Re: Promo's support for KDE booth at QtWS 2019

On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 8:26 PM Paul Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello Roman,
>
> I will give you that you do seem to be slightly confused about what my job
> entails and even what Promo is. First off: Paul =/= Promo. That would be
> presumptuous. I will go one further even: Paul + Ivana =/= Promo. Promo is a
> whole bunch of people that carry out different tasks. We even have a task about
> it:
>
> https://phabricator.kde.org/T8258
>
> Secondly neither Ivana nor I are employed as designers, layouters, writers,
> bloggers, or even event organisers.
>
> We do all those things from time to time, but, for Promo to be sustainable,
> community members will usually have to take the lead and use us like any other
> community human resource, a resource that sometimes will be available and
> sometimes won't. There is much more work to be done in Promo apart from
> designing, writing, sourcing and laying out stuff.
>
> Which brings me to my final point. It is something I have mentioned before, and
> please don't take this the wrong way. Again: if you want materials for the
> event you are attending, the best course of action is to make them yourself...
> Like everybody else.
>
> Check out the tasks for the Pycon India (https://phabricator.kde.org/T11430),
> or OpenExpo (https://phabricator.kde.org/T10539), or EduCode (https://
> phabricator.kde.org/T8122) or, indeed past editions of QtWS. You will see that
> the people interested in attending these events usually figured stuff out
> themselves.
>
> Sure Ivana and I have lent a hand when it came to advising on content, editing
> and proofreading texts, pointing towards designs available, figuring out
> budgets, etc.. Dropping everything else and creating a complex thing on
> demand? Not so much.
>
> It is usually up to the person who is in charge of the booth to figure out the
> details, work on the designs, order the material from providers, pay for it
> and later charge the e.V.. If this is you, you better get a move on and stop
> wasting time.
>
> I would like to point out that there is nothing personal in my non-
> availability to make the flyers. I am just sceptical as to whether it is worth
> my while to spend time on QtWS at all. I am not saying it isn't. I just
> haven't seen any data that confirms it is. I have not seen figures, I have not
> seen any charts that show a growth in the number of developers, companies
> using KDE technologies, or sponsors after the event. Again, not saying that it
> has no effect. I just have not seen any evidence of it.
>
> After three years, it gives me a pause, and I feel KDE is better served if I
> work on pending tasks that have a clearer and more concrete payback. I cannot
> in good faith go out of my way and put on hold other projects, to work on
> something that brings no clear gain for KDE,  just because I want to avoid
> irritating someone. Nope. Not doing that any more.
>
> Just a matter of priorities. I am sure you understand.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
> --
> Promotion & Communication
>
> www: http://kde.org
> Mastodon: https://mastodon.technology/@kde
> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdecommunity
> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde
>
>

Ok, you have made clear that you are not willing to provide us with
flyers for Qt World Summit 2019 and this is the case although Kai
asked you for them already two weeks ago and there are still this and
the next week to go. Mind you that the Promo wiki says:

"We are always in need of people to represent KDE at conferences,
local meetings, etc. All you need is a passion for using KDE and the
right materials. You provide the passion, we'll provide the rest!" [1]

But apparently that is not the case, or only if you find the event
worthy. The fact that you even consider Qt World Summit to be unworthy
and ask us for statistics about its usefulness for KDE (surely while
knowing that generating such is not feasible in our setting),
questions your suitability as marketing lead.

Additionally the question is why after you being contracted for more
than two years as our marketing point person you still don't have any
common marketing material readily available for such events? Instead
Kai had to ask around for getting material from the last few years
from different people having some stuff saved on their private
machines. And this material he needed then to modernize with updated
text and graphics.

To top this off what material you have is apparently on some private
cloud instances unavailable to other community or even Promo members.
You ask for our involvement but don't provide access. People are
questioning this now [2], but there should have been no need to ask
for this to begin with. And how much is there anyway and how well is
it organized? Who controls that? Certainly not we community or e.V.
members since we don't have access.

This all raises concerns that the money spent on your contract is not
a a good investment for the e.V. and I will bring this up in the
financial working group in the near future.

Lastly to clarify when I said "Promo" previously I mostly meant you in
particular Paul, since you denied Kai's request for help two weeks ago
and since you are the Promo coordinator. Or are you the Promo
coordinator? Can you confirm that? At least other people said they see
you as such and I do as well. But since you spend lots of time on
arguing what all you are not responsible for maybe that is also the
case here? So what are you responsible for?

Besides not having flyers readily available in the first place being
an issue, if you are the Promo coordinator and if your internal
organizational task T8258 [3] is somewhat up-to-date then you would
have had several persons listed there as writers and willing to help
on events that you could have asked to help us with flyers. You will
now again state why we should have done this ourselves and why this is
not part of your job, but managing such tasks or doing it yourself is
exactly what I see as your job.

CCing the e.V. members list since this is now about your contract with
the e.V. in general and not only about the flyers anymore.

[1] https://community.kde.org/Promo
[2] https://phabricator.kde.org/T11867
[3] https://phabricator.kde.org/T8258