Oh yes, oh yes, it's that time of year again. Let's get the ball rolling!
Production schedule/critical path:
I've drawn up a production schedule with indicative timeline for each stage. The exact deadlines will be determined at least when we have identified contributors for the content (stage #2 below). What we know for sure right now is, we target to have the report out by end-June 2016.
1) Kick-off meeting - Ideas & suggestions, finalize content outline and etc - suggest to include as an agenda item in the upcoming Engagement team meeting i.e week of Jan 25th
2) Identify and recruit contributors - writers, designer(s), editor(s), proof-readers etc. - by mid-February
3) Write - First draft of content (2 weeks)
4) Photographs - Gathering of photos, checking licenses (concurrent with #3)
5) Draft review (1 week)
6) String freeze - final proof-read (3-4 days)
7) Editor sign-off
8) Design and layout (2 weeks?)
9) Design-proofing and approval or feedback (3/4 days)
10) Final design approved
11) Printing/online production
12) Distribution - end June
Setting the structure: I've used last year's report as a starting point to create an outline of all the content we need/want to include in the report;
a) Letter from the GNOME Foundation
b) Hackfests
c) Releases
d) Financial Report
e) Conferences
f) Feature (where we can add some human element to the report - how the people make the GNOME community). An article on Builder perhaps? Ideas welcomed.
g) Outreach
h) Bugzilla statistics
i) Accessibility
j) Friends of GNOME
k) Advisory Board
Starting with this outline, to flesh it out, it might help to ask ourselves these questions;
- What else must we include and what else do we want to include?
- What, in this outline and in previous reports have we seen that we like, and which ones don’t appeal? Why?
- What is the story we want to tell about GNOME, and how can this report help that?
Having asked myself those questions, I have a few ideas I'd like to bring to the table;
- Using statistics and numbers to tell our story e.g. "GNOME Foundation by the numbers". Can we think of any meaningful stats/numbers to highlight? # of new foundation members or total # of foundation members, # of attendees at GUADEC 2015 (to show the size of GNOME's footprint - pun intended)
- 2015 Highlights in a visual timeline (by dates) so readers can see GNOME's year in a glance (events, releases, conferences, noteworthy statement releases etc)
So, I've created a wiki page for this here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/AnnualReport/2015
The sign-up sheet is up on the page if you're interested to contribute to the production of this report. Feel free to share your ideas there too!
I would like to suggest we launch the discussion officially at the upcoming engagement team meeting (date still to be determined but we know it will be in the week of Jan 25th). Say yea?
Best,
Adelia