Feeling stressed?

3 Apr 2018


      Hi all,
I've been picking up a lot of indicators of stress in our project
participants.  Each seems to be a unique case, with a different cause,
and so there can be no universal solution.  But if you're feeling
stressed it might help to take a look at a broader perspective, and
see some of the great progress being made.
We just completed a very effective Hackfest.  We burned through our list
of discussion topics and unblocked progress on multiple fronts, and
helped get each other on the same page on several topics.  I think
everyone came away energized, a bit overwhelmed, and enthusiastic to get
moving on some big efforts.  It was an intense week.  I wish everyone
could have come!  We want to organize future hackfests to be more
convenient for you, so everyone gets a chance to benefit from
face-to-face time with each other.
The Inkscape 1.0 release is now visible on the horizon, which is very
exciting and will be a massive achievement for our project.  There is
still planning to be done, and it'll be probably about a year before we
reach it, but a lot of path clearing has been done the past couple weeks
to ensure we can head there at full speed.
Print/color management, multi-page, GActions, and more are starting to
get charted out; 1.0 is not going to be the end of the road, but rather
the start on some major innovations for Inkscape.  It is almost
overwhelming to think of all the work needed, but know that while
they'll be progressing in parallel, our focus right now is the 1.0
release.  People have been very understanding that we have to pace
ourselves and prioritize stability right now.
Several changes are afoot for our infrastructure - mailing lists,
merchandise, forums, a website redesign, and bug tracking all have
improvements under way.  Quite a bit to do, but will strengthen both our
user and contributor communities, and we have plenty of time to do them.
Another bit of very good news is that Inkscape is doing well monetarily.
At the start of FY2017 we had $18,414; after one year this has grown to
$45,732.  This is thanks both to prolific individual donors and several
very generous sponsoring companies -- people believe in us and what
we're doing, and are providing us with financial resources to do even
more.  Looking at this past month's financial data, donations appear to
have picked up even more, and we've several potential sponsors that will
likely pitch in once they see some plans for specific features they're
interested in.  All of this funding gives Inkscape a lot of flexibility
to do more to improve both the software and the community.  And, to
boot, efforts on new fundraising sources are in process, which could
kick us off in a 'virtuous circle'.
At least some people are finding stress from the sheer amount of
different things, and how quickly they're progressing.  I sure feel it.
I just want to say - pace yourself.  Don't be afraid of letting others
take over some of your tasks, and don't be shy about asking for load
sharing if you feel overwhelmed.  Please email me privately if you need
help.  I expect things will even out better in the next few months --
the release and the hackfest caused acceleration on a bunch of stuff,
but the next few weeks should get quieter as people take time to digest.
In some cases, the stress has shown itself in various discussions.
Please know we're taking these seriously and working behind the scenes
to improve relationships.  This community wrote a remarkably good Code
of Conduct for itself, well worth reading (or re-reading):
https://inkscape.org/en/community/coc/
In the next week or so I'll post a plan for getting us to 1.0, with
specific tasks that we'll need people to pitch in on.  Meanwhile, take
some time to get recentered and get the stresses eliminated.  :-)
Hugs and cheers,
Bryce

Bryce Harrington

Jabier Arraiza

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