IDEA 20090508 Open Content Conference

LGM is way too focused on tool development. Who cares about just making tools, unless they have a use. This year at LGM2009, I felt like the projects and developers attending had totally lost their way since much of the original goals for projects appear to be accomplished. I know this sounds controversial, but honestly, how many more features can we add to our applications? Inkscape has hexagonal guides! Gimp's interface is still so crowded, its hard to know what to do.

I want to refocus on content and artwork generated from open tools and standards. The way to do this is by focusing on creating something before and at the conference.

I propose to make a 3 day conference that consists of day events for developers and artists, with parallel workshops for basic and advanced users. The first day will be structured like a traditional conference, the second day will be unconference focused on creation, and the third day unconference on collaboration, with outcomes presented at the end.

The conference goes from 10 AM until 6 PM everyday, with food on location. There will be performances each night, an art show during the conference, installations, and focus upon content and concepts, in order to feedback into software.

There should be awards for both software development projects, top 3, and then the same for art/content, top 3. Rewards for software is to receive art gifts, and for artists, hardware and recognition.

Another idea is to have one big project to work on collectively prior to the conference, like a music cd, book, videogame or film. And, yes, we should totally rip off from Blender project where possible. That Ton guy is quite smart!