GNU/Linux Matters Summit 07 is over

With only two of us, the name “summit” might be exaggerated; but we found the title amusing, and the meeting was as serious as a top corporation board assembly. The 2007 edition of the GNU/Linux Matters Summit, held in Madrid, is over.

The result is that we have made excellent progress on a number of important things. Meeting in person allows much more productive communication, so we could reflect on where we stand and where we are heading.

Our main priority is making GLM work more efficient, or in short, scaling up. We make no secret that we are having difficulty managing many websites and languages, mainly because everything is built out of static XHTML files. We also are bad at letting members know what exactly they can do to help, and what we are working on precisely. We want to change this, and our priorities are:

1. Complete the transition to DocBook
   This should make translating the websites much easier and (combined with the new trimmed version of GetGNULinux.org) much faster.
2. Re-organization and clarification of the community pages
   This will make participation much easier; for translators, editors and technical members
3. Completion of our back-linking system, Animador
   This should encourage more linking to GetGNULinux.org

The above will not translate into short-term differences for most of our readers, but will certainly help us grow more efficiently. In addition, two more visible projects should come along pretty soon:

• A 1-month fund drive aimed at covering our running expenses for the coming year;
• A 1-page website featuring the very best vendors of computers pre-installed with GNU/Linux.

We won’t fail to say more about each of these items as time passes by.

These five days haven’t just been productive, but also quite exciting, including lots of interlingual and cultural exchanges, and a fair amount of out-going…
The activity of GNU/Linux Matters will now slow down for ten days (one of us is taking vacation and the other is working on exams) and we will be back full steam at the start of September.