LUGRadio

gimp, libre graphics meeting 1 Comment

I gave an interview last night to Jono and the boys on LUGRadio about the Libre Graphics Meeting.

I don’t think I was particularly good – I was a bit scattered, which probably reflects the conference, and I’m not sure I got the core points across – getting artists and developers together and learning from each other, getting developers working together from different projects, sharing a passion and love for free software with a bunch of people we don’t meet very often.

That’s what you get for doing interviews after 10pm, after a 10 hour working day and a board meeting.

Anyway, we’ll see how it sounds after it’s passed through the magic remixing fingers of Mr. Bacon et al.

Envy

gnome 7 Comments

I envy people with the sense of humour and subtlety to come up with a t-shirt like this.

"Conferences suck"

gimp, guadec, libre graphics meeting Comments Off on "Conferences suck"

Libre Graphics Meeting

Jeff Jarvis on conferences:

Too many conferences suck […] They are all about speeches and not about conversation and argument and learning and meeting. They don’t capture the expertise of the crowd.

Reading this gives me great pleasure, since the Libre Graphics Meeting is all about conversation and argument and learning and meeting. The last bit’s even in the name, it’s so important.

So most of the great, exciting stuff that’s going to happen at the conference, you won’t find on the schedule.

Carl Worth is coming along to meet people interested in Cairo. A contingent from HP’s imaging team will be popping in to get their kit working better with free software. Rui Campos is going to give a 5 hour workshop on Blender. The GIMP developers are going to have a meeting. The Scribus developers are all going to meet for the first time in real life. A bunch of Inkscape developers are coming along to have a laugh and work with a group from Xara.

I’ve never been so excited about a conference. It’s going to be passionnate people from different projects, all in the same place, scribbling their notes and designs and explanations on beermats and paper serviettes, but also, thanks to the fact that there will be time during the conference when there are no planned presentations, perhaps they’ll be scribbling on whiteboards, laptops and paper.

The community, work + pleasure, community aspect of a conference is also something I want to be important for GUADEC this year, and with Quim at the helm, we’re well on our way.

Oh – and listen out for a quick bit on the Libre Graphics Meeting during the last episode (right at the end) of LUGRadio, season 3, episode 8, in all good websites now.