On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:04:04 -0500, Bryen M Yunashko wrote:
I don't think it's necessarily a fair assumption that if you can't be there, it's because you don't care.
In defense of Jos, I think he simply botched his own writing. I don't think he meant to imply that if you don't show up, you don't care. Probably better worded if said "if you care and you can find a way to make it to the Conference..."
I think you're probably right - that that's what he meant. Hadn't had any caffine yet this morning. :) I certainly didn't mean to "jump on" Jos.
There needs to be an alternative for those who do care but can't attend an in-person event in order to get their input involved.
I think slowly but surely, we're finding ways to do this. We have oSC coming up next month, Summit this weekend, COSCUP mini-openSUSE Conference in Taipei last month. Last year we made our first community appearance at Brainshare where we met you. We're showing up at more FOSS events than ever before. We may not have perfected yet how to leverage these in-person dialogues more effectively on a global basis, but I think we're getting there. Lessons are being learned and retooled as we go along.
Yeah, it's a question of doing both - and in-person meetings certainly have value. My point wasn't to say they don't (and if that's how it came across, I apologise profusely for that). The implication that if you want to be heard you need to be there in person (even if unintentional) diminishes a lot of voices in the community. Not so much for my own personal benefit (I provided my situation as an anecdote to explain one of many reasons why someone might not be able to attend), but for the benefit of the community as a whole.
Even a Google Hangout scheduled, or some time set aside on the IRC project channel would help get input from those who want to be involved.
Hangout only allows ten connections. I think Hangout can be used in some situations, but not as a replacement to a large conference gathering. We need to continue to explore ways to communicate with our community and users across many borders, cultures, and languages.
I know the capability is there to allow at least more viewers - it was used to promote viewing of the solar eclipse a few months back. It makes sense that the video side would be limited - and in such a scenario, the limit would be to the moderators of the discussion. But leveraging both synchronous and asynchronous communications channels is needed, because of time zone differences and people's availability. Gathering the right data isn't easy - and while it should be made / easier/, there is a difference between making it easier and excluding valuable input because someone has to use a different means to make their input. Just like putting a survey together - it's easy to say they don't provide value when the time spent creating it isn't sufficient to create a proper survey. It's harder to build a survey that actually answers the questions you want to answer, but he quality of data is better if you take the time to do it properly. :) Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org