trysil sunday

coolo arrived this evening marking the end of the first wave of attendees. there will be a few more arriving mid-week, but we've got the bulk of the group here now.

one of the goals for kde4's interface is to be more organic, which is to say to behave more like the real world which we are well adapted to. in keeping with that we went for a walk out to a meadow for one of our two group meetings today.

towards a more natural interface

we shared our broad visions for kde, experimented with walking on bogs and climbed a tree or two. then it was back to the lodge for more hacking and in the late evening (though it's always hard to tell since it never gets particularly dark) we held a more structured event in-doors where we brainstormed first functional goals and then practical tasks. we put them on sticky notes and put them on walls in the main common room.

the wall of practical tasks

we arranged the practical tasks from least critical to most critical (they are all important, of course ;) from left to right. we then tagged them with some even smaller stickeys as to which were purely discussion meetings and which we were going to for sure tackle this week. then we each tagged those items with small yellow stickeys with our name on them which items we were committed to working on personally.

the idea was to emerge with some direction for the week ... and beyond. we witnessed the emergence of a new teamwork centered around kdelibs, something that has not always been so obviously there. as we closed the meeting (before going back to more hacking, at midnight no less) everyone shared what they hope to leave this week with, and resoundingly the consistent message was, "kdelibs in a state that has clear direction, is coherent and which can be used to start application work with."

looks like the days will be packed.