 One of the presenters is the benevolent dictator of KD Lydia and The benevolent dictator in training to be Thomas Pfeiffer. So give them a hand and we shall start Thank you very much. And sorry that we're starting a bit late. So Thomas and I Wanted to talk a bit about the process we've gone through over the past year and what's up to come With regard to cool what is KDE? Where are you going KDE? How did we get here? 20 years ago Matthias, I just sent an email to Start a project with name cool desktop environment short KDE Since then a lot of the things he was aiming for a desktop environment and applications for end users With nice graphics and everything Has been realized On the other hand a lot of the things he wished for We hadn't realized Not everyone uses KDE Not even close and so on. So last year I started To ask myself, okay KDE where Where are we going? How are we going to what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? To give KDE a bit more of a sense of direction again After this has served as well for 20 years So I started an initiative called evolve on KDE With with the question of Where are we? Where do we want to go and how do we get there and we've done As a start of that we have done a survey which I presented last year at Academy and We have asked a lot of questions to figure out Where answers to the questions I just mentioned and the outcome of that survey Where a list of actions that we need to tackle Those were develop a vision strategy and focus for KDE review all our initiatives and Products and evaluate which of those we should actually really focus on and make them truly shine Improve our recruiting and onboarding processes and Documentation to make it easier for people to get into KDE Simplify and clarify our main web presence because if you go to KDE.org Not exactly a pretty sight And the last one was develop ideas and processes for how to make better use of our social media presence dot Outlet and other outreach menus Of all of these the most important one is the first one develop our vision strategy and focus during Academy last year We then started the vision creation process with a Keynote by me and then both many hallway discussions and mailing list discussions and Here you can see one of those very pretty whiteboard or blackboard pictures that we Created during this both and with that I'm handing over to Thomas thank you so then in the next step we Took it to the community because of course a vision which is not supported by at least the majority of a community won't get us anywhere So we presented a draft to the community and then Within the community another group formed which also created their own vision draft So it was kind of two competing drafts at some point I've only linked to them there because they're rather long and I don't want you to just spend a few minutes reading text and The the original group then created a more concise vision draft Which read? KDE through the creation of free software enables Users to control their digital life KDE software enables privacy makes simple things easy and complex scenarios possible While crossing device boundaries, so at this point we wanted to be Short but still kind of comprehensive but in the discussion then far out that this was already too much because it already went too much into detail and There was still There was a period with rather intense discussions between the two groups and there was a point where we thought we might never reach a consensus because one group wanted to have a rather inclusive vision which wanted to Demonstrate why where we want to go but not how we want to go there Whereas the other group had a vision which was more focused on things like Do we only want to do desktop software or mobile as well? Do you want to do we want to do web services or not and all of these things and At some point we realized okay. This is all valuable information but there are actually two levels as But yeah already hinted at there's a vision which Explains where we want KDE and also the world to go and there's a mission which details more how we want to get there and Since we realized that the One of the drafts was already quite deep into the mission level We found out that we could or actually Create a vision which everyone might agree with so there was a second draft which is already considerably shorter and only reads KDE creates technology for world in which everyone has freedom privacy and control over the digital life and This was then further refined into a world in which everyone Enjoys freedom and privacy and has control over the digital life because we thought that we didn't have to repeat our name in the vision and then When discussing this we realized that actually the control aspect was most important for everyone and Found out that even the formerly competing groups could actually agree on one vision Which is a world in which everyone has control over the digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy and From that point on this became the official vision of KDE and this yeah pretty well reflects what KDE is all about and Yeah, and this is what we learned from the whole process first Yeah, we had to learn the hard way that soul searching is hard and takes time we started the whole effort at last Academy, but the final vision was only ready in May and But it is time that you need because we are a big and diverse community and you can just say well This will be our vision. Just check off on it and that should be okay. You really have to have that discussion to reach a good vision and We also learned that you have to be very precise in Defining and explaining what you are trying to create because originally we just talked about a vision and Then when there were these two different drafts, we realized that people understood quite different things When talking about visions, it isn't a really precisely different defined time. So terms so pretty much Yeah, everybody understands something a little different By talking about visions, but then at some point I took the time to really Detail again. Okay. What do we think a vision should entail? What do we think a mission should entail? and this was the point where yeah, we realized okay, we can Integrate all these things we we want and we think are important, but we have to do it on different levels and only then we could actually agree on something and Yeah, that was also when we realized that sometimes positions are less far away from each other than you think Because yeah, we all want users to be in control We all want users to have privacy and freedom It just we might Have different priorities on how to get there, but that is not really the important part the most important part is that we all want to go to the same place and Yeah, then of course a vision would not work if people don't buy into it That's not something that can be dictated from the top down It has to be it has to come from the community and Yeah, then it was really Was a positive surprise when we had we came to a point where everybody said yeah this is something that I really can identify with and only then we were at the point where the vision actually becomes useful and Yeah creating a vision having a vision, but also the process around it has been incredibly valuable because Whereas the the discussions sometimes were rather strenuous and there was very heated debate It was important because we had to do this soul-searching. We had to find out Where do we agree? Where do we disagree? otherwise We cannot go into the same direction So what's next as I already said now that we have the vision we need to go to the next level which is a mission so Vision is the where we want to go a mission is how we want to get there and So pretty much immediately after the vision was published. We started brainstorming on the KDE community mailing list which is a list that theoretically every contributor to KDE should be subscribed to and And it is for discussing any non-technical topics which are of importance for the whole community But it turned out that not that many actually contributed to the discussion and So at some point there were a few people discussing they had very Different positions not on the on the overall theme, but on some important details and And we thought okay, we can now discuss this to death and maybe someone wins that discussion, but then We still don't know if the position of the one who has won the discussion is the position of the majority of KDE And if we created a mission which was only supported by a minority then we could as well Just leave it and not have any mission at all so What I did since I'm a Psychologist and user researcher. I ran a survey. So the sample of the survey was 201 self-identified currently or formerly active KDE contributors and We also recruited users because of course The contributors are the most important people because they have to carry the the mission forward But we also wanted to find out what our users think because when having doing something that Has nothing to do with what our users want is not really a good thing anyway So it was at least interesting to find out How close our all goals with our goals and priorities with those of our users. We also had 1184 KDE users and They were recruited via KDE mailing lists I tried to send it to as many mailing lists as possible to reach as many people as possible Also those who were not subscribed to the KDE community list We published an article on dot KDE.org and in various groups on Google plus where a KDE users and KDE enthusiasts meet So where were some of the key findings the very surprising finding was that Contributors and users are quite similar in their priorities So this is really a good thing. So it seems like we're not out of touch with our users and That means that if we derive a mission from these results, it should resonate with our users So one One part where there was a bit of divergence was that Whereas the contributors also wanted to focus on free software platforms for our software the contributors also think that platforms like Windows OS 10 or iOS are also important not as important as the free ones But that we also should reach people there so we can still convince them to use free software even if they use proprietary operating systems That that is the point where the users that participated in the service slightly disagreed they Apparently they're all Linux users and they just want us to focus mostly on Linux and That also was reflected in a different priority in Maximizing our reach so KDE contributors do want to reach as many users as possible whereas Yeah, well the the users we interviewed probably mostly care about us reaching them and not reaching others Which makes sense for them that shows that yeah, this is something where some difference is okay then Yeah, of course the the most important part is creating products that actively provide control freedom and privacy But also an excellent user experience so having having great free products which nobody likes to use won't get us anywhere and Actually the most important thing for both contributors and users was stability and reliability This is really something where yeah, we can still step up our efforts and really get to a point where KDE is known for stable and reliable software and These are followed in importance by usability and then of course features Not just as many features as possible, but the features that users need Then one thing Um KDE doesn't do only development. We also do things like mentoring programs. We are active in There are several organizations in the in the wider free software community and this is something that again both contributors and users found very very important So we had a scale from one to seven and they ranged all above six. So it is not something that Yeah, we just do Because we've always been doing it. It is something that is really important and we should keep doing it and there was also a question about which platforms to support they're both Contributors and users wanted us to focus most on open source platforms including Android and then Yeah, to a lesser degree proprietary platforms and as I said, this is something that contributors find more important than The users which participate it And it was also a question about target audiences Well, it turns out that students and developers should be the most important target audiences this It might have been Protests that way with keeping in mind that these are most likely to contribute back to the software So if we focus in those four first, then this might give us the best avenue to actually grow but also other Regular users free software enthusiasts also office users were also considered important and Professionals as well children to a lesser degree then there was a question on whether we should focus on desktop applications or also on web services and whether it should be clear focus on cute or basically any toolkit that does the job and The answers were very pragmatical medic, so We should still focus on desktop applications Also mobile but to a lesser extent than desktop and web services were a very Heated debate because there were some people which said that if we do web services now as well Then this will just dilute our focus but the the survey turned out that Web services are also important, but not as important as get the desktop application So it's good if we integrate new Projects doing web services that is absolutely fine for KDE, but should not Divert resources away from the desktop applications. So this is something that could be drawn from these results and Yeah, cute is still our most important toolkit and KDE should still be the go-to Community when it comes to everything cute, but that doesn't mean that we should shun any other toolkit so if something else does a specific job better than cute then it is fine for KDE to use that and Now that we want to Take that further we have for those who are still here next week. We have set up above on Tuesday at 4 where we will discuss further about the the results and how to Continue from there and create a mission statement from these So that's all from us. Thank you any questions We have five minutes Hmm Marta can prepare during the question time anybody That there was a time where it was more exhausting than invigorating and Where we were close to the point of just giving up But we are all very glad that we pulled through because then at the when we were over that point it was really invigorating So the question What's the relation between your conclusion that the main target audience are the students and developers as opposed to The conclusion by plasma team in certain that we should make stuff for professional users and similar And still the each project of course has their own target group so that there are some like KDE edu will be more for students and Teachers and I think it it is fine for plasma to focus on on professional users As long as developers and students are not forgotten or left behind so it's not we're we're still a Mostly a community of volunteers So we cannot have a binding mission which dictates that now everyone has to focus exclusively on developers and students But of course it would be bad if those target groups were completely left behind by the majority of applications You had some problems reaching all the KDE contributors From what I saw a scene Do you think in the future? You will do something different it to better be able to reach everyone inside KDE Well, there is at least we have to think we have to find a way to get Everybody on at least one common mailing list. So we that we have originally we had the KDE membership mailing list which of course is only for members of the KDE and Community the community mailing list actually was derived from that one because at some point we realized that we are discussing things here Which are not only relevant to the EV members, but to everyone in KDE. So that's why a community was created but unfortunately We seem to have missed the opportunity to get everyone onto that list we can't really automatically subscribe people but Yeah, we will have to find a way to reach Everyone at least at one point so they all subscribe to KDE community So that at least we can reach everyone through that and yeah, that is really really an important thing And I sometimes when I talk to people and say yeah, we have discussed that on KDE community And then they say what is that I don't even know it existed and that is really a problem because we're discussing very important topics Yeah, this is something we have to fix Well, you mentioned that between contributors They feel that it was important to target proprietary operative systems like Windows and Mac, but the users did not think that that was a Priority may that be because probably we are not Not reaching the users of that operative systems now so they cannot answer the survey Yes That that is most likely the cause We we had thought that maybe there were some people who for example use Linux at home But Windows at work and who would also want our software to be available on Windows But it it seems that most of the other people who reply to that survey were just Linux users So this is also why we should not derive from that that we should not target Windows or OS 10 or whatever And yeah, so that was just a natural part of the selection of the sample So that was it give a hand