On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 00:31 +0200, Martin Sourada wrote:
My point is -- learn from the mistakes of past and but be also aware
in
what we were good at. In all cases where we failed, we failed because we
had to redo the artwork anew late at the process. We should really avoid
this.
This is a good point. Although I wonder how much you can really control
a creative process. I think the thing that scared me the most about the
late nights - I could spend hours and hours and hours and have to throw
it away. There wasn't any guarantee after x hours there would even be
anything usable.
Yeah, we totally need people to actually do more than just submit
ideas...
How do we encourage the follow through we need? :-/
>
I think that plan worked pretty good until we tried to mingle it
together with release name (in F9)... In F10 we reverted back to it, but
failed, I wonder what exactly went wrong...
Ah okay you are right! I forgot about that.
Perhaps we could use a simple bug track to track our tasks? Or would
it
be an overkill? I can see the advantages of people being able to more
closely follow the process and also people claiming tasks knowing that
others didn't claiming those yet. Plus people would have better idea of
how far we are. But it would pose additional work on us...
I think this is a good idea. Maybe for each piece of artwork that we
need, that's in the schedule with a deadline, we open a trac bug in our
new trac instance Paul had set up for us? That might work well.
As for having two processes -- yeah, it's probably a bad idea,
what I
had in mind something like having some kind of fallback if the process
itself fails... Well, if don't base our artwork on release name, we
could keep it for more than one release, if necessary. But it would feel
awkward if it would be based on the release name... Or perhaps have a
completely new artwork with every odd release and have an
improved/slightly changed version of the previous one with every even
release? Are we really have problems with time, or is it just because we
tend to do the things last minute? Or is it lack of people?
I think it's a combo of:
- the creative process is hard to control, and it's hard to know how
long something is going to take or what odd directions it might take
- lack of people
- outside of the team folks tend to be very critical of the artwork no
matter what and it's demotivating.
And I don't think there is so much we can do about the first and last.
> It seems there are complaints about the process, then complaints about
> changing the process in trying to improve it. How can we improve the
> process that people complain about so much if we can't change it?
>
I think, we often have problems when we change the process completely.
It seems to take some time for people to adjust... Perhaps analyzing
what parts of the current process are worst and how to improve them
would be a better approach than trying a completely new process again?
> Does anyone want to take up the task of writing and maintaining the
> theme process documentation, and making sure it is well-publicized?
>
We need to decide on the process first, than documenting it... I can put
together a draft of what outlined before tomorrow if people think about
it as a good idea. We can even put different drafts together (although
it seems I and Nicu are not fans of your idea, it does not mean it might
not turn up to be the best after all) and then discuss what might be
best. FUDCon is next week and the release name will be supposedly
reported there, so we still have some time to decide on the process for
F12.
I think I really like the requirement that the default be:
- original
- vector
- abstract
- theme-related
And that we pick, let's say as originally proposed, 4 works from the
creative commons / openly-licensed community that are related to the
theme as well and have the following breakdown:
- 2 general appeal / any age group
- 1 appeal to children
- 1 appeal to women
> > > The main problem for me is that every time the topic
of release art
> > > comes up, I don't think 'fun' and 'cool', I think
'pain' and get a
> > > feeling of dread and despair :( And that's not cool. And after going
> > > through all that hard work and time, still we get negative comments (and
> > > I understand we can't satisfy everyone, but that on top of having to
> > > work so hard and not have much fun, makes it even less enjoyable.) I
> > > feel that this problem should be addressed so we can make theming fun
> > > again, but I'm not sure how. This was the idea I came up with but
I'm
> > > very open to other proposed solutions.
> > >
> > > Is this fair or am I being overly dramatic?
> > What I feel when I think about fedora themes is high entry level and
> > confusion about the process.
>
> Do you have a better idea? Can you commit to helping make it better?
See above. But to summarize and perhaps add something more:
* try to change the process slowly rather than radically, based on
experience from previous release(s)
Is the above proposal slow enough? We're keeping the
inspired-by-the-release-name theme, but clamping it down a bit more by
requiring vector artwork and abstractness.
We could handle the 4 broader-community readymades as a separate
project.
* after each release is done, hold a session (on irc with
summary
posted on the list and wiki, or on the list only?) to discuss
what went right and what went wrong and what can we do about it
That sounds good.
* better track what needs to be done and who's working on
what
I think maybe the trac ticketing system can be a big help here.
* create rather abstract themes than photo manip.
+999
* have a direct link to the current release artwork process
from
our front page
Good idea... and we should also make sure that when we figure out the
process, we get some publicity around it:
- process announced in Fedora Weekly news & Fedora Forum
- process announced on Planet fpo
- each phase of the process announced in FWN & on Planet FPO & Fedora
Forum
- maybe some kind of podcast,
www.fpo banner, some kinds of publicity
that way to get people involved, similar to how Michael did the fpo
banner to solicit picture book submission
- Any other venues I'm not thinking of?
* be stricter about deadlines
+1
* don't expect Mo will do the dirty work. Our artwork must
be a
community effort, not our leader's all nighters (yeah, I am also
to blame here, but at least I've tried to help with the
wallpapers a little)
Yes please :) :) :)
And thank you for your patience with me :)
~m