[kde-community] Evolving KDE

[Lydia Pintscher]

When I became president of KDE e.V. in September last year I made a
list of important things we need to do over the coming year. The
biggest item on this list was helping KDE and KDE e.V. get a better
understanding of where we are, where we want to go and how we want to
get there. Today, with the help of many others, I want to start this
process and I want you to be a part of it.


KDE began its life as a desktop project and Qt showcase back in 1996.
Since then KDE has evolved to become something more significant; the
modern KDE is a global community of technologists, designers, writers
and advocates producing some of the world's finest user-centric Free
Software. As we have evolved, so too has the world around us. The
user's experience is no longer restricted to the desktop. It has
expanded to the user's hands, wrists, glasses and more and will
continue to evolve into areas we have yet to imagine.
In KDE we want to be in charge of our future. We want  to have a clear
and honest approach for reacting to and influencing our shifting
environment, to continuously and consciously improve. We want to do
what is necessary to be the thriving community for creating technology
that will satisfy the needs of the next 20 year's users.
In order to shape our evolution it is crucial that the wider KDE
community understands its current position and where it aims to be in
the future. As the primary support structure within the KDE community,
KDE e.V. is instrumental in guiding that journey.
Through regular honest assessment and reaction to our environment the
KDE community continues to remain effective and relevant and ensures
that KDE's users will continue to Experience Freedom.

In order to provide the KDE community with the means to assess its
current position and find future direction we have devised this yearly
iterative process:
* First, we will gather extensive input from the wider community:
everyone from core contributors to casual contributors to users. This
will be done via various means, the main one being a survey, but also
including forums, mailing lists, IRC office hours and in-person
meetings; for example at Akademy.
* This input is then consolidated into a report. It is going to be
published before Akademy for public consumption. This report will
summarize community conclusions and potential areas of focus and
improvement.
* During KDE e.V.'s annual general assembly, the report is discussed
and some of the recommended focus areas are agreed on as goals.
* At a strategy sprint, core community members come up with
measureable suggestions to achieve those goals.
* Finally, there will be a wrap up session that will evaluate how much
progress we have made towards the goals we set ourselves. The
evaluation will be presented at the next general assembly meeting.
KDE e.V. will support this process and its outcome. The outcome of
this process are happy contributors and happy users.


I'd love for you to be a part of this process. As a first step please
help us by taking the time to fill out the survey at
http://survey.kde.org/index.php/survey/index?sid=752944&lang=en.
Further information will be published on http://evolve.kde.org. If you
have questions please don't hesitate to ask.


Cheers
Lydia


PS: A big thank you to the other board members, Paul, Cornelius and
many others who helped get this started.

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org