This is something that I have been thinking of for a little while, and while MATE is not as big as Gnome or KDE, I think it's time we have our own conference, It would be open to everyone that is involved in MATE, not just Ubuntu MATE, but any distro that uses MATE. I have other ideas if everyone thinks it would be a good idea, but just wanted to see what people thought?
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All five of us? Sounds great! 
Joking aside, I'd be more tempted by having a MATE presentation at a GNOME/GTK conference and a bunch of MATE people show up. That would give more exposure to the desktop environment and might get outsiders to contribute or otherwise help out.
Another thing we can do is have virtual live sessions that people can join online to have discussions around whatever the community wants, rather than organizing something more involved.
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I actually like both of those ideas a little better than mine at this point though once we are as big as kde or gnome we do need our own conference 
Especially the second and while I would love to go to a Gnome/Gtk conference most that I've seen are too far away 
Just another thought would be to have non gnome gtk conferences where all the non gnome gtk desktops come, not that we would exclude gnome, but that it would be focused on non gnome gtk desktops, but really there's not a need for one. I really do like your second idea with the live sessions, I think doing that would interest much of the community and maybe help them to be more actively involved
I wouldn't dismiss an actual conference, but I think we might not be big enough to even have the quorum or resources to put this together (I might be wrong, though)
If we do live sessions, we could record them and have them available on the website afterwards. Those could be really useful, like tutorials, howtos, Q and A sessions, etc.
Other ideas welcomed, of course
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I'd be down for a virtual MATE-themed LUG. Wimpy could use his reputation to bolster the idea with Jupiter Broadcasting and get some sweet, sweet Digital Ocean discounts if they want to sponsor it.
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It is a great idea. Mate is my favourite Desktop
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To record live sessions would be fantastic for who live far (as me)
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I'm really starting to like the idea of online live sessions. The having actual physical conferences also has the downside of only being near to a part of the community at a time everybody else would have to travel. However online would be accessible to everyone and might not cost a ton, as far as through what medium it would be done through I'm not real familiar with such things
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Also it wouldn't have to be that often, even annually would be cool though quarterly or monthly would be even better, however we don't want it to be to time consuming, that it consumes a lot of the developers time as from what I've seen they're already very busy
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If anybody knows a way to get the ball rolling with the online part(get it to some of the other people who could make it an official UM thing), or has other ideas along this line that the community could do to help increase awareness of UM and improve the community overall they are welcome
Discord has screen sharing in guilds now, multiple persons with good Internet connections can share their displays in a single channel, though for screensharing I believe it's limited to ten individuals (just like in private groups) but one person can have a stream to YouTube or Twitch running, switching between different desktop users on-the-fly whenever a bug is encountered, or if there is something of interest one of the (potentially) ten users want to show something off.
As we are not targeting gamers, being a "Gaming personality" isn't important. (Linus Sebastian sure isn't one.) But any relevant personalities with Linux desktops could host this MATE-centric stream to accrue more viewers.
I have a Discord guild ready and waiting, if anyone wants to use that though I don't have the screenshare stuff set up in it quite yet.
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BTW wanted to say thanks for running that Discord server.
Not that it's popular or anything. I've never looked at it since the idea of making it official was pigeonholed ages ago.
That would be awesome