Notes from the first OpenPGP Summit

[Bjarni Runar Einarsson]

Thanks for the write-up, Werner! :-)

Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> wrote:
>   I do not want end these notes without remarking that I am a bit
>   disappointed that many of the participants favored this closed
>   invitation-only style summit and want the next meeting to happen the
>   same way.

I was unable to attend the session where this was discussed, so please
forgive me if I'm rehashing something that was already covered.

On the one hand, I suspect it would be very hard to maintain the
excellent signal/noise ratio we had, in a completely open summit. On
the other, I also feel it's really bad for the community if we aren't
welcoming and open to new people. The summit attendees were not a very
diverse group, to say the least... So I share your concerns, Werner.

Was the idea of having a mixed summit discussed? I think there was
general consensus that we could probably skip the introductions next
time, so perhaps one of the two days could be open and the other day
closed for people who want to work together on specific issues?

Or the group could fork, with the first day shared for talks and getting
to know each other, and the second day forked into non-dev-friendly
activities (crypto-parties, keysigning, introductory talks) scheduled
for the same time slot as an invite-only tech unconference, with the
groups re-merging at the end of the day to present any results.

Of course, organizing something like that is even more work, so unless
the organizers love the idea and are motivated to do that sort of
out-reach, it's might not be a great idea.  But we do have a while until
the next meetup is planned, so there is time to reconsider and think
about whether we can find a way to preserve the focus of the group
while still welcoming new people to the community.

>   I would actually like to have an open OpenPGP meeting with
>   a stronger emphasis on Free Software and a clear anti-surveillance
>   message.

Although my politics and yours align, I think it might be a strategic
mistake to exclude the closed-source folks from these discussions...

Cheers,
 - Bjarni

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