Reviving Django Update posts

Although the 1.6 release of Django has been well received, one criticism of the 1.6 release cycle was that the core team wasn't very good at keeping the community well informed about progress. The original plan was to ship in late August. However, that didn't happen, and every time the schedule slipped, we weren't very good about clearly communicating why those slippages were occurring, and what the revised release date would be.

So - for the 1.7 release, we're going to resurrect two things that we've done in the past, but have missed for the last couple of releases.

Firstly, we've put up a wiki page to cover the important details of the release -- most notably the release dates, but also helpful guides for how to contribute. We'll keep this wiki page up to date as progress continues.

Secondly, we're going to resurrect the regular Django Update blog posts. Back in the early days of Django, we posted regular summaries of progress on the project (here's an example from June 2007). During some releases, we've done regular updates to let the community know how we're progressing towards the release (here's an example from the 1.3 release cycle). Curtis Maloney (a.k.a. FunkyBob on IRC), the recent winner of the inaugural Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize, has offered to resurrect these blog posts for the 1.7 release cycle.

Curtis will be monitoring mailing lists and Trac to keep abreast of progress, but if you've got a suggestion for interesting activities in the community that should be included in the regular updates, email scoop@djangoproject.com and Curtis will throw them onto the pile for inclusion.

A big thank you to Curtis for volunteering to take on this task. We look forward to seeing your inaugural edition!