When I became president of KDE e.V. in September last year I made a list of important things we need to do over the coming year. The biggest item on this list was helping KDE and KDE e.V. get a better understanding of where we are, where we want to go and how we want to get there. Today, with the help of many others, I want to start this process and I want you to be a part of it.

KDE began its life as a desktop project and Qt showcase back in 1996. Since then KDE has evolved to become something more significant; the modern KDE is a global community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates producing some of the world’s finest user-centric Free Software. As we have evolved, so too has the world around us. The user’s experience is no longer restricted to the desktop. It has expanded to the user’s hands, wrists, glasses and more and will continue to evolve into areas we have yet to imagine.

In KDE we want to be in charge of our future. We want to have a clear and honest approach for reacting to and influencing our shifting environment, to continuously and consciously improve. We want to do what is necessary to be the thriving community for creating technology that will satisfy the needs of the next 20 year’s users.

In order to shape our evolution it is crucial that the wider KDE community understands its current position and where it aims to be in the future. As the primary support structure within the KDE community, KDE e.V. is instrumental in guiding that journey. Through regular honest assessment and reaction to our environment the KDE community continues to remain effective and relevant and ensures that KDE’s users will continue to Experience Freedom.

In order to provide the KDE community with the means to assess its current position and find future direction we have devised this yearly iterative process:

First, we will gather extensive input from the wider community: everyone from core contributors to casual contributors to users. This will be done via various means, the main one being a survey, but also including forums, mailing lists, IRC office hours and in-person meetings; for example at Akademy.

This input is then consolidated into a report. It is going to be published before Akademy for public consumption. This report will summarize community conclusions and potential areas of focus and improvement.

During KDE e.V.’s annual general assembly, the report is discussed and some of the recommended focus areas are agreed on as goals.

At a strategy sprint, core community members come up with measureable suggestions to achieve those goals.

Finally, there will be a wrap up session that will evaluate how much progress we have made towards the goals we set ourselves. The evaluation will be presented at the next general assembly meeting.

KDE e.V. will support this process and its outcome. The outcome of this process are happy contributors and happy users.

I’d love for you to be a part of this process. As a first step please help us by taking the time to fill out the survey. Further information will be published on evolve.kde.org. If you have questions please ask them on the KDE community mailing list.