Re: Free Desktop Communities come together at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

[Stormy Peters <stormy peters gmail com>]

Here are the survey results with a summary I did initially.

Note that this was a survey, not a vote.

Stormy

216 people responded (142 attended)
138 GNOME people (94 attended)

Of the GNOME people:
* 59% said it went well, 15% said it didn't
* 56% said we should co-locate next year, 35% said no
*
26% said we should co-locate in the future but not next year, 31% said
no (Note that 41 of the 59 people that didn't answer were people that
said we should colocate next year. Adding them in to the yeses here
would give us a 57% think we should colocate at some point.)
* 44% said we should do it even if we lose profit, 32% said no
* 55% collaborated with a KDE person, 30% did not

Of the GNOME people who attended:
* 71% said it went well, 17% said it didn't
* 53% said we should co-locate next year, 44% said no
* 31% said we should co-locate in the future but not next year, 30%
said no
* 41% said we should do it even if we lose profit, 39% said no
* 68% collaborated with a KDE person, 28% did not

Of the GNOME people who collaborated with a KDE person:
* 78% said it went well, 7% said it didn't
* 67% said we should co-locate next year, 29% said no
* 28% said we should co-locate in the future but not next year, 25%
said no
* 53% said we should do it even if we lose profit, 32% said no
* 55% collaborated with a KDE person, 30% did not

Of all respondents, including KDE folks:
* 65% said it went well, 13% said it didn't

* 63% said we should co-locate next year, 30% said no

* 27% said we should co-locate in the future but not next year, 32%
said no

* 55% said we should do it even if we lose profit, 24% said no

* 55% collaborated with a KDE /GNOME person, 29% did not

Comments on what people liked:

	Ability to attend a larger variety of talks.
13	There wasn't so much join activities in the program, just the general track, no more people from kde attending GUADEC talks and GNOME people attending to GUADEMY. Guadec should maintain Warming up.
16	I can finally see KDE hackers that don't work for my employer.
17	The cross desktop tracks where potentially interesting and useful.
21	Sharing keynotes and interesting talks with KDE folks is great. I think we should destroy the 'invisible' wall between 2 comunities and what better than co-locating?! Also, to have beers with them is fun :)
22	- The possibility to see some of the things the "competition" is working on that I otherwise wouldn't have seen. - It provides a "single entity to talk to" with regard to (potential) sponsors.
23	more people with different views. Lots of projects are suddenly interested in cross-desktop functionality. Sharing of technology.
27	Others that might not necessarily come to a GNOME or KDE came to the desktop summit. Could also discuss things like FreeDesktop.org.
30	It was good to bring both projects together, especially from a perception standpoint.
43	I went to GUADEC in 2008, What I like the most is people gathering in the same place but with different points of view. If you add KDE developers in the same rooms, that could be very interesting.
44	nothing
47	:(
59	valuable happenstance and random cross-fertilisation
65	Try to get a coordinated vision
68	Good collaboration on the freedesktop front
69	The very good organization and the increased amount of social activities. It's great, but we shoulnd't feel obliged to keep doing it.
77	This is an important step in bringing the GNOME and KDE communities closer so that there is less redundancy in core technologies. The results will not be apparent immediately, though, since there are lot of bridges to cross before we reach the level of cooperation that we potentially can.
80	The opportunity to see what kde is doing. However, I think we can organize better to encourage more cross destop collaboration
86	I think it was great, but not valuable enough to do every year.
90	Having all the people in one place was good. It creates some synergies and was rather successful for a first attempt. There is plenty to learn from this first desktop summit and the experience next year will be far greater. I think the participants and even more so the presenters who took part of the cross-desktop talks should be commended for their efforts. Great start
91	I thought that it was great to have people that use the same technologies in the same room.
92	To know people from the other project and to lern from them what they really do and their reasons
99	Fine, but we need more crosspolinations and cross-social activities :-)
100	flamewars!
101	Cross desktop talks do get a cross desktop audiance, therefore, less traveling to get your idea across. But that is only if the other community is responsive and shows up at the bof.
102	Crosspolination Better empathy because meeting in person «the other guys» More contents for the crossdesktop track
104	The colocation meant that a larger, more comprehensive venue was practical, which meant better rooms and infrastructure for both conferences. That was good.
107	Having people in the same place. Good story for sponsors. A broader conference opens up new potential sponsors for us. Things I didn't like: Organisational issues. No common vision for the conference. Two sites. Perceived inequity in where money came from.
109	creating interaction between the two communites
122	I liked having the opportunity to follow a bit what the KDE guys are up to, and use some of their ideas to improve the GNOME project. Also, even though I personally didn't talk much with KDE people, it might be really useful to talk to them and come up with a common ground for the free desktop.
126	The cross-desktop discussions, interesting talks and meeting a lot of new people!
127	I liked the possibility to see how another community, which has the same interests and problems, solves their issues.
130	A project that I'm working on benefited tremendously from discussions that took place with KDE and GNOME developers.
133	Meeting some freedesktop experts. They may have not been at Guadec only.
144	cross desktop was cool meeting new people
147	having people from both projects at the same location makes easy to exchange
148	Cross Desktop talks
152	It's great to see people I ordinarily wouldn't at conferences like this.
153	More crossdesktop colaboration. Meeting people from other projects.
182	Great place. Caught up with some old KDE friends Talked to KDE folk doing similar things
186	Good to encourage cross desktop discussions.
190	Ability to talk to KDE folks about opportunities to share data and technologies, although I had to rely on relatively few people I already knew (well, hired) from KDE to make introductions. Moving forward on freedesktop.org unsticking with a KDE/GNOME/fd.o meeting.
192	It was a very good opportunity to share experiences, and talk to people you would otherwise not have been able to meet because of a specific conference being a personal priority.
194	the fd.o bof
198	Chance to talk with the equivalent project on the KDE side.
203	So many intelligent people to talk to
209	Loads of new people I didn't know. Maybe it was a bit too longish.. And maybe it would have been better to officially split it into warmup/core/cooldown like guadec was in the past.
210	The opportunity to talk to more developers in other desktops.
212	N/A
213	Was nice, if a bit confusing as to what was cross-desktop and what wasn't.
214	May not be a technical reason, but the breaks in between and longer afternoon breaks provided some much needed rest and conversation room. I felt that I made a lot of good connections and even wrote some good code during these breaks, as I got to mingle with both GNOME and KDE folks.
215	we had some very useful bofs with folks from both sides, but otoh i was a bit disappointed that kde didn't bother to send anyone to some bofs wher we really could have used them, such as the gst bof and the audio bof, and others.
216	Maybe the fact that I now know some of the KDE developers and that it's hard to reason with them.
217	Getting to meet new people, discuss ways to share more infrastructure between Gnome and KDE.
220	I came to know about kde projects like Akonadi, Tracker. I met kde community people.
221	I work for a distributor. Although we distribute GNOME with our OS, we are interested in making sure KDE works well on our OS and interoperates smoothly with our GNOME offering. I would probably never go to a purely KDE conference, so it was a great opportunity to discuss issues with the KDE/Qt developers.

Feedback on content and schedule:

Trying to organise both conferences simultaneously may have contributed to the organisational problems that cropped up. It would have been good to have a single unified timetable, rather than effectively segregated conferences.
13	I don't liked the lightning talks approach, there should be some panels and join BoF, i think we should push something like last GUADEMY to promote the collaboration of developers of both projects.
16	We need the GNOME and KDE schedules to match. Otherwise, you never coincide with the other project in the hallways. We need the schedules to be published together, without splitting them into "KDE schedule" and "GNOME schedule" (both online and offline). We need to physically force people to mingle. Put GNOME talks on one side of the building, KDE on the other side. For the next session, switch them around. This forces you to see the other project's hackers in the middle common area. There needs to be a common area in the (physical or psychological) center between the conference rooms. That needs to be the hacking / coffee / sitting area. There needs to be a common bulletin board at the center of the common area. Print the schedule on the back of the name tags, so you always have it with you!
19	Invite XFCE guys and run freedesktop.org panels!
21	I would like to see other desktops also, as I feel that XFCE or LXDE should be here. The schedule was OK for me but maybe less parallel talks will make both comunities stay together for longer on talks instead of big keynotes together and the rest each one with the community they belong. We must destroy some myths around each distro, accept the others do and finish all the stupid flames like "we did this before", "gnome-3 will never see the light", "kde4.0 was even worse than winME"...
22	Would have liked more cross-desktop sessions in the spirit of cooperating in freedesktop.org style.
23	Expected more cross desktop feeling throughout. Felt like a CrossDesktop-weekend with a separate GUADEC/aKademy week attached.
27	Keynotes should be spread out - one per day.
30	After the cross-desktop talks, it was my opinion that the groups split with little to no interaction.
32	I think regardless of whether we co-locate or not over the coming years, would be great to have some sort of team building type of excersize, like a treasure hunt or something similar. Teams would be randomly chosen thus promoting discussion between disparate GNOME members which may not occur during party nights out.
37	Didn't actually talk to KDE people. I feel like we lost our big team-building venue.
40	It seemed that a lot of conference attendees deliberately arrived after the cross-desktop days were over. The camaraderie of past conferences was missing.
43	Unfortunately I didn't attend (I'm a Gnome member BTW)
45	Did not like the idea of only 30min talk slots with no breaks to move rooms.
47	:-|
50	There was only one KDE talk that I wanted to see (a presentation from a designer) and I missed it because I wasn't looking at the KDE talks schedule.
59	maybe remove the deliniation between two tracks?
65	Increase the cross-desktop track
68	Tracks should be focussed on freedesktop stack than the GNOME/KDE stack.
69	Was okay, though people mostly went to the talks affiliated to their desktop.
71	If co-locating means just having 2 separate events in the same city, I'm against the idea of co-locating again. But if it means getting more cooperation and collaboration between the 2 projects (much more than what was done this year), I think we should try to do it again.
77	I would like to see a more explicit GUADEC/aKademy split and a longer Cross-Desktop part, so developers can clearly have a schedule where they're working only on the stuff they love, and another where the focus is cooperation. This might not be immediately viable, but in the next 2-3 events, it should be possible to get a lot closer to achieving this.
79	It was very confused, because of the split.
90	Yes. It would be great to have tracks more focused on technologies than the specific projects. Not too many of course. But many subjects are relevant for both desktop environments (kernel integration, device management, Xorg, multimedia, and more) Activities that would break up the projects and desktop environments teams would be great. Promote a set of events where people can be affiliated by everything but their desktop environment project (nationality, area of interest, ...)
91	I thought that some of the GNOME specific scheduled items should have been scheduled as cross platform.
97	Please choose much, much less expensive locations for future conferences. Consider both flights from other continents and expenses.
99	Good, but the more, the better
101	Co-locating made the schedule lasts for ever. A week should considered the maximum length ever and not start on friday. I had to attend to half of the conference because it was too long.
102	The more, the better!
104	The keynotes were necessarily non-relevant to both KDE and GNOME, which is OK, but perhaps not something we want every year. My area of work isn't at all cross-desktop, so I can't comment on how well the cross-desktop things have gone.
107	Too KDE & GNOME centric. We should organise by function, not affiliation, to get people interested in the same things together. We should also outreach to Xorg so that we can fix issues with them, and application vendors who can give us feedback on how they use the platforms. One conference, not two co-hosted, should be the goal.
109	it was hard to attend to a kde keynote/talk, as i did not want to miss a GNOME talk. this could be improved
117	People should have been able to submit to a cross-desktop submission system and not one or the other.
122	I think having lightning talks on the first day has been a bad idea, and I would have liked to see the core cross-desktop talks straight after the first days' morning keynotes. The rest of the schedule has been fine.
125	The cross-desktop tracks felt a bit like alternating GNOME/KDE tracks. :-)
126	Should try to have more cross-desktop talks and maybe some lightning talks about KDE for GNOME people and vice versa.
127	I'd try to have the specific content and parties at first, because I assume that the people from one community haven't seen theirselves for a year or so and need time to catch up on each other. Once that's finished, I think cross-desktop content and parties are ready. So have a schedule focused on collaboration at the end of the conference.
130	Don't invite Stallman to talk again. :D
133	I would like to see more weight to the mobile day (part of core).
144	content and schedule was alright, but I would love to have a day or two where there is no interfering gnome and kde talks. What I mean is: I would love to go to kde talks but if that means missing gnome talks I definitely won't do it. I would have liked to go to the akademy keynote as well, but that interfered with guadec keynotes.
147	there was not enough cross desktop talks
150	The cross desktop section of the program was a joke, almost no real cross desktop talks. If one are to ever try this again one need to actively solicit talks from relevant people and groups, like X.org and so on.
152	I think the content was balanced, but it would be nice to get mroe stuff that was of interest to both sides. Combined parties are a good idea, but there were just too many of them, too close together.
153	Not really.
157	While I did not think that co-location was an unmitigated disaster, I am not sure that the few benefits that occurred outweigh the negatives associated with co-location.
182	Cross desktop talks wasn't really cross desktop I'm really worried that KDE is pushing for Tampre too much. While it may end up being the best place they seem unwilling to listen to other proposals. e.g. they have made up their mind.
184	Due to the number of talks, I think it was too difficult for GNOMErs to attend KDE talks, and I imagine that it was the same the other way around
186	The schedules shouldn't have been seperate. If we're going to colocate then having an opportunity to see what is going on with the other guys easily would have encouraged people to mingle. Seperate parties wasn't a good idea either, make people have a good time together. :)
190	There should be one unified schedule, to let everyone see what talks they could attend on the other side.
192	The talks should not be separated in two different tracks. I believe the tracks should be logical grouping of topics (say, semantic, and indexing), instead of the two different 'conferences'.
194	not really. there was very little overlap and it just meant that good venues were harder to find. c'est la vie.
198	Organize some GNOME state-of-the-art talks in the KDE conference and the other way around. After the summit, i still don't know what are the hottest topics in the KDE community.
202	Don't change the venue half-way through the conference.
209	The cross desktop track was packed in only two days, we should have a lot more of it. And there were too many "Gnome/kde stuff for the other desktop" and not enough joint things. Maybe encourage gnome/kde people who work on similar stuff to make joint presentations (would also force them to talk together more).
210	It wasn't as useful as it could, because of separate talks related to one or another desktop.
212	I think the way the schedule was laid out wasn't really conducive to cross-desktop pollination. There were separate tracks and I don't think many people looked at the track they weren't affiliated with. It would have probably worked better if the talks were interleaved on the same schedule. Still, I don't think there's a lot of value to be had anyway.
213	Seemed OK, but I would have loved to have seen more structure around getting things done between desktops.
214	I felt that the schedule was overly populated early on with "popular" talks and that by the time we got to the last 2-3 days, we had less popular talks scheduled and the attendance was decreased considerably.
215	quite a few of the "cross-desktop" talks were not cross-desktop at all. it would have made sense to drop those and replace them by some of the cross-desktop related bofs instead.
217	I think we should have some BoFs dedicated to finding ways we can maximize overlap between Gnome and KDE, to help make us more interoperable and reduce overhead. Specifically, I think we should pick well-defined areas of overlap and try to find agreement on deprecating all but one solution.
218	I wasn't there; I just think co-locating sounds like a good idea. Reading Planet GNOME, there wasn't much talk about the co-location (except for occasional "i met some kde guys"). Maybe because it's the first time. But for the future events, I'd like to see projects being discussed, joint hack sessions etc.
220	Cross desktop talks were good but other wise i attended mostly gnome sessions.
221	More cross-desktop talks would be good. Without giving up on the unique style of both desktops, sharing ideas and interfaces that allow applications to interoperate is good for both projects.

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com> wrote:

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Philip Van Hoof<pvanhoof gnome org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 21:06 +0530, Srinivasa Ragavan wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Philip Van Hoof<pvanhoof gnome org> wrote:
>> > Apologizes for asking.
>> >
>> > When was the community consulted about this decision?
>>
>> There was a survey request on the foundation list about the opinion
>> from the members.
>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-July/msg00006.html
>
> Aha, thanks.
>
> Are the results of that survey available?

Looks like there is at least a FAQ addressing the reasons for the decision:

http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2009-08-desktop-summit-conclusion.html

(scroll down a lot)

I'd be curious to see the survey results, too.  I do not disagree with
the decision to split, though I think we could have done the joint
conference a bit better.

Sandy

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