If the effort means smooth change of the bitcoin block size, it will be good. But 6 months is too long.
average data per block at the moment is only 66%.. still plenty of room for a while.. the reason transactions may take longer then one block to finally get admitted into a block is no due to data bloat, but due to miners preference to only allow fee added tx's.
in short there has never been a constant 0.99mb filled block problem, so i prefer them spending 6 months alpha-testing all these new concepts privately before releasing them as a formal beta public update
still not sure about segregated witness, if it's not carry any risk, why satoshi has not think about it since the ebginning, when he limited the block to 1?
i welcome the synching speed up, this is needed for those that have not strong machine, not my case, as i can sync and open the client in 20 seconds..
i too am not sure about segwit. as its a benefit only for lighter clients.. the whole allowing for twice as much tx's is not quite true either. but atleast its a soft fork (only for lite clients.) and not a hard fork (affecting proper nodes)