Dear all,

it seems that the Discord link had an expiration date which I forgot to check.

Here is an unlimited one : https://discord.gg/wJdQ6sS

Apologies for the annoyance.

I also created a #creativecuties channel on freenode, which will in time

be linked with the discord channel unless we find a better way of communication.

All the best,

Jean-Michaël

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 7:28 PM Jean-Michaël Celerier <jeanmichael.celerier@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

TL;DR: we'd like to organize a conference / meetup about the use of Qt in multimedia software and software for artists, create a community around that and weigh a bit in the Qt development process / exchange good practices / fix bugs together / etc.
You are invited :-)

Long version:

You are receiving this mail as you are likely to be part or know persons who may be part of the development team of a software which fulfills the following criterions :

- It is free software.

- It is developed with the Qt framework.
- It is a software mainly used by artists & creators - visual arts, music, lighting, stage control, creative coding, video...

This mail is addressed mostly to individuals as it's easier to find out, but can (should) be discussed with the dev team of the organization you are affiliated with,
and shared with any person or project that may be interested in the initiative.

As you all know, developing with Qt is some days very nice, and some days very... not nice :-)
In order to improve on this, I am trying to organize a conference / meetup / community which would be centered specifically around the use of Qt for software targeting artists as end users.

The reason for that scope limitation being, that we often have fairly similar problems to solve across different software in that field, especially as OSS devs :
- Introduce scripting through Javascript / Python / etc. to allow users to make extensions & plugins
- Rendering nice graphics with the GPU
- Handling real-time operation for audio
- Communicating with various kind of hardware through various uncommon protocols / drivers
- Creating custom widgets used in art contexts - color choosers of various kinds, knobs, vumeters, waveforms, etc etc
- Interoperating with web through websockets, for instance for remote control apps & similar.
- Creating timelines & similar kind of complex widgets with complex user interactions
- Building & testing for platforms we don't own (e.g. most likely an overpriced intel and soon-to-be ARM CPU in a metal chassis with a half-eaten fruit on it)

- Theming, skinning - art makers sure do love their dark themes & skeuomorphic UIs :-p

The central idea for this meetup would be to create a space where we could share knowledge around these topics, and discuss which solution experimentally works best, what pitfalls are encountered, etc. as it's not unlikely that for any of these problems, someone else in that community would already have encountered it in some way.

The second idea is to identify the Qt shortcomings, and work together either on fixing them in Qt (as it is often the most future-proof way) or provide potential alternative libraries / ways of doing things. (or just complain very loudly on the mailing lists or bugreports :-p).

A first thing to do would be to create a kind of community space to discuss a few points - this can be this mail chain at first but I think that using a chat platform such as Mattermost, Slack, Discord, RocketChat, Zulip, or IRC channel of some kind would be better.
These few points are for now :
1/ What would be the meetup format ? In an ideal world we'd do a conference with a nice hackathon and lots of pizzas :-)
but it's more likely that things would look like an online meetup soon. Any idea would be appreciated - other than that things could start as soon as mid-september for instance if we are to do something over a video conferencing service.

2/ Should this only be about free software, or should we also invite proprietary software developers ?
I am thinking of Blackmagic, Allegorithmic, Arobas, VIDVOX and a couple others.

For now I've created the following Discord instance to discuss: https://discord.gg/n2TCrR - any other idea is appreciated, as long as everyone can get on board :-)

The meetup would follow the Berlin code of conduct (https://berlincodeofconduct.org/) ; it is important to me to ensure that we encourage diversity among the attendants, and all have a nice time overall.

To finish, here's a few words about me: Jean-Michaël Celerier.
I've been working on a sequencer for live show control, ossia score (https://ossia.io) since 2014, using Qt5 & mostly C++.
I've worked at KDAB (a company fairly involved in Qt development) from 2019 until now where I can afford to work full-time on my project.
Also, I like organizing things and I love art and making artists' lives better, with free software :-)
I live in France, and am affiliated with the Université de Bordeaux and the SCRIME (Research and Creation Studio for Computer Science and Experimental Music).
I can easily have access to a conference space if we are to organize something in the physical world.

Hoping to hear from you all soon.
Kind regards,
Jean-Michaël

https://jcelerier.name