Re: [Usability] Announce - GNOME 3 Usability Hackfest (London, Feb 22-26, 2010)

[Steve Lee <steve lee oucs ox ac uk>]

2010/1/12 Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron sun com>:
>> As already discussed with Brian Cameron and David Flanders, there is a
>> great opportunity to hook up this event with the JISC Dev8D developer
>> event that is happening in London at the same time.
>>
>> http://www.dev8d.org
>
> How many people in the Dev8D community
> work in the HE field?

[I've added Mahendra to this discussion as lead of Dev8D)

I'd guess most, but I am not involved with organising Dev8D

> Have they worked with free software projects
> like GNOME before?
> Are there particular people who might have an
> interest in attending or participating more directly with the GNOME
> 3 Usability Hackfest?

Perhaps the delegate list would reveal that? I'll check if any of the
projects that OSS Watch have advised on open development might
possibly be interested in both events.

> If there are particular people in the Dev8D community who have an
> interest in usability or human interface design, then I would
> recommend that they join the usability gnome org mailing list and
> participate in discussion leading up to the event.  That way, we
> could start discussing how we could possibly work together.

Perhaps that could be suggested in one of any pre event mailshots?

> If possible, it might work out best if the folks at the GNOME Usability
> hackfest could brainstorm and discuss this on the first day of the
> GNOME 3 Usability hackfest, or would that be too late to make a
> decision?

That sounds constructive, even if something more definite is decided before.

One idea that might work if GNOME use W3C widgets at all, or it is
being considered. I know there was talk of closer web/desktop
integration. The Wookie project from Bolton University is a W3C Widget
server (and is now in the Apache incubator).  OSS Watch are running a
Wookie training day and then a Wookie + Sling/OSGI event at Dev8D. If
there is interest in this then perhaps the usability folk could help
us understand what we need to do when building widgets?

http://getwookie.org/Welcome.html

-- 
Steve Lee

OSS Watch - supporting open source in education and research
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk