> >> At first I thought the sound is bad, the video is bad, and
> >> there's no focus.
> >
> >
> > At first I thought... Well, he's right about the sound, but the video
> > isn't bad, and podcasts are all nattering on about something of interest to
> > a niche target audience.
> >

You say "All podcasts are like this," but please! -- they don't
have to be.

I think what you want is a documentary... we could do that, if we had the time/money/resources. But obviously no one wants to hear about that again. ;)

It's important to know what podcasts are like, lest we order the vegan platter and bemoan its lack of meat.
 
Yes, indeed, I thought these guys have a terrific amount of experience
with Inks, designing, implementing, debugging.  They will now impart
some gems of wisdom.

Nyet.

The title of this initial introductory podcast is "Casual Inkscape Chat", not "Everything You Might Want to Know about Inkscape at Any Level of Monotonous and Very Specific Detail". 

That's the NEXT episode. ;)


They talk about everything except.  Jeepers.

Chastisement accepted. I feel we've somehow wasted your valuable time here. ;)
 
> > I think that last bit should be the title of our next podcast. Inside
> > jokes are often part of what makes FLOSS grouo projects fun after all.
> >

I have mixed feelings about inside jokes.  They're fun sometimes,
but they do tend to exclude people . . .

That would be true if we didn't explain the jokes to anyone who asked, or somehow limited people from joining to be in on them. That was explained in the nattering, by the way, including ways to join in the fun, keep the community friendly and active, and gain a reputation for being absurdly resillient to major problems like funding issues. 

 
> >> It left a lot of questions unanswered:  What's a hackfest?
> >>
> >
> > Good idea for a podcast. I had the same question from my mum. "Is it where
> > you learn to hack?" XD
> >
> > I have abundant footage to clip together to help explain. Esp of the one
> > in Kiel.

Awwww, don't dodge the question.  Tell me in less than 50 words.

I get the feeling that podcasts are not a format you enjoy...
Maybe one of the many tutorials about hackfests, or some googling around for articles would be better.

Podcasts are mostly freeform Q&A, and can be 30minutes to many hours.
They are a good platform to discuss things on-camera with little editing needed.
The idea is that since we don't have time for a documentary, let's just talk with eachother on camera and see where it goes.

Podcasts let you listen in on a regular unscripted conversation with people in the project on particular topics. They are a great community building tool because unlike a documentary or tutorial, you get to know what people in the project are like. You get to be in on those jokes, and the more you watch, the more you feel like part of the community. It's not a format for 50-words or less people. Gotta have more patience to get the payoff of podcasts.
 
I would have guessed that it's basically a social occasion, but
the podcast exclaims loudly that everyone worked very hard.

When people in our community (and sometimes outside) do great things, in this case, fly potentially thousands of miles to work all week full time on Inkscape together, we tend to shout their praise from the rooftops. We also release summary articles in our newsfeed about exactly what happens at the hackfests, including what was acomplished. 
If the loud exclaiming is getting to you, I recommend spending time elsewhere. We congratulate eachother a lot. Not just because it's richly deserved, but also because it's motivating and encouraging to hear it from your friends and community members.

 
OK, what were you doing?

I hope this level of detail satisfies: https://inkscape.org/news/2018/09/20/inkscape-hackfest-kiel-2018-what-happened/
I spent quite a bit of time making stickers, taking/editing photos, writing the article and also capturing video for later use (part of my own hackfest activities prior to, during and after the event).

The pictures are nice, but video can be much better to relate the feeling of what it's like to work together face to face with people you work and chat with over the internet every day to make Inkscape better, support eachother and yes, have a bit of fun too. You can, for example see people writing extensions to use Inkscape for 3D printing, and making projects with it. You can see the joy and excitement of getting something to work which didn't before, and the further thrill of releasing it to millions of users so they can experience the same joy of using it. You can also see the kinds of machines people work on, and collections of stickers and totems folks have. 
 
> >
> > What's multi-page support supposed to do?
> >
> >
> > Well, it's one of our most requested features apart from CMYK. Maybe it
> > would be good to do an episode on most requested features, what they do for
> > the non technical among us, snd what it would take to get them implemented.
> >

Shucks.

You dodged this question too.

Did I? I said it's one of the most requested features. However, let's ignore convention and assume that a quick internet search would not turn up a wealth of information on a "most requested feature"...

Multi-page support basically boils down to having a mechanism for creating/exporting multi-page documents. People have written extensions to use the layers dialog for this, however it really should be in Inkscape proper, and have it's own dockable dialog for determining things like whether the pages are facing (organised into spreads), or just appended one after another. This is useful for, well creating multi-page documents... yea. 


Hey! Great!


I know right? Mesh gradients have been there for... years actually, thanks to the hard work of Tavmjong. These are the sorts of announcements we could put into a podcast, for those patient enough to listen to them. There's also our news feed which is getting a lot more love recently due to our outreach efforts, and formation of the Inkscape Vectors team (which was also nattered about).
 
> > Nope. No one has time to do a complete overhaul of anything right now. A
> > stable and improved Inkscape is what will be delivered. Overhauls will need
> > to wait past 1.0 realease.

Well, this is how people get dragged in.  I suppose if I want it
changed I'll have to write it myself.

Possibly. That, of course will take patience as well.
 
. . . although, you know, I'd like to get some assurance that my
version will get into the source tree.  How to get that?

Recommend using gitlab to create your own branch with the code modifications. Once you've tested it and it's reliably working, you can submit a merge request. The code will then be reviewed, and modificaitons suggested. 
As far as "assurances", absolutely not. This is a project where we work together. It takes time, effort and patience on everyone's part to get stuff stable and make sure everything works together. 
No project will promise to patch in arbitrary code before it's made.

You could, of course make it for yourself, submit patches, and consider eventually making it into trunk a bonus. That may be worth it to you at the very least. Indeed, that's how a lot of folks get interested in Inkscape development. They want it, they make it, and they decide to share the results.


Well, of course, it /is/ a labor of love.  It's good of you not to
be (too) offended.  But, it isn't that much harder to do a good job:
more succinct, more focused.


Podcasts are unscripted. If you want something scripted, podcasts are likely not the format for you.
We figure a podcast was a good format for reasons previously stated in this reply but also it's better than waiting until we have time to reherse, script and produce the masterpiece you're after. Something is better than nothing.

Good journalism.  Did you take journalism in high school?

Nope. Just 15 years of experience creating content for an obscene quantity of commercial products, websites, and yes, Inkscape too. :)
If you want the original 2 hour video clip which I've trimmed down, that can be arranged. Maybe then you'll appreciate more the work that went into just this first episode.

I don't expect an improvement in the sound, actually, as long as
people are using their own mics at home.  Oh, well.

Martin's mic was hitting the sound ceiling excessively. That's probably fixable in the mic settings of Ubuntu, so the bar is low to make at least that improvement. I did normalise the sound from the entire video so it wasn't blowing your ears or speakers out each and every time Doc said something. So even there, there's something to be greatful for. ;) Nothing I can to about the sound ceiling in post, though. Just need to reduce mic sensitivity for the next one. That was actually the least of the technical problems Ryan, Tim and Martin ran into recording this. Seriously, if you saw the original, it's clear there was a LOT of patience involved in just recording it.


> PS, the bad quality video was edited down a ton by some maniac, to exclude
> all the technical difficulties which the audience would otherwise have to
> sit through. So one could simply be happy about that fact, and enjoy
> listening to largely off
> -the-cuff banter from our intrepid team of strangeoids on this their very
> first podcast attempt.
>
> Can I get a huzzah?
>
> -C

Hurrah!  (I hope it's the same thing.)

Works for me. :)

-C