[ubuntu-art] Looking forwards not back.

[Сергей]

>
> Fine, we need a new team leader as well. I don't want to miss another
> cycle. I hate being subscribed here and not feeling useful.
>
+1
In Elementary, DanRabbit is a leader that does awesome things which inspire
other people. He seems to be a good coordinator too. As a result, everyone
is extremely productive. I wish we had something similar in this team.
Elementary currently faces a different problem - bringing new contributors,
but that's another story.

We need more coordination as well. Just look at the EPIC FAIL of Free
Culture Showcase during the Natty cycle. Look at
http://design.canonical.com/2011/01/free-culture-showcase/ announcing that
the submitted works should be about freedom, and
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase that doesn't mention
anything about that, and my
comment<http://design.canonical.com/2011/01/free-culture-showcase/comment-page-1/#comment-12899>pointing
this out simply ignored. Look at the countdown banners being
advised to "not over-emphasize" narwhal graphics, and then the community
wallpaper selection...

Finally, the infamous http://www.flickr.com/groups/uawt-10-0/pool/ contains
pieces of art that make Ubuntu's default wallpaper fade in comparison. But
look what was picked for inclusion in the distro! (I personally want to
award everybody who didn't give up after THAT with an Ubuntu Faith Award and
make a low bow to each them). Community is the power that sets Ubuntu apart
from everything else - apple, M$, other distros, whatever. Until Canonical
recognize Ubuntu's creative community as a power and learn to use it, they
will never have better artwork than M$ or Apple just because their resources
are very limited in comparison with those multi-billion corporations.

The problem is not only inside this team IMO.* If anybody would want to get
good artwork from the community, not to put a check in the TODO list, nobody
would care what flickr group it's submitted to. *Neither they would be so
thoughtless in selecting community wallpapers, to the point where the whole
thing seems like another checkbox in a TODO. Neither would they so poorly
maintain the info intended to direct community contributions (examples
above). Damn, Canonical needs to finally realize that creative community is
an enormous power that they can use [almost] for free if they just want to!
I understand the Design Team consists of quite busy designers with tons of
their own work and interacting with the community is their spare-time hobby
at best. They don't have any experience or skills of interacting with a
community, and that's absolutely OK because they're not intended to. But
somebody has to do it if they want to get anything from the community at
all, right?

BTW, a nice post on the topic:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/design-boost/

Respectfully
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
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