This is a meta-task. The aim is to systematically make our way through the stuff we discussed in the BoF at Akademy 2024, see what we can get done ourselves, and what needs to be communicated to other teams or WGs for them to carry out.
Topics Dicussed
Funding
- Regarding the pop-up,he idea of somehow notifying institutions that use Plasma on a large scale (schools, public institutions, that winery in Australia Kevin was talking about...) so they could turn it off from the outset
- Also the idea of moving the time of year it pops up to something other than December has been discussed, the reasoning being to avoid it coinciding with our traditional end of year funding drives (and the fact that recent experiences seem to indicate that the time of year may be irrelevant to when individuals are willing to give)
- We agreed that we should help the fundraiser team to recruit new members (initial tasks to do this listed in TODOs below)
Plasma 6.2 announcement
- Plasma 6.2 will be released on 8 Oct. 2024.
- Nate has thoughtfully created a wiki page that collects all the noteworthy stuff. if you are dev or just happen to know of something else you think should be included, just add it there.
- We'll build up the text from that source and have it on collaborate so others can revise, tweak, etc.
"This Week in Apps" blog series
- @ngraham will stop including news regarding apps on his weekly "Adventures in KDE" series and will concentrate exclusively on Plasma
- To make up for this we will create a weekly (? or maybe bi-weekly?) "This Week in KDE Apps" which will collect the most newsworthy progress in the apps KDE puts out.
- We want to keep it short and easy to generate, so more than an article like blog post, it will be a list of bullet points that expands the news into plain English (where possible) and add a link to the relevant merge request, or whatever for those who want to delve deeper.
Social Media
Twitter is becoming more and more of a hellhole of hate and disinformation by the minute and users are fleeing in droves. We cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to follow us there, so we will be removing all links to our Twitter accounts from websites, email signatures and other media forthwith and we will be encouraging other projects do the same. In a not distant future we will stop posting altogether or only post to inform people of alternatives. We will not close the account (and advise nobody close their accounts) to avoid it be taken over by squatters.
As Mastodon is still a pretty specialised, so we will expand our outreach to social media outside our bubble by creating (or recovering) accounts for kde_community on Threads and BlueSky.
I (@paulb) am typing this through gritted teeth.
Design template for presentations
It has come up several times that some people who speak at events would like a template for slides. We will ask the VDG to come up with something and link to it from the wiki where we have our other resources so everybody can use it.
Encourage Local Grassroots Activism
We have found that direct human contact with non-techie social organisations can work really well. The novelty of Free software and what it provides is eye-opening for those not within the FLOSS bubble and often provides solutions for problems that having been dragging them down for years.
The idea here is to encourage our own community to seek organisations (local NGOs, religious orgs, schools, youth and senior clubs, charities, etc.) and offer talks, workshops, install parties, and so on, with the aim of sparking participation of their communities with ours.
This should probably be a task of its own, but let's list it here to get it started.
TODOs
- Recruit members for fundraising team (@ognarb , @paulb , @aniqakhokhar )
- Write _convincing_ text for recruitment call
- Publish recruitment call internally on community mailing list
- Make it a bit more public by posting to Discuss
- Create Plasma 6.2 release announcement
- Create 1st "This Week in KDE Apps" post
- Create blog space on KDE blogs (@ognarb , @redstrate , @tfella )
- Collect list of items
- Write template for intro and footer
- Adjust social media platforms to current situation
- Remove X/Twitter from all websites, signatures and other media
- Open/Recover (and start posting to) accounts for (@paulb , @bcooksley , @aniqakhokhar , @linuxpusher )
- Threads
- BlueSky
- Include Threads and Bluesky links to websites, signatures and other media
- Create Template for Slides
- Talk to VDG to get design (who?)
- Link to Download from wiki
- Build grassroots participation through local orgs (@paulb , @aniqakhokhar )
- Develop coherent strategy
- Engage KDE Networks
- Write a guide and lists of things people can do
- Provide support/advice to people who take the step