The Plone Strategic Planning Summit is now going into it’s 3rd day and many wonder what actually is happening there. They don’t know because nearly nothing yet has been communicated in any way. There is a #psps IRC channel where nothing is happening, there is the Plone Planet where nothing is posted. The only activity towards the outside world was once on the PSPS mailing list (which though is more meant for the participants) in the form of Elevator pitch like Plone descriptions.
I think this is not good, not good for the summit and not good for community and consensus building around it. If people have the feeling they are left out then it’s very unlikely that they will understand much of what the summit decided upon and why they did it (even if it’s not decisions but thoughts/visions). There was lots of conversation before the actual summit but now it totally stopped. This maybe natural because all the participants now have lots of other people around them to discuss these things but it’s also a bit sad because they seem to forget the rest of the world. Some people seemed to have annoyed by this fact already.
I am sure there will be at least some (probably also extensive) reports after the meeting but in general with any event it is very important (and with the summit which wants to „speak“ for the community) to communicate also during the meeting. Thus my point in my wishlist about setting time aside just for communicating with the rest of the world.
So for me this is one point which should definitely be improved next time. And if you are at the summit please blog/post/twitter/ustream/talk about it! (some few tweets at least here).