The Inkscape team is raising funds to organize a 3 days long hackfest in Toronto this April, right before the annual Libre Graphics Meeting event.

The idea is the get ca. 10-12 Inkscape contributors into a single room and let them plan their further work on Inkscape, do actual programming, and, ultimately, make Inkscape better.

The Inkscape Board has already decided to use $10,000 from the project donations' fund to cover travel/accommodation expenses for both hackathon and participation at Libre Graphics Meeting, but more money is likely to be required as not every team member lives in Northern America.

Why is this fundraiser a big deal?

Despite of meeting each other at LGM every other year or so, team members haven't had proper quality hacking time together in a face-to-face fashion, ever. And while videoconferencing might help, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

So who's coming, and what's in it for the community?

The likely participants so far are:

Martin Owens. He's been getting increasingly involved with the project over the last several years, doing all kinds of work, from adding new handy features and fixing bugs to programming the new website.

Tavmjong Bah. For years Tav had been orbiting the project as creator of A Guide to Inkscape — the reference for Inkscape users. Eventually he started doing programming, mostly to improve SVG1.1 and SVG2 compatibility, and then he became Inkscape's ambassador in the SVG Working Group where he makes sure that SVG provides features that are in demand by illustrators. Read his blog post for details on a recent SVG Working Group Meeting in Sydney.

Jabiertxo Arraiza Cenoz. He joined the project only last year or so, but he's likely to become the next Inkscape superstar due to his work on live path effects, most of which you will be able to make use of, when v0.92 is released. If you ever wanted fillet/chamfer tool in Inkscape or had the feeling that Spiro curves should be visualized as you draw them, you absolutely want him at the hackfest, because it's what he already did. Imagine what else he can come up with!

Bryce Harrington. One of the founding members of Inkscape, currently doing mostly boring organizational work that, nevertheless, has to be done to keep the project's gears rotating smoothly.

Joshua Andler. He is one of Day 1 Inkscape users. Apart from being another Inkscape Board member, he's been organizing Inkscape booths at SCALE (Southern California Linux Expo) since what feels like the dawn of times.

The agenda of the hackfest is subject to changes, but here are some rough ideas that will be taken into consideration:

roadmap planning, how new major releases can be cut faster;

early start on redesigning the extensions system;

looking at what can be done to improve print-ready output (CMYK, spot colors);

various usability improvements.

The actual agenda will become more definite towards the beginning of the hackfest, when the team has a better understanding, who exactly is coming, and what things these people are interested to work on.

The idea is to make Inkscape hackfests a common way to speed up development. But since getting people from around the world together is not exactly cheap, this is where your support will play a major role.

Sounds interesting enough? Go ahead and donate to help organizing the first Inkscape hackfest.