It took a while but I'm away from a desk sometimes 16 hours at a time. With the week-end storm in the Northeast of the USA these past two days have been on the road.

I'll post my answers here as formatting an e-mail leaves something to be desired.


I haven’t participated directly in the sprint process in the past so any input from me with regard to improvements or flaws would be subjective. I have reviewed the tasks and results from past sprints as reported in the WikI page found @ >> http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints
It seems to me that like all things successfully done, it involves planning, execution, and follow up. While each stage is necessary, the best people in each of those stages are not necessarily the best people for all of those stages.

Your question merges two of these stages and supposes that it is an either or proposition. If that is the current thinking then it will always be either well planned, or over executed, or vice versa and proper follow-up will be ignored altogether.

From reading the planning and review meeting logs found here [/I]>> http://maemo.org/maemo-meeting/ [I]I find that this isn’t the case; each meeting usually begins with a follow-up and review of the past sprint. However improvements can always be made. If improving the Sprint process is a MUST/SHOULD task, I would start with the follow up stage of the process and move forward.

[The number one improvement I see would be the visibility of the Sprint process. In my research I saw that a lot of the same people have been doing the heavy lifting time and time again. I was a bit ashamed to admit that after 3 years I have not participated in this process. But then again, I am forum centric and although there have been great improvements in the availability of information; most of it remains unseen on the forums as either posts or links.
They old saying “out of sight, out of mind” may hold true.



I really like Bergies initiative >> http://www.qaiku.com/channels/show/maemork/
I think he and I may have traveled many of the same roads, the same way, but at different times.

However, rather than add a new means of communication we should explore how the forums could be used. It is possible to set up a privately viewed forum that allows posts only from a specific user group. That user group could very well be Sprint participants. Sprint tasks could be threads and those threads could be locked and moved as “stickies” to a public area at the completion of the Sprint.

Rank and file forum participants could then start new threads commenting on those “stuck” threads. From these comments constructive feedback could be used in the follow-up review. The task threads would be unstuck but remain locked to naturally depreciate when the next Sprints task threads become available.



Apart from the code?

IMHO, some things need to be left to professionals. Website design, forum and communication channels should be laid out by the Manufacturers.This is store front stuff. They intend to sell the devices and to many potential customers, these channels will be what they form their first impression of the product from. I’m also thinking the bucks will come from a different line item than R & D.

An example of why I think this is wasted effort would be the discussions about what software the MeeGo forum should use, that open source software should be used because MeeGo is open source. This makes no sense to me. The best forum and website software should be used regardless of its source. It has as much to do with Meego as organically grown vegetables have with where they are sold. I doubt as many people would buy these vegtables if they could only be sold from grass huts.

The Meego community at this point is, and should be research and development centric. The benefit to both us as well as the manufacture’s for this R & D transparency is moving engaged users closer to this process. For them it is a chance to touch and directly interact with end users, for us it will mean shorter times to market for new technology, and devices with a better defined purpose.

What I believe our role could be is to help provide focus and some order to this voice of the end user. I said earlier that I felt some decisions should be left to professionals. However, once the pro’s provide the store front and the lease is drawn up and agreed upon, it will be up to us to provide and place the majority of the inventory.



They could try, but I doubt they would be effective. A new community will always form around new operating systems and devices.



My answer would be no.




No one will be left behind. Maemo will always be part of MeeGo’s legacy.
Unlike the 770, a lot of N900’s were sold. Like the 770, the N800 and N810’s were built like tanks. They will be around for quite a while and people will always find uses for them. As MeeGo becomes device centric, I think Maemo devices will also find a home there.



They should continue and I would think that Nokia has an interest in continuing their support in the near future.
I don’t know any of the details and any speculation on my part could lead to increased FUD.



One word, Forums.

Some of the best collaborative efforts have come from forum threads. I have also seen existing developers that had month’s old garage sites, make much more frequent and useful updates once they began participating in active threads in the forums. Sometimes a simple Kudos is all it takes >> http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=17532

Although that thread started over two years ago, it remains active as of 3-15-10…I don’t see this much anymore. Perhaps it is the increase in noise that came when the N900 dropped however; I believe we all should be more proactive.

If elected I will push for a strong, more focused community voice from within the forums.

As I said in my nomination, I am a Forum centric member of maemo.org. I believe a lot more could be done with the forums that will benefit all channels in maemo.org. At times I feel that this potential has been squandered. The framing of questions like 4a (above) shows me that perhaps some of us still don’t understand how strong the sense of community can develop from within a forum and how productive that could be.