Re: Summary of IRC meeting on 28-Apr-09

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

There was another section at the end between Alolita and me that I felt was very important. Alolita was talking about what would attract businesses. In particular, she thought the key was CIOs. To get them there she felt like we had to have their customers or partners talking about how they use GNOME technologies successful. Both Alolita and Sankarshan had a couple of good examples of companies using GNOME technologies that I thought would make excellent case study talks.

Just wanted to capture that. Perhaps Alolita and Sankarshan would be willing to contact those folks as potential speakers when we know where and when the conference will be held.

Best,

Stormy

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Sankarshan (সঙ্কর্ষণ) <sankarshan randomink org> wrote:

The formatted log is available from
<http://sankarshan.fedorapeople.org/asia-summit.log.html>

== BEGIN SUMMARY ==

(The IRC nicknames have been used in the summary with the assumption
that they are fairly evident to the readers)

After a round of greetings, emily started off the meeting asking
sankarshan about the agenda of the meeting.

sankarshan mentioned two specific items which have been discussed on
the list as well: [1] the expectations from the event and [2] a
discussion about the issues that the local team sees on the ground.
The GNOME "community" in India is somewhat small at this point of
time. Primary contributors are the ones who contribute and collaborate
on the GNOME Translation Project. There are a few developers as well.
Among the expectations from organizing a GNOME.Asia09 in India were -
[1] providing a structure that can enable the build up of
participation into GNOME and FOSS from India and, [2] engage the
(until now) ignored groups viz. OEMs/IHVs and ISVs to understand the
value of participating in GNOME and Freedesktop technologies alongside
providing them the ways to contribute.

emily had a question about how many GNOME folks does sankarshan know
in India and, their workplaces.

sankarshan (personally) knows around 19 folks of which 13 are GTP
contributors and, the rest work do GNOME-OpenSolaris work. The quantum
of participation into GNOME is significantly small.

BLUG_Fred asked if the conference was meant to increase the quantum.

Responding to a question from stormy, emily pointed out that at the
initial stages of GNOME.Asia08, the number of GNOME folks known to her
was around 3 and, she coordinated with the BLUG to generate more
interest and involvement.

BLUG_Fred added that the purpose was to attract the non-GNOME users
or, the passive ones.

Further to a small round of discussions about involving and
collaborating with LUGs etc, the question about value proposition for
the event was put forward by sankarshan.

emily mentioned that for GNOME.Asia08, there were 40 speakers talking
and over 40 different sessions, evangelism about the GNOME community,
and, talking about GSoC and, the large GNOME presence in GSoC.

stormy mentioned that the focus groups from 08 were potential
developers (mainly students) and users. terral added that the groups
were students and local businesses. emily provided the focus as : 1.
Users 2. Developers 3. Students 4. Communities

sankarshan pointed out that the virtuous cycle of developer doing
things around GNOME requires engaging with companies which would end
up students 'desiring' to be involved. The uptake of GNOME and, the
resultant increase in participation is not expected to happen without
that.

stormy, emily, BLUG_Fred expressed concerns about the local team not
believing in the event itself and hence, probably not being
enthusiastic and optimistic.

alolita provided a run-down of the target audience that the local team
has been thinking about : 1. Large and medium businesses 2. Startups
3. ISVs 4. Channel Partners 5. Professional users 6. Professional
developers 7. Students and hobbyists 8. Local and National Government.
alolita also provided inputs on the need to focus on businesses first
and, use the interest level generated to pull-in the developer
communities

PockeyLam provided an insight that while the GNOME.Asia summit could
adapt to the culture of a country, the objectives should not be
changed.

Since it was getting late, the meeting ended with a proposal to take
the discussion about the goals and the focus to another meeting.

== END SUMMARY ==


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