Re: Repost: [desktop-devel-list] Guadec focus.

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi again,

> Miguel wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> >     Summary: I think that we should make a departure from the
> >     traditional Linux-like conference which has been centered 
> >     around new developments, and instead focus on explaining our 
> >     technology to newcomers.

I agree, but how does that fit in with the vision of having papers formally 
presented & written up & published in proceedings? Is that inconsistent? Or 
would proceeding containing articles like "How to embed bonobo objects in you 
libglade/python apps" be interesting for proceedings?

And do you mean "newcomers" in the sense of developers not familiar with the 
architectural framework, or users not familiar with GNOME? Should we be 
encouraging papers like "getting the most out of GNumeric"? How do tutorial type 
talks fit in with the idea of publishing papers?

> >      Maybe we should focus more on making GUADEC have sessions
> > describing technologies, and our focus should not be
> > paper-presentation, but trying to find people interested in doing one
> > hour or two hour sessions on GNOME and related technologies.
> >      I think that we should make GUADEC a forum where people can learn
> > *mostly* about existing GNOME technologies and how they can apply this
> > to their software, and then you can sprinkle it with researchy or
> > two-point-next features.

OK - so it seems you would like to move away from the idea of papers & 
proceedings & making the conference pseudo-academic... what kind of ways should 
the conference be organised, then? A papers-oriented conference gives the 
organisers the chance to know well in advance what's going to be presented, that 
the presenters are prepared, allows the organisers to split things up into 
tracks, have published proceedings, etc.

Typically LUGs that organise conferences which are based around presenting free 
software to a larger public invite people according to the aims of the 
conference - should we decide what kind of things we want to see presented, and 
invite the best person for the job to present something?

Or do we modify a "call for papers" to a "call for conferences" or "call for 
workshops" and continue to get abstracts, and ask people to (say) submit their 
slides in advance? How do you see the workshop/presentation opriented conference 
working from an organisational point of view?

> >      Some ideas for the kind of sessions I would like to see are:

<snip>

I'll add a couple more:

Bonobo components (making them, reusing others, accessing stuff like this via 
bindings)

Docbook XML - Writing docs with it, and an overview of the tools needed

I like the idea, I'm all for more accessible conference.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
bolsh gimp org