Time for the foundation IRC meeting. As a reminder to anyone who just joined, if you'd like to talk about anything, add it here: http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/MembersAgenda We don't have much on the agenda this week, but the board would like to continue holding these meetings regularly. For announcements: As you probably already read, last week we announced 12 new interns for the Outreach Program for Women --> Bertrand (~lorentz@88.207.152.46) has joined #foundation fujii (~luciana@189.59.162.181) has joined #foundation Thanks to marina for her continuing hard work, and to all the community members who've stepped up to mentor. --> gpoo (~gpoo@gpoo.segal.uvic.ca) has joined #foundation <-- gpoo has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) --> dneary__ (~dneary@mne69-h01-31-33-19-101.dsl.sta.abo.bbox.fr) has joined #foundation gpoo (~gpoo@gpoo.segal.uvic.ca) has joined #foundation <-- gpoo has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) ah. where was this readable? http://www.gnome.org/news/2011/11/gnome-outreach-program-for-women-participants-continue-to-impress/ --> gpoo (~gpoo@gpoo.segal.uvic.ca) has joined #foundation so news.gnome.org, planet.gnome.org and the 20 mailing lists I read are not enough. hmmm. correct :) * andre sighs --> j1mc (~j1mc@99-127-172-158.lightspeed.nsvltn.sbcglobal.net) has joined #foundation is that fixable? I never read www.gnome.org. I guess that's up to the web team. I definitely think gnome.org/news doesn't get enough visibility typically such suggestions should be sent to the marketing list. they would be the right people to "fix" it, I'd think. it made it to Facebook anyway, congrats to the new participants :) Any person on planet can blog about such things, also. The Foundation does need help getting the word out yes, the Women's Outreach Program continues to be a great volunteer driven success <-- dneary_ has quit (Ping timeout: 600 seconds) There seems to be a growing push to improve the GNOME Foundation website. As a part of this project, we are making an effort to better communicate the value of The GNOME Foundation and membership. I believe there have been some small tweaks lately to more specifically provide certain services to GNOME Foundation members, for example. We also have some upcoming hackfests which I would post links to if live.gnome.org would cooperate with me ;) There's a WebKitGTK+ hackfest starting next week: http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/WebKitGTK2011 And both the GTK+ team and the documentation team will be holding hackfests at the Developer Conference in Brno in February http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/BrnoDocs2012 http://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/GtkBrno2012 We'd like to encourage people to plan more hackfests. I know there's talk about an accessibility hackfest. hi hi dneary__ --- dneary__ is now known as dneary That's better So, I'm out of announcements. I'm going to open the discussion. There's nothing on the MembersAgenda page right now I didn't see anyone reply to my email on foundation-list (which was intended to be direct to you, shaunm) reply-to on foundation-announce caught me out dneary: you wanted to have more discussion abut the future of the DS? I was specifically concerned about the minutes of the last board meeting in the wiki, whioch make it sound like the board might decide not to have one Then I read the minutes of the last IRC meeting & saw that Jon McCann is strongly against another DS And for a number of reasons, I'd like to ensure that due reflection is given before any decision is taken at the last meeting, we did open the floor to discussion about the future of DS. Not many people besides Jon responded. yippi, I don't know who was here - I saw jjmarin, aday and mccann were the only people to contribute outside the board As I said, I missed it It seems like a topic that would benefit from mailing list discussion In any case... As a bidding city this year, I have been talking to people about putting in a Lyon bid for next year and there's a big difference between hosting a GUADEC and a DS in terms of infrastructure requirements, so I'd like to know soon That makes sense. Putting together a bid for a combined event is even more difficult, and people need to know enough in advance to do stuff. And as a long-term participant in the event organisation, I can see definite benefits to sharing facilities in terms of both broadening the base of people we appeal to, and gaining economies of scale There have been problems, I think they're fixable And I would definitely encourage the conference to broaden its scope to "the free software desktop" and not "GNOME + KDE", which is kind of what it was this year It's been incremental - we started with GUADEC + Akademy, moved to a GNOME + KDE conference (although I would have preferred more outreach to Unity, Enlightenment, XFCE, and apps) What do you think are the main advantages of having the different groups together? The natural next step is to get people together to think about what the free software desktop will look like as a whole, and how things will work together - not just bits of it One concern that keeps being voiced amongst the board is about whether the DS generates effective collaboration. If it were more clear that a future DS would lead to more concrete collaborative results, that would help, I think. yippi, It never will unless it's structured to encourage it - and we didn't quite get that right this time. yippi, One thing that would help is a more effective hang-out space yippi, There are lots of other possibilities too yes, I don't think we've gotten that right in past Desktop Summits. As you suggest, it is probably fixable. But also likely would require some real time investment between communities to put together a more clear agenda of collaboration. (I guess I'm wearing "Lyon bid" hat now, when I talked about the scope of the conference, it was a "GUADEC guy" yippi, I agree. especially if the DS is to become something more representative of all free desktops, not just KDE and GNOME combined <-- en (~en@117.192.194.211) has left #foundation while the DS has been great in some ways, there just isn't a lot of measurable collaboration The collaboration potential, for me, comes from having LibreOffice, Mozilla, GNOME & KDE guys in the same place to talk about things like how to improve the drag & drop story, homogenise printing interfaces, collaborate on lower level infrastructure Some people will argue that Collaboration Summit & Plumbers are already there for that --> en (~en@117.192.194.211) has joined #foundation But not many of the major GUI applications go to plumbers And Collab Summiut has become less & less about hackers We need to start thinking holistically about the free software desktop we can start with hackfests at any rate, it seems that the Desktop Summit needs to adjust its focused on measurable goals. gpoo, We already have some - we can certainly continue them Hackfests are great, but there's a definite benefit to getting people in the same place at the same time dneary: I mean, cross/free-desktop hackfests yes, maybe collaboration would benefit from doing more focused work like hackfests for some time. gpoo, I'd argue that we already have them. though a Desktop Summit could also be surrounded by related hackfests. dneary: Some people have suggested having a separate free desktop collaboration event, and keep the flagship conferences separate from that. What are your thoughts on that? shaunm, Who are the flagship conferences for? I'd ask: how many times do we expect key GNOME hackers to ask their manager to travel to a GNOME/Free Desktop event, or take holiday time to travel to one? I don't know about Akademy, but I think GUADEC is mostly a developer-focused event despite the U in the acronym GUADEC is for users and developers, which covers about everybody really my thoughts on that (as blogged): have KDE and GNOME co-located, and have a collab summit right before or after it. as you say, we tend to focus more on developers s/KDE/aKademy and s/GNOME/GUADEC shaunm, So if you have a smallerr "more useful" X-desktop collaboration summit, you'll end up with a GUADEC where some key GNOME developers won't come any more, potentially Anyway - let me repeat my first opinion: this is the kind of thing that will benefit from slightly longer, slightly more reflexive thought on a mailing list, rather than being decided in IRC meetings I really think the board needs to feel the temperature of the GNOME community before making a decision, but it needs to happen pretty soon sure, but the general lack of measurable collaborative work done at past Desktop Summit's makes it hard to argue that particular key GNOME developers are needed or made use of We're certainly not deciding here. I've already had meetings trying to source a 750 person hall for keynotes Unfortunately, the DS summit was only open for a short time, and didn't get a very wide circulation in the GNOME world Attendees weren't emailed about it, so if you didn't find out about it on Planet GNOME or the Desktop Summit news, tough luck <-- j1mc has quit (leaving) And the two IRC meetings have had a limited number of participants I'd definitely be interested in hearing the reasons why Bastein's against, and why desrt & ebassi are leaning towards not having it, or changing its format That's fair It would be worthwhile to revisit the arguments for having it from 2007, and see how many still hold What was the input from that DS questionaire participants filled? fujii: The majority were in favor of another DS in two years. fujii, Most GNOME members who responded were in favour of repeating it biennally overall, people seemed positive about having another one. GNOME people slightly less-so than non-GNOME people. thanks for the info I do think it's important to have a very strong GNOME influence on the organisation for the next one yes, volunteers were lacking for the Desktop Summit. I'm not sure it makes sense to consider doing another one without some clear motivation from GNOME volunteers to make it happen. DS has tended to be more like Akademy than GUADEC and I think that might be a reason for some of the discontent even if people are positive on the questionnaire, that doesn't mean much if people don't step up to help. Well, if it's worth anything, the core team behind the Lyon bid includes a decent number of GNOME people (but it's far too early to lobby yet) all right dneary: so you think our next action ought to be to have a discussion on foundation-list? shaunm, I think so dneary, would you be agreeable to help moderate such a discussion? But beware: just the fact that it's up for active discussion will have an effect on relations with some KDE people I think they're already aware. There's a potential to use the discussion as a stick to beat us with When it's in a public forum (our members list is public, theirs isn't) right Just something to bear in mind - perhaps some policing of the discussion would be useful if it gets heated, as I'm sure it will Honestly, that's my main aversion to using the mailing list I've unsubscribed from foundation-list before because of the lengthy threads that were happening at the time I only recently re-enabled delivery of f-l, and I've left d-d-l disabled for the time being It was getting me down during the early Summer shaunm, I think the important thing is to allow views to be expressed, set a deadline, and then have a board meeting to decide, taking into account the member views right, so you understand hesitance to list discussions that are likely to get heated Bearing in mind, of course, that the people who will express their views are not necessarily a good sample of the membership shaunm, I think the consequences of the board taking a decision on this issue without consultation would be worse But of course, I understand the hesitance dneary: the board has, though. they've asked for feedback via email, the survey, irc meetings.... all right It's now 17:00 Anybody have any last-minute questions or comments? --> mccann (~jmccann@c-76-24-221-83.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) has joined #foundation All right, thanks for coming --> bkuhn (~bkuhn@pool-72-81-191-158.bltmmd.east.verizon.net) has joined #foundation We'll have another meeting in two weeks, on December 7