[Kde-science] Re: Encouraging participation

[Stuart Jarvis]

Hey!

On Sunday 17 October 2010 23:51:00 todd rme wrote:
> It seems to me that this mailing list is not being involved in the
> discussions for which it is intended.

Well, actually it's been very quiet in general. I've been busy, so thanks for 
kicking it back in to life

> I am not sure why this is the
> case, nor do I know how we could go about remedying the situation.
> Within the last week, there has been 3 science-related posts to the
> dot and planetkde.
> 
> http://dot.kde.org/2010/10/12/kde-marble-intergeo
> http://blog.cryos.net/archives/245-England-Open-Source-Chemistry-and-Real-A
> le.html
> http://kstars.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/kstars-can-now-use-opengl-and-some-
> thoughts/

None of which I knew about in advance either, for what it's worth

> The first two were about KDE presentations at major scientific events.

Well the second seems to be more a developer sprint and talking about KDE 
applications at a university. It's cool, but it sounds quite low-key.

>  In neither case was any notice posted to this mailing list, either
> before or after the event, yet in the first case there was a request
> for assistance posted to the marble mailing list.

That is unfortunate, in case someone here might have helped.

> The third is asking
> scientists and educators for input about whether to continue
> development of an application of a scientific nature (kstars), and
> once again this question was not posed to this mailing list.

Sure, that would have made sense.

> As I said, I am not sure exactly how to rectify this situation.  I
> think a good first step would be to post a prominent request asking
> that developers post such notices to this mailing list, especially if
> they are already posting it elsewhere (a simple copy and paste from a
> blog or forward from another mailing list would suffice).  The
> request, I think, would ask that the mailing list be involved with
> these things in particular (but not exclusively):
> 
> 1. People planning to present or promote KDE or a KDE application or
> tool at a conference of a scientific, mathematical, engineering, or
> other technical nature.  This is especially true if they are looking
> for assistance.

Yep - a local user of the software in question could easily turn up and demo 
it, talk about it etc

> 2. People looking for input about an application with of a primarily
> scientific, mathematical, engineering, or other technical nature.

Yes, we're not masses of people (about 60 last time I checked) but all those 
people will know people who could have an opinion

> 3. People looking for input from scientists about KDE or a KDE
> application or tool.

Sure, similar people to above.

> 4. People seeking assistance making use of KDE or a KDE application or
> tool for scientific purposes.

Yes, although that may be better dealt with via the forums. For developers 
from edu etc to want to follow this list I think it needs to stay quite low 
traffic and relevant to them.

> In order to guarantee that the people we are trying to reach see it,
> the request would probably need to be posted to planetkde, kde dot
> news, and at least these mailing list: kde, kde-announce, kde-devel,
> and kde-core-devel.

I can post to planet kde. Or would you like to write a 'guest post' (assuming 
you're not on planet kde yourself?). If so, just write something and send it 
to me.

For the Dot, it needs to be news really. However, Luca has been doing an 
interview with the developer of KBibTeX so it can be added in to that.

Re mailing lists, I think it makes sense to remind kde-edu of our existence. 
I'm not sure we'd reach more people working on relevant apps on the other 
lists, but I could be wrong.

> What does everyone here think?  Any suggestions, or does anyone think
> this is a bad idea period?

I think it's essential to spread awareness of KDE science apps, let scientists 
get a bit more involved and help the application teams - which is exactly what 
we're here for :-)

Cheers,
Stu