… and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit
1. Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very
pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock
:) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending
me there.
2. Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually,
we know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks
like everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it
still exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say
"wow! it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk
seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that
for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language
and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to
set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.
3. And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational
ideas mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just
outline some directions…
4. Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, but
apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page
http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list.
I didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important to look
closer at the projects we did within GSoC, understand where we succeeded;
where we failed; did we benefit and could we get more; make some plans for
the future... etc.
5. I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very important for
our small society. Of course, we can't be sure smalltalkers will be invited
again next year. (One of the things I tried to understand at summit but
still I don't: how does Google select mentor organizations?) But this work
will be very helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever.
6. We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our
projects. Since money are involved here, we have a right to. That's money
from Google, but still. I think it should be a bit different from the way
free projects are evolved within Smalltalk society. Since we have such
opportunity we have to benefit as much as we can.
7. Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I don't
want to :) but now I understand even better: we have to promote Smalltalk.
I know everybody knows that, but I still want to state it once again. And
promoting is not only about advertising and praising. We should be more
open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other
societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's extremely hard for
me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) But still we have if we don't
want Smalltalk to die. In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open
should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige
of Smalltalk among developers.
--
Dennis Schetinin
