<blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">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. </blockquote><div>+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 <a href="http://design.canonical.com/2011/01/free-culture-showcase/">http://design.canonical.com/2011/01/free-culture-showcase/</a> announcing that the submitted works should be about freedom, and <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase</a> that doesn't mention anything about that, and <a href="http://design.canonical.com/2011/01/free-culture-showcase/comment-page-1/#comment-12899">my comment</a> 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 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/uawt-10-0/pool/">http://www.flickr.com/groups/uawt-10-0/pool/</a> 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: <a href="http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/design-boost/">http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/design-boost/</a> Respectfully Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff </div>