Akademy 2010: Wrap-up (with travelogue!)

As promised, I’m finally getting around to my final post on the Akademy 2010 experience in Tampere, Finland.  For those interested, I’ll cover most of the journey start to end.

My participation began with a request from Claudia Rauch to the community council for submissions from the maemo.org community.  The chair at the time, Valerio, posted a plea at the discussion forum… which went unanswered.  So, volunteering idiot that I am, I decided to give it a shot.  My proposed talk on user engagement was accepted, and I began an open presentation development process at both maemo.org and Meego.com forums. 

Skewing Positive

Other than Akademy 2010 postings, the content here has admittedly been largely negative lately.

When I re-read that statement it sounds so passive, as if the blog writes itself without my input.

I can lay the blame for the trending tone here on the subjects, especially Nokia, for inspiring such downward feelings… but ultimately a writer has to decide how to approach a topic.  Cynical sorts will label perspective-finding as “spin” but perish the thought– I can speak Marketinian with the best of them but it’s not my primary language.  That would be Geekese.

Anyway it’s time to analyze the landscape, shift gears again and get back to contributing more toward solutions than problems.  Stay tuned.

Akademy 2010: Day 5

I didn’t have much to report for days 3 and 4, sorry.  I had planned to attend the Qt workshops on day 3 but got engaged in a really fascinating offline discussion with Nokia’s Knut Yrvin instead.  Day 4 I spent in my gracious host’s apartment suffering from some bug of the human variety.

Today I felt a little better which was good, because I was highly interested in attending the NEPOMUK workshops.

Akademy 2010: Day 2

I just sat through a talk by Aaron Seigo where he outlined the challenges for KDE.  Very stimulating discussion.

As a newcomer to KDE I was struck by the singular fact that nothing he said was new per se.  When he kidded the community for falling short with documentation and global teaming I was put in mind of our similar struggles in Maemo.  So in one sense it was refreshing that that we weren’t the only ones to battle managerial sort of demons and in another frustrating in that his points appear to reinforce the idea that open source communities can’t establish the same degree of discipline as corporate efforts.

Akademy 2010: Day 1

I’m typing this up toward the end of Akademy 2010‘s day 1 in beautiful Tampere, Finland, so please forgive any signs of weariness.

The day began with Valtteri Halla promoting Meego and demonstrating how the project has already benefitted KDE, Akademy’s coordinating organization, with upstream development for KOffice and other applications.  From there came talks along the tracks of community and mobility, including mine on user engagement (presentation on slideshare; project site here).  Even Maemo was mentioned!

I was nervous about my talk but while it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, it wasn’t the disaster I feared either.  I’ll take that.  😉

Input on a feedback ecosystem

I am about to plunge this often-erratic blog over a sharply-defined edge and into a sea of clear certainty.

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk feedback.

How many times have you been presented with a survey in which you were highly interested but failed to complete?

How often do you play a song you enjoy yet neglect to rate it?

How many software bugs have plagued your mobile device of choice and were not followed by reports sent to the developer(s)?

I think it’s safe to say that the one aspect of feedback that keeps our complaining (or praising) confined to unproductive quarters is the frequent disconnect between the usage and the feedback opportunity.  At least in my experience, far too often the feedback mechanisms are separated from the origin of their need, especially when that starts with a mobile device.  The greater the gap, the less likely we may be to take the step that can actually serve to prevent future aggravation.