Dot article on activities needed, maybe more?

[Sebastian Kügler]

hey,

On Sunday 04 April 2010 23:34:40 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> 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.

I didn't know that, last time I asked you made clear to me that you were too busy, so 
my impression was that it remained on my plate. Glad to hear I misunderstood though, 
thanks for taking it on. 

Looking forward to reading the article, as an interested user. :)

> > 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.

Well, we talked about this before Tokamak 4 with the board, and we agreed that so 
many things happen during such a sprint, that more than one post-sprint Dot story 
would be good to reflect that in the public perception. Initally, the idea was to do 
one article per subsprint, Plasma, KWin, Oxygen. I've changed this idea to do topical 
stories since that reflects much better how we work during Tokamak.

> 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.

Maybe I didn't make this clear enough, but I really wrote this email as a Plasma team 
member asking fellow teammates for help, that's why I didn't CC: the board in the 
first place. If it came over like "Board dude says: Plasma has to pay back the KDE 
e.V. with Dot stories", that at least wasn't my intention.

I really don't think you need to tell me though how much contributors put into KDE, 
and how we cannot demand more. That feels ... backward given that I've invested 
muchos time in all of Plasma, Tokamak and KDE e.V.. Spreading the effort to make this 
whole system work is much needed.

> 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.

I agree I should've made the "we do cool stuff, now let's also tell people who 
weren't there", but then it wasn't the first time I asked around, so to me, maybe a 
clearer "I really need some help here, guys" seemed more promising.

> 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)

Well, yes, but that's only indirectly related (no reporting -> no justification for 
sponsor money -> no sprints due to lack of funds). It's a consequence though, not a 
goal.

> 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.

Wether or not these resources will be there is of course a matter of finding 
sponsors, which is again related to how well we can justify donations. Here's where 
the sprint reporting comes in.

I agree though that a smaller Tokamak would probably be easier to organise. This time 
around, Will has poured a lot of time into ground-organisation, and I got things 
organised on other ends. To me, this felt quite time-intensive, and I'm sure it was 
for Will.

> > 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.

Exactly, the simple math on my table is that I've personally committed to good 
reporting about Tokamak 4, and that as long as that's on my plate, there's less time 
to do other board tasks (like reporting, pushing forward the Gitorious negotiations, 
working on fundraising, and so on).

While I agree that lacking with quarterly reports is really not good, responding to 
an email where I ask teammates for help with reporting by telling me that there's 
doesn't contribute to this discussion in a constructive way.

I've actually done some work on this, compiled a Tokamak 4 scratchpage which 
containes a bunch of links, and material related to Tokamak 4 to give people some 
idea of what happened. This page is linked from the sprint overview page on 
communitybase. The scratchpage is here: 
http://community.kde.org/KDE_e.V./Sprints/Tokamak4

http://community.kde.org/KDE_e.V./Sprints has more information about sprints than the 
ev.kde.org page you linked. I've now merged these two pages (I wasn't aware that we 
had two of them) into the communitybase one and linked it from ev.kde.org. Should be 
clearer now (and the cb page actually listed all four Tokamaks :)

> > 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.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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