I presented my point of view to Luis and Dave. Luis suggested to let others read it as well. So, here it is but blame me for doing so. :-)
>From the name changing discussion, I got the feeling the problem is not the GUADEC brand but selling GUADEC (by eventually changing the product). A conference is similar to a journal or newspaper; thus I would like to point you to the 'news values' listed here: http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fWritingPressReleasesHowto I believe if you look at the GUADEC survey results with news values in mind, it'll indicate what topics make GUADEC successful. For example, the Shuttlework Keynote was considered interesting by a lot of people. But why? He's got nothing to do with GNOME directly! But he and his talk has 'Impact' (lots of GNOME'ers are affected by his decisions) and 'Prominance' (He's a well-known person). This may also explain why the business/government day isn't successful: There's no value for government people unless they already consider GNOME to be a choice, and hackers aren't interested in government affairs either. One thing that could make a difference to government people is, for example, training costs. Unfortunatly, none of our UI designers managed yet to present a study that all the interface spit'n'polish indeed reduces training costs or improves training effectiveness. Another thing is applications: GNOME has no special applications for governments (yet), and just a few for businesses (except some of the Office must-have ones). And hackers are probably not interested to learn from government people what applications are needed because noone will hack them anyway. Another thing I already pointed out on the marketing list after the last GUADEC was its missing final press release; indicating a lack of results at GUADEC. Readers then learn that GUADEC has no 'Impact'. (And most of you probably noted that KDE made such a final press release this year.) If you think about GUADEC from this point of view ('What would be interesting to have in a final press release?'), you'll get a list of potentially interesting topics, for example: * Product or project announcements (new applications or projects like Ridley; this is basically the Apple kind of way to promote their conferences. And it spreads the news much faster than a blog entry.) * 'Status reports' such as "The status of Project Ridley", "Memory reduction", "Artwork (Multimedia, Science, etc.) with GNOME" * Any decisions that have impact for GNOME. Additionally, the 2.12 release fixed so many core issues that I believe lots of people are very happy about GNOME as it is. What's missing is a broader adoption of GNOME'ishness by third party F/OSS applications. I might be wrong but my feeling is that GNOME developers somehow expect others to pick it up but aren't able or willing to get it started. Now, the advantage of a conference compared to an journal or newspaper is direct interaction. Are there any programming trainings at GUADEC with a tutor or mentor who'd be able to help? I can't remember about it, so probably not or not advertised properly. I noted there will be *very* interesting workshops the weekend before but I don't speak spanish or catalan, and I have no time to visit spain for a whole week or two weekends. There's so much even hobby programmers like me could do: Fixing minor HIG violations in GTK applications is rather easy, for example, so here's another hot topic for a workshop. There are also quite a few top-rated 'old-style' GTK applications under gnome-apps.berlios.de Also, Jordi Mallach once posted about all the GTK1 applications in Debian in his blog. Once well known applications like GNUCash die slowly because the switch is complicated. Imaging we could get people to work on their GNOME'ishness and sent patches from GUADEC to their developers; they'll note it and (hopefully) learn: GUADEC has 'Impact'. This is a good reason to join GUADEC next year. You may call it "GNOME Love Live". ;-) Davyd Madeley is good at spotting such topics; he already announced an article about Cairo programming for the next GJ edition. Now, that's a hot topic! Java on the other hand is not, and it shows in the GUADEC survey. Sorry for making this soo long, and the cross-posting. Hope it was at least 'inspirational'. :-) Cheers, Claus _______________________________________________ guadec-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/guadec-list
