Recap of Inkscape's Hackfest in Pasadena

We've just completed another great hackfest here in rainy California,
and wanted to share some accomplishments of the event.

* The 1.0 release plan was fleshed out

  We will have a chill/frost/freeze sequence beginning March 15th, and
  will encourage a general focus on critical bugs.  We will have a
  "Final Features" list of a narrow list of allowed features to land
  before the 1.0 release.  A formalized definition of "blocker" bugs, vs
  "critical" bugs was agreed to, and will be made part of the release
  process.

* The Roadmap will be rejuvenated with a new monthly process.

  Going forward, a new team will be formed to meet monthly and
  review/approve/forecast feature development work.  This meeting will
  look at both "Big Ideas" that need long range planning, and smaller UX
  changes that need more than one person to decide.  It will also track
  status of what the extended developer community is up to, and thus
  help turn the Roadmap into more of a Forecast.

* A vision document on our UI strategy

  We see a need for a collaboratively developed document that lays out
  our intended design strategy for the UI.  We didn't get into details
  on how to make this happen, though.

* A "Big Ideas" tracker will be established in gitlab.

  (We need a better name for this.)  These will hold "blueprint" scale
  feature requests, that will need planning, analysis, and scheduling
  via the roadmap.  We will explore kanban-like approaches for managing
  this list in building the roadmap.

* For Mac OS/X, we want to make initial steps by 1.0

  Our first objective will be packaging a demo app.  This could be a
  scripted build of gtk3-demo-application, for example; that way if
  there are problems, it will be more familiar to upstream.  If this can
  be achieved by beta, we may be able to invest more to getting a
  package ready by 1.0.

  A follow up would be to convert the raw build script into equivalent
  CMake commands.  This should reveal lessons on how to do this for
  Inkscape.

  Additional steps were scoped out, and will need further definition in
  gitlab.  The master bug for this should probably move to the "Big
  Ideas" tracker at this point.

* For CMYK, Color Management, and PDF/Print, we have a detailed plan of
  development tasks needed.

  This will be published in the "Big Ideas" gitlab tracker.

* We will establish Paypal buttons for dedicated funds to start
  collection of donations for several targeted efforts:

  A. Native Mac OS/X Packaging
  B. Color Management
  C. Internships promoting diversity (e.g. Outreachy)

* Budget planning work was begun

  Areas of interest for funding include hackfests, increased conference
  attendance for speakers, increased Vectors team budget, and resources
  towards increased fundraising and sponsorship management.  The board
  will continue work via email.

* A brand/trademark issue exists which needs visibility

  We will be making this (and things people can do to help) public soon.
  Preparatory tasks were identified and split up between us.

* Video interviews of attendees were collected

  These videos will provide material for Vectors team outreach and
  communications efforts in coming weeks and months.

* A greeter guideline was conceptualized

  The initial interactions with a new contributor are critical for
  getting them happily engaged, and directed to where they want to
  work.  A personal touch counts, so we want actual people doing
  greeting work.  The greeter guideline will give easy reference info
  that can be given in chat, etc. for how to get involved in different
  areas.

* Teacher curriculum grant program

  We discussed using grant programs to develop teaching materials for
  educators to bring Inkscape into the classroom.  This felt out of
  scope for us right now, but we may revisit the idea some day in the
  future.

* Codebase subsystem contacts

  It can be unclear who to contact for advice when working on certain
  areas of the code.  We will try to identify in per-directory README's
  the individuals who have experience with that code and who are
  available to be contacted with questions.


SCALE