Faircamp Feature Suggestions Season Finale

I'm starting an experiment for Faircamp where I'm introducing alternating seasons of different focus:

1. A season to broadly gather input and feedback on long-term development, where feature suggestions and wishes can be deposited openly in the feature suggestions thread and I'm taking lots of time off from development to actively evaluate and provide feeback on them as they come up.

2. A season where I'm fully dedicating my available time and resources on pushing actual development forward, focusing solely on design and implementation work, and in turn, putting the suggestions thread into hibernation until the cycle returns to a new season of input and feedback.

Since its inception, Faircamp has always been operating in season 1, and over the last year with noticeably growing intensity. At this point I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has been contributing their insights and input - although naturally not everything can become a part of Faircamp, every insight helps to find direction and shape the future of things - so thank you for being a part of this process!

Faircamp will now for the first time enter season 2 - a stretch of focused development that will strictly prioritize the other, equally important side of things: Getting to work and making the things we talk about reality.

Lastly, I'd like to emphasize that while this season of doing will temporarily hibernate the discussion and evaluation of new features, any bugs, installation problems, ambiguities or problems in the documentation will of course still be very welcome, and will enjoy the same attention as ever (especially when they are critical).

Additional background

I consider the maintainership of Faircamp a responsibility, and knowing that many people by now use, or in some way depend on, Faircamp, I take this responsibility seriously too. With growing interest comes a greatly increased effort of communication - much of which is invisible as it comes in the form of emails or private messages asking for support or presenting ideas.

One of the forms in which I try to live up to this responsibility is by gathering a realistic picture of the time and resources required to "keep the lights on" in this project, and how different areas and needs contribute to this balance. Simply put: I try to track my time on the project based on different activities.

One key insight of the last weeks is that feature discussion and evaluation has been consuming a large part of the voluntary, and to the largest part unpaid, time I most recently spent on the project. An hour spent discussing, given that it leads to new insights and direction, is very important and valuable, but it also is an hour not spent planning, designing or developing, and if the balance between the talking and the doing becomes too one-sided, it will eventually have adverse effects on the health of the project.

Therefore, I'm taking early action. Over these last years I experienced the importance of being open and approachable, and I'm therefore dedicating the first cycle of the season model to just that. The second cycle of the season model, introduced in this experiment, creates a temporal structure that will act as a counterbalance that creates room for working intently and exclusively on Faircamp, for it is deep and focused work that really brings about the things that can make a change in this world (that at least is my firm conviction).

Lastly, an important emphasis here also lies on experiment. I don't have all the answers, but I'm eager to find good ones, and this is an attempt to find out if this is a viable solution - right now in these specific circumstances - to strike a good balance between availability for exchange and a focus on bold, deep work that brings the project forward.

And that's it. Let's get some work done.