Re: Fwd: Reminder: FOSDEM CrossDesktop DevRoom 2013 - Call for Talks

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Christophe:

On 12/10/12 04:30 AM, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
> Hey Brian,
> The FOSDEM devroom has always been organized like that, ie with me
> taking care of the organization for GNOME, and doing it on GNOME mailing
> list. Over the years we evolved from a GNOME-only devroom to a joint
> devroom with KDE, to a devroom where we try to gather as many DEs as
> possible.

Thanks!  The work you and others are doing is great.  When I first
complained, I incorrectly thought that no effort was made to contact
freedesktop.org.  I apologize for the confusion.  I should have asked
you guys about it off-line before raising issue.

Having been involved with organizing two Desktop Summit events, I have
seen a lot of the benefits of cross-desktop planning.  But, also, that
there are many ways this needs to be improved.

One problem with cross-desktop events is that they, historically, seem
to represent only a handful of Desktop communities very well.
Inclusiveness is something to strive for, and not something to attain or 
achieve.  So we can't always rely on what has worked in the past.

> I'm not sure doing part of the devroom organization on a freedesktop
> mailing list would help a lot as we need to make sure the call for talks
> goes to the right communities rather than expecting people to watch
> freedesktop mailing lists.

I'm not sure why anyone might think having discussion on a freedesktop
mailing list would prevent making sure a call for talks was forwarded
to the right places.  I have often heard people complain that there is
no point to doing planning on the right forum because that forum seems
too dead.  The gnome marketing mailing list suffered from that problem
a few years ago, and seems more useful after encouragement.

> What kind of planning would you have expected to see on freedesktop MLs?

It will be interesting to see some blog write-up after the event to
learn how effective the currently used approach works to draw people
from different communities.  Survey data from attendees provided some
real valuable input about how The Desktop Summit was working.  Perhaps
something more simple is appropriate for this event, but I do hope some
useful metrics will be tracked to measure how effective we are.
Perhaps any such discussion might be the sort of appropriate one to
consider having on a freedesktop.org forum.

> Would you have liked to be involved in the organization and feel you
> cannot do it the way it has been done?

No.  I feel like I am involved with the organization just by having a
discussion with you about it.  Instead I am hoping to encourage
consideration of ways to improve.  The two Desktop Summit events that I
helped to organize were both dominated by GNOME and KDE people, so I am
not sure that the approaches used in the past work the best.

Brian