Hi,
I just want to let the board know a bit about the hackfest and LGM. I assume that you've read the posts on Google+ and seen all the activity on IRC and in Bazaar.
I think this year's hackfest was very successful. We got a lot of hacking done including fixing the GTK3 flashing bug and getting a lot closer to being able to switch to CMake. This hackfest had a different tone than last year's. We spent a lot more time coding and a lot less time discussing (only an hour or two). I think we did need to spend a lot of time last year on discussions as that was the first time we really sat down together. Our monthly board meetings have probably also reduced the need to spend a lot of time on discussions.
I also think the LGM meeting was more useful this year than last year, not because the talks were better (perhaps they were a bit on average) but because we were able to both continue working on the code and spend a lot of time discussing with others issues that effect Inkscape. We had a good meeting with some designers who use Inkscape everyday and have started an Inkscape interface group which should come in handy as we rework the GTK3 dialogs. I met with people concerning better library support in HarfBuzz for accessing OpenType features which would allow a better interface to font features. Martin talked to the Gimp people about their plans for GTK3. Tom Lechner gave a nice talk demoing some interesting ways of interfacing with text which might be of interest to us. (He also gave a workshop on his very interesting engraving tool.)
I would recommend we start thinking about another hackfest, either in the Fall or Spring. LGM will be in Rio de Janeiro in late April or early May. While I would love to visit Rio, I'm not sure we would get a large enough turnout for a hackfest there (hotel/food would be cheap but flights expensive). Martin has suggested a hackfest in Boston. That might be a good location as it's not so far from both Europe and the US west coast. LGM 2018 will most likely be in Europe, possibly Milan.
Tav