another way to look at Guadec

[Bart Decrem <bart eazel com>]

Hi everyone,

So a couple of times now we've started a discussion about what the agenda
for Guadec should be, but we haven't really "gained traction", as they
say.

Havoc and I were chatting tonight and we asked ourselves: what are the
big challenges facing Gnome going forward.  And we came up with 4
biggies. I think Havoc and others can probably do a much better job than
me articulating these issues, but here goes anyway:

1- "What is GNOME?"  This is the existential question.  GNOME has grown
in many different directions over the last few years, and perhaps its
time this year to revisit our vision for what GNOME is, and what it is
not, and try and get people behind it.  One great place to start this
discussion would be the meeting of the Board of Directors with the
Advisory Board.  We're going to have some people with really great
perspectives joining us for that discussion (incl Rob Gingell from Sun,
Bud Tribble, Michael Tiemann etc.) and could really benefit from their
insights.  Then we could continue that conversation as a roundtable
discussion during Guadec proper.

2- GNOME 2.0.  We need to get the GNOME 2.0 platform out this year and
could build an interesting track around that suite of issues.

3- Useability.  Man, we've got a long ways to go if GNOME is going to be
ready for grandma in, say, 2 years.

4- Interoperability.  If free software is going to take over the world,
there needs to be a LOT more collaboration with other free desktop
projects (KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice ....).  Let's build on the success of
the window manager spec and come up with a series of discussions about
specific things we can do to improve interoperability between GNOME and
other free software efforts on the desktop.

So there's 4 big important issues that GNOME needs to deal with over the
next year, and they would map quite nicely to an agenda for the advisory
board meeting and 3 tracks for Guadec.  Then there could be a 4th track
that's a bunch of misc items.

I think our goal should be by next Tuesday to reach consensus between the
board and the Guadec organizing team on the agenda, and then move into
full gear on the logistics of the conference (lining up speakers, raising
funds etc.).

Thoughts?

Bart