Re: Virtual conferences and hackfests to replace physical events?

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

> There should only be a single physical conference, GUADEC most likely, that
> is held every single year.  But all other events should be virtual and
> online. Engagement should get together and get a list of current events and
> hackfest and begin the process of converting them to virtual events.
>
> Let me know what the team thinks...

I couldn't disagree more.

Hackfests and summits are where a lot of our progress gets made.
Getting enough interested people out of their daily routing and in a
room together for one, two or three days enables the high-bandwidth
communication that is needed to reach consensus around designs and
direction. It also just plain fun, and keeps us together as a
community of friends and not just a group of software developers who
happen to work on the same piece of software.

With my GTK+ maintainer hat on, the hackfest in Cambridge in April
2013 is almost solely responsible for the toolkit improvements in the
last year.

I do agree with is that we should strive to lower the barriers to
online participation in development; a large part of that is just
communication - publishing roadmaps,
replying timely and constructively in bugzilla, reviewing patches,
etc. But as much as we all like to think of ourselves as digital
creatures, abandoning physical get-togethers is not going to help.

Matthias