First GUADEC 2007 Sponsors

Just announced on guadec.org

Each year, GUADEC is always supported by the GNOME Foundation, and organised by volunteers. However, this event would be inconceivable without the generous help and contributions from sponsors, media partners and co-organizers. Therefore, the GUADEC team is pleased to announce that Google and Igalia are the first confirmed sponsors for GUADEC 2007! We have several more sponsors in the pipeline, but congratulations to the Google and Igalia for their promptness. We are very grateful to have these companies involved in GUADEC this year, as they are both very focused on using, supporting and providing Free and Open Source software solutions.

Google

Silver sponsor

Google have decided to sponsor GUADEC at silver level for the second year running. This indicates their continuing commitment and support of Open and Free Software projects.

About Google

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

Google provides support to the open source community through donations, hosting community meetups and through the Google Summer of Code program. To learn more about Google’s open source efforts, visit code.google.com.

Igalia

Igalia LogoSilver sponsor

It is also Igalia’s second year sponsoring GUADEC, and they will be sponsoring at Silver level again. Many thanks to Igalia for their continued sponsorship of GUADEC, and also for the many other Free and Open Source projects and events they support.

About Igalia

Igalia is a company from the south-west of Europe (Galicia, Spain), specialized in the development of innovative free software technologies and solutions. Igalia has been increasing its involvement in the Gnome community since its creation five years ago, contributing with code and documentation to several components and applications, and sponsoring and organizing different Gnome events, from local hackfests to international conferences.

In May 2003, the first version of the Fisterra project was published by Igalia. Fisterra is a sophisticated framework for making the development of business management software easier with Gnome technologies. Since then, several companies have adopted solutions based on Fisterra. Igalia developers have a deep knowledge of the Gnome technologies and during the last years, the company has carried out projects for evolving, adapting or modifying different parts of Gnome, including subcontracts for relevant international companies.

http://www.igalia.com/

The Amazing Wastebasket

I have found my first suprise feature of GNOME 2.18! I guess this will prevent me having to explain why people have found they have no space left on their removable drives, yet have deleted everything off them…

Empty Trash Confirmation Screenshot

That is, as long as they can understand what it’s really asking. I’m hoping “umount” and the strange paragraph size is just a translation problem. The odd thing was it didn’t actually empty my wastebasket anyway, since there is still stuff in there from my hard drive.

On the other hand, I can’t wait to see what this will look like in Ubuntu, where they have inexplicably renamed “Wastebasket” to the more incomprehensible “Deleted Items”. (“So I’m deleting the items from my deleted items? You What?”)

Go Go GNOME 2.18

Yesterday was my first experience of an Advisory Board conference call, and it was delightfully uneventful. However, I did think it was a shame no one mentioned THE MOST IMPORTANT THING that happened recently, which was the release of GNOME 2.18. I was going to, but we ran out of time before AOB.

Bit disappointed to learn one or two people weren’t taking the call as seriously as they might[1], as there are a lot of possible positives that could come out of these meetings if we could turn words into actions. Collaboration between some of the major GNOME companies is something I’ve been thinking is desperately needed to rejuvenate some areas of the GNOME project.

[1] Some people have asked what I meant by this, so I’ll just clarify it was a few comments being made on IRC at the time of the call. Nothing very serious, but just a little disappointing after such a useful and positive call.

art.gnome.org: Google Summer of Code Project

So some people may have noticed I’ve spent more time hacking on control center and other things recently. I’ve had loads of ideas for art.gnome.org, but no time to implement them, so let me introduce the Summer of Code project for art.gnome.org!

Coding the next version of art.gnome.org

Benefits: Users love cool artwork – users love web2.0 – lets combine the two

Requirements: Need to know PHP and MySQL.

More Information here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Ago3/Ideas

Contacts 0.4

Just released a new version of Contacts, with the following new features since 0.3…

Overview of Changes in 0.4 (since 0.3)

  • Add support for saving and restoring window size on application exit and start up. (bug 240)
  • Allow double click in the chooser window if it is single select. (bug 176)
  • Use the icon theme for the application icon
  • Prevent the search entry selecting text on backspace. (bug 53)
  • Fix group editing/management (bug 217)
  • New translations: Bulgarian and Danish

Download

I expect Ross will have debian and ubuntu packages within minutes.

GUADEC Marketing

It seems the GUADEC Marketing Campaign has got off to a great start. We’ve had some fantastic ideas for posters from Dave Lamb, who seems to have a good talent for marketing. I think posters
seven, eight
and
nine are my favourites so far. We’ve been discussing these on the gnome-uk list, but we should probably move it over to the guadec-list for more input.

We also have about 10 people so far who have volounteered to put posters up in colleges and universities, or talk to their local LUG meetings about it. I’m sure we can do better though, so if you know anyone who has possible contacts, make sure they put their name down to volounteer!

Also, there’s a last chance to enter your talk proposals if you’ve been to busy preparing releases for GNOME 2.18. The call for papers deadline has now been extended to Thursday 15th March.

guadec.org work

Michael was over this weekend, and we found some time to have a go at the guadec.org website. Having slightly more experience with Drupal, he managed to explain some of it’s idiosyncrasies to me. We’ve hopefully managed to make the navigation a bit more understandable, and I’ve updated it with the latest news on the GUADEC Marketing Campaign. We also added some information about visas if you’re travelling to the UK.

And don’t forget, tomorrow is the deadline for submitting talk proposals for GUADEC 2007.

YOUR DESKTOP NEEDS YOU!

If YOU want to get involved in THE BIGGEST and THE BEST CONFERENCE in
the GNOME CALENDAR, then help us SPREAD THE WORD about GUADEC and
GNOME!

And now that I have your attention…

One of the goals of Guadec, and especially in bringing it to the UK,
was to raise awareness about the GNOME project. At our last Guadec
planning meeting we were discussing the ways in which we can get more
people involved in Guadec.

One of the easiest ways to get involved is to start promoting Guadec
and the Gnome project at your local LUG or university, or any other
geeky institution. We’d like to see Guadec posters put up in as many
university and collage computer science departments as possible.

So first things first, we need some nice posters that are easily
printable on A4 paper to stick up on notice boards. It would be great
if we could find some artists in the UK to help with this project, so
if you know any artistic people who are interested in free software,
please ask them if they would like to help out!

If you are a collage or university student, or regularly attend your
local lug meetings, SPEAK UP NOW, and place your name on our marketing
campaign wiki page

You might also want to join the gnome-uk mailing list or the guadec-list to join in the discussions.