Dot article on activities needed, maybe more?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On April 4, 2010, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> For Tokamak 4, I'm still looking for someone to write an article about the
> work on activities that has been done there. I've not followed these
> sessions myself, and I'm also having a hard time to wrap my head around
> the topic on mailing list discussions. That means that someone else has to
> write this article.

as you already know, this one is on my plate. and i actually have time for it 
now that the javascript jam is all but wrapped up. i'll get it done in the 
next few days.

> Also, please don't forget that by asking the KDE e.V. for sponsoring this
> event (which has been the most expensive (non-Akademy) developer meeting
> in its history so far) we agreed to properly report on what we're doing
> and what has been achieved during the meeting.

to be perfectly frank, phrasing it in terms of "KDE e.V. gives us more money, 
now you have to provide more documentatin on the other side" is not the most 
useful way for the board to go about it. i also find it very distasteful how 
we are fairly constantly reminded how this was the most expensive meeting, as 
if we got away with something here or don't "deserve" it. this is especially 
galling as it isn't about deserving or not deserving at all. it's about 
investing where we think it's worthwhile to do so. i'd be completely fine if 
the board decided not to invest as much financial capital in Tokamak, and i've 
said so in previous emails. but when the board does put out that money, do not 
tie such strings to it.

KDE e.V. is not contracting out or investing in a third party. we are 
investing in ourselves. and the people we are investing in already give an 
amazing amount to the community and world at large through their efforts in 
KDE> it would be good to treat it like that rather than use "this is our (KDE 
e.V.'s) money, now you (contributors to KDE) earn it" language.

personally, i'd position it more as a "here are the commitments we make to 
ourselves when use our resources to hold these events. this gives us a good 
way to measure our own progress, communicate our exciting developments to the 
outside world and reassure our investors that they are doing the right thing." 
this puts the "us-them" line outside of KDE (it's KDE and the public; KDE and 
our investors). the result is that it will create a lot less stress between 
people inside KDE since we will be working together on it, rather than trying 
to meet the expectations of our task masters.

yes, it's the same end result in either case, but these things actually do 
matter when trying to get people to do things in a timely manner with quality.

putting pressure will also have the reverse effect desired here, i think. 
unless, of course, the desire is to do fewer and smaller KDE developer sprints 
in the future. (that's a valid goal, perhaps, depending on the budget 
expetations)

as it stands, i've already personally decided that the next tokamak will be 
dramatically smaller. i said as much to kevin on one of the days at T4 when he 
and i went for a walk to discuss various matters related to KDE. a smaller 
even will be easier to manage, we won't have to go looking for resources that 
quite evidently are not there for us to use and we won't have to deal with the 
"now you owe even more!" stuff.

> My personal stance (both as
> KDE e.V. Board member and Plasma hacker) is that we're lagging, again
> time-constraints on my side being the obvious reason, but then I've
> received very little in the sense of help with the work ahead, so I've
> been chipping away on it when my time allowed it. The bottom-line is that

and it's greatly appreciated.

> didn't meet the expectations of the KDE e.V. for sponsoring such an event,
> and secondly, because if we fail in reporting, it's harder to get
> companies to donate to the e.V. resulting in not enough available funds to
> fly everyone in to such an event.

yes. however, we're (the people at the sprints) only the first step in the 
reporting chain. that we don't have quarterly reports coming out of KDE e.V. 
atm doesn't help. that http://ev.kde.org/activities/devmeetings/ lists no 
meetings for 2010 and only 3 in 2009 (none of which are Tokamaks) doesn't help 
either.

> already), but it won't work in the future, and it's falling apart right
> now as you can see.

that's mildly dramatic, but i think we get your point.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
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KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks