No subject

just a bunch of people who happened to like art or the aesthetics of
Ubuntu and had a desire to help out. However, as fun as that is, that
type of group cannot have a serious impact on the final outcome of Ubuntu.

Instead, it was the desire of both Jane and Mark, and presumably others
who I didn't talk to, that the art-team would morph into a powerful
force of not only interested artists, but driven and motivated
contributors who could adopt the development cycle and techniques of the
rest of the Ubuntu developers to create polished and complete themes for
future releases. You can talk to Ken and Troy S as well as Frank about
this and I think they will agree. Back in July, the goal was that the
process would be refined and perfected. The hope was that it could get
done soon enough for a contribution to Edgy, but there was no promise.

I spent a few days in the London office working with Mark and not once
while I was there did I see him eat babies or kill kittens. He is driven
and intense but he doesn't take joy in watching others suffer. Realize
that Mark's reputation and image are reflected in Ubuntu. Like you, he
does not want to settle for "good enough" because that doesn't
characterize him. He wants excellence and he feels that it is worth
waiting for.

Both Jane and Mark compared the art team to the doc team. Keep in mind
that I'm still talking about July, not present. They said when the doc
team started it wasn't very effective. Then, something happened, and the
team got organized and got together. They started adopting the processes
that made other Ubuntu developers successful and now they are the model
for other teams to follow. Mark mentioned in a recent e-mail to this
list that he hopes it will happen here as well.

I can understand everyone's disappointment, but remember, we're still at
step 1; the goal here is not to produce wicked art, the goal here is to
develop a wicked team. To me, it looks like we're making tremendous
progress.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode