Re: GNOME.Asia focus, strategy and medium to long term plan

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Fred:

> While we're approaching our 3rd conference in Asia, it would be nice to
> consider what we want to achieve (except suffering from organizing
> conferences with third parties). My understanding from the various talks
> I have had with Emily is that we are trying to encourage, attract,
> foster, build a GNOME community in Asia.
>
> So what is a GNOME community? Is it GNOME users, is it GNOME developers,
> is it both?

I would say it is both, and more.  Read on...

> Do we want as what happened in Beijing, to create a lot of Gnome User
> Groups?

Yes,  think the creation and growth of strong GNOME users groups in Asia
is a good (but not the only) goal for GNOME.Asia.

> Do we want to create communication channels, and if so, would they be
> users support vs dev support (or both).

I would think both.

> I have been reading the recent posts on Guadec and I am under the
> impression that people tend to go again and again every year, creating a
> sense of belonging. I don't feel we have focused so much on getting this
> core group of developers (or if so, we haven't quite succeeded yet) in Asia.

Although GUADEC stands for the GNOME Users And Developers European
Conference, it is much more strongly focused on developers than users.
Most of the people who tend to go again and again are developers.  So
perhaps this comparison is a bit of apples and oranges.

It would be good if GNOME.Asia could foster a stronger GNOME developer
community, and provide GNOME developers in the Asian region with a
forum to meet and work together.  Perhaps more hackfest like activities
would help in this regards.

For example, in past years various hackfests have been scheduled
around GUADEC or Boston Summit events.  Making plans to have a hackfest
just before or after the GNOME.Asia event could help to draw more
developers to the event, and provide for more speakers.

> I'd like to get a bit of feedback from people on this list before
> continuing and then maybe work together toward a better strategy to
> strengthen our efforts.

There are a few other ways that GNOME.Asia could help to strengthen
the GNOME community:

1) To develop better relationships with Asian governments, especially
   ones with an interest in FOSS.  For example, at GUADEC we had
   "Open Desktop Day" to meet with government officials, which was
   very productive and helped to spread the word to this audience.

2) To foster awareness and usage of GNOME in the developing world.
   Perhaps it might be a good idea to try and plan a future GNOME.Asia
   event in an Asian country that would particularly benefit from this
   sort of attention.

3) Developing stronger localization for Asian languages.  Perhaps it
   would be good to plan a future GNOME.Asia event in a country or
   region with poor language support, and to try and get people
   interested in helping with this.

Another thing to consider is that the GNOME and KDE communities are
having combined conferences in Europe with the Desktop Summit.
Perhaps we should consider working more closely with the KDE community
and have a combined Asian summit, and perhaps get support and funding
from both the GNOME and KDE communities.

Lastly, I very much agree with Pockey that it would be smart to set
up better communication channels (e.g. email, IRC channels, etc.) to
provide more focused forums for users, developers, people working on
localization, etc.

Brian