gatherings
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So a child of the frigid north found his way all the way to the other side of the world for yet another spectacular free software conference. This time it's to celebrate the Encuentro Linux conference 2009 in Valparaiso/Vina del Mar in sunny Chile.
Hosted at the picturesque Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, this conference has attracted hundreds of Linux enthusiasts, students, and business folks. With a view like this, it's no wonder that you often see people standing outside discussing their software, instead of the auditoriums and class rooms:
(View from outside the conference entrance)
The main reason I'm attending the conference is to spread the word and raise awareness of everyones favorite toolkit and desktop - Qt and KDE!
I presented two talks - one more technical on the various Qt modules available and how you can use them. A (demo-effect riddled) presentation on using Qt Creator to make a web browser in 5 minutes as well guiding through the other tools included with Qt. Thanks to Henrik for large parts of this presentation.
Also, I presented an introduction to the KDE project and an overview of KDE4. KDE has so much to show that 1 hour only gave me enough time to scratch the surface - bummer! Thanks as well to Sebas for large parts of this presentation.
(Encuentro folks enjoying the good weather and discussing important topics like Linux and Freud)
It's worth noting that the food here is spectacular. For instance, even "fast food" like the Chorrillana (sp?) has the lowly Oslo kebab/shoarma beat on every metric!
(Miguel in a chorrillana mode)
All in all this conference is off to a great start and I'm already enjoying day 2 as I write this blog while listening to Lady GaGa in the "penguin room".
Oh yeah...and thanks Nokia for taking me from -2 degree Oslo weather walking to work, to 24 degrees of South American awesomeness!
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The Grand Canaria Desktop Summit has been incredible so far. The amount of talent and enthusiasm for Free Software has not only been amazing, but equally impressive and inspiring. The GNOME and KDE folks talking openly and discussing future plans - proving - that the so called "desktop flame war" is more or less completely gone. I really look forward to the hacking these coming days - hopefully implementing a few of the things that have been discussed this weekend myself. Also, worth mentioning is the amazing job that Nokia did with the sponsorship. The conference location is top notch - the events great - and the swag is all very useful. Good job!
And now, we have the obligatory photos...
Two incredibly handsome trolls (myself and Jens (jbache)) outside the entrance:
Ariya showing off some really slick graphics FX with Qt:
Knut, Olivier (gof), Andreas (bibr), Antti, Espen, and Alexis (darktears) enjoying the calm before the storm (Sunday evening event):
Till, Kevin, and Will efficiently showing us how to Get Things Done:
Spreading the word outside the conference together with Alexis (darktears):
(old bag, new towels)
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So, the KDE 4.2 release party in Oslo is over. We capped at around 12 people, and everyone had a great time :) We discussed free software, Qt (how couldn't we?), and various KDE technology/pillars. It was neat to see some non-trolls show up, and I'm tempted to host more small events to maybe create a local community. Concretely, this means that the next KDE Sunday (hacking/krush sessions) I'm hosting will be public. In otherwords- if you're in Oslo, then keep an eye on my blog for more announcements so that you can come and join us!
And now, time for some handsome devils depicted through blurry vision (cameraphone):
Leo, Thiago, Thomas, and Alexis cheering for Kde 4.2!
Olivier and Simon
Denis, Tobias, and $kde_user (sorry - forgot your name!)
Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate, and thanks to Bugges for hosting us! :D
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So, after spending a week in the US attending the Linux Collaboration Summit, I'm finally back, and slightly less jet lagged enough to write a small post about my journey. Although I haven't attended many conferences in my life, I have to say that this one was truly one of the best. The amount of talent mixed with collaboration was a spectacular sight. Indeed everyone was open to dialog, and wanting to to work together to bring Linux forward as a whole. Particularly interesting and inspiring to me was the talks by vendors and hardware people who are already now taking the first tangible steps to reaching the elusive year of the Linux desktop. The idea of creating a niche market for small or ultra inexpensive systems which basically work perfectly for anything but gaming is a really feasible and ideal market for a Linux based system to thrive and lead. The panel that presented that track proved that the industry has indeed noticed, and the manufacturers are pushing hard for the concept as well. Of course, I found it particularly exciting to hear the that Asus EeePc SDK will focus on Qt4, as you can see in the guide here. Enough chit chat, here's some eye candy:
Ever so famous Jon “Maddog” Hall. If you look closely in the background you can see Henrik presenting Qt 4.4 features as well ;)
I think this pic really expresses the mood on the mobile panel, where it felt like a free for all against Google (on the far right), and OpenMoko being the neutral party beside him. The most entertaining panel, but also the least productive in my opinion.
At the end of the first night we were taken to a really nice club/lounge place called Qua which has the worlds largest indoor aquarium in a club. Basically, the dance floor was literally a big shark tank. If this wasn't cool enough, J5 of fedora/gnome/d-bus fame managed to hook us up with a nice bar side alcho-pyrotechnic display:
We also got to visit Ranger, a really powerful supercomputer/grid which was recently built (running CentOS on Sun hardware). An ultra friendly diagram to show its power...
...of course, they needed to show their Texas pride as well! :)
After finishing up all the hard summit work, we had a little boat outing on lake Travis (we had 3 small fast boats and cruised around basically :))...
.ate some good tex-mex at a restaurant overlooking the lake...
...and finally ending the day screaming as you realize that you forgot to put some sun block on your legs!
A spectacular summit, and I really hope to go again next year!
