Minutes for GNOME & KDE Board Meeting of July 8, 2009

Attendance

• GNOME:
  • Brian Cameron
  • Diego Escalante
  • German Póo-Caamaño
  • Lucas Rocha
  • Srinivasa Ragavan
  • Stormy Peters
  • Vincent Untz
• KDE:
  • Adriaan de Groot
  • Claudia Rauch
  • Cornelius Schumacher
  • Frank Karlitschek
  • Sebastian Kügler

Regrets

• GNOME:
  • Behdad Esfahbod
• KDE:
  • Celeste Lyn Paul

Minutes

• Evaluation of GCDS and consideration of the next steps for a future joint conference
  • The KDE community had a meeting where they voted on whether Akademy/GUADEC should be co-located again. Results were:
    • Together: 70%
    • Separate: 15%

    • Separate 2011 & Together 2012: 15%

  • KDE:
    • The KDE community was quite positive about the co-located GUADEC and Akademy as the above survey shows. There is a real interest to do a co-located conference again and increase community GNOME and KDE interaction.
    • That said, the first co-located GUADEC and Akademy did not go as smoothly as it could have. Issues with the venue, for example.
    • Tampere, Finland is interested to organize a co-located conference or to organize both conferences separately.
  • GNOME:
    • The GNOME community expressed a concern that by co-locating the GNOME Foundation did not make as much profit.
    • When we next plan a co-located conference, there will be a need to discuss this issue and make sure that we find the best way to make a profit for both the GNOME and KDE organizations.
    • In general, the GNOME sponsors liked the combined conference, even though some were skeptical at first.
    • Based on feedback from GNOME sponsors, some of them appreciated the joint conferences. They felt that it is easier and more efficient to sponsor a single conference. However, other sponsors still prefer separate conferences.
    • We should not rush to make a decision about whether to hold a joint conference in the future. July and August are slow months in Europe, so we should plan to make an announcement later.
• Issues
  • Financial
    • Can we do better about planning for making a profit?
  • Community
    • Identity of the event. Some aspects of the GNOME and KDE communities are lost in a combined conference. At a big conference, it can be hard to identify with or connect with people from your community.
  • Logistics
    • We need to do a better job about making sure that we pick a venue location that is easy and affordable to get to. Many GNOME sponsors are from the USA and we need to work harder to ensure that costs are kept low for people traveling from abroad.
• Plan
  • July 15: Make a decision about whether to co-locate next year.
  • July 20: Call for Locations, Sponsorship acquisition. Request formal bids using a template. This will make the bids easier to review and compare.
  • Late August: Deadline for bids
  • September 15: Decide the location.
  • March: Handle logistics.
  • July or August: Timeframe for holding the event.
• Other Feedback
  • Cross desktop did not work as well as was expected. The separate GNOME and KDE tracks did not encourage as much interaction between communities.
  • Should be more common areas and events (e.g. BOF's and extra activities) to encourage more interaction between communities.
  • With the Google OS announcement, the market for desktop Linux becomes tighter. It might not be a given in the future that Linux on end-user machine means either KDE or GNOME. We should be aware of that and consider it when collaborating.
  • Need to do a better job managing the Wiki and mailing lists.
  • Press conference did not work as expected. Both communities missed the opportunity and it did not work. It must be improved for the next year. A joint conference was supposed to have a wide coverage of international press.
  • Set more clear responsibilities.
  • There was no clear decision process.
  • Do not relay all responsibilities in one person.
  • Try to get more people involved, from the community or create a stronger organization team (locals, communities).

Actions

• Stormy Peters will prepare a survey for the GNOME community to find out what the GNOME community's reaction to the event.

• Lucas Rocha and Sebastian Kügler agreed to prepare a joint press release (testimonials, good & bad things, etc.).