Winter Summit Quick Wrapup

I won't spend a lot of time getting into details in this post, because the CSM is committed to getting a good portion of the Meeting Minutes published to the community before the end of the year, Mayan Apocalypse permitting. As soon as we get back home, we're going into full gear, and most of the devs we met have been able to promise they will review the minutes in :48hours:, even if it means interrupting their Xmas vacations. Thanks in advance for that.

In general, the summit went quite well, though there were a few times when we had to say some things that certain people were not expecting to hear. However, I think it's encouraging that this was a bit rarer than in certain past CSM summits.

The schedule died in a fire by lunchtime on the first day as it became clear that extra meetings were required (we had to stay late every day). My thanks to CCP Xhagen and CCP Dolan for keeping all the balls in the air.

I must admit to going into the summit wondering how CCP was going to address the challenges of the future, especially how they are going to take on bigger feature projects without succumbing to the mistakes of the past. But after many discussions with people at different levels of the company, I am more confident that they have an ambitious but well-considered development strategy, and the right people in the right roles to execute the strategy. CCP is going to be explaining this all to the community in the very near future.

This is not to say that what they want to do will be easy, or without risks -- it won't. But while they are going to take big bites in 2013 and beyond, I don't think they will be biting off more than they can chew.

And of course, it will be interesting to see if the community will swallow it. ;)