Social Events at GUADEC 2020

Part of the magic of GUADEC is going out to amazing dinners with your new and old friends; exploring the beautiful parts of somewhere new; and maybe even staying up to watch the sun rise.

This year is a little bit different – but there are still lots of ways to get to know each other, try out new things, and hopefully have a little fun.

Four smiling people at a restaurant
Photo courtesy of Sriram Ramkrishna. Licensed CC-BY-SA

Social Events

Wednesday (22 July) at 21:10 UTC you can join Melissa Wu for drinks. She’ll be teaching us some fun cocktail and mocktail recipes. Thank you Woodlyn Travel for making this happen! (See Notes below.)

Sriram Ramkrishna, every GNOMEie’s fun uncle, is also quite the cook. Join him Thursday (23 July) at 21:00 UTC to learn some of his kitchen secrets. I recommend getting the ingredients ahead of time so you can cook along and then we can all snack together. (See Notes below.)

You might know Sumana Harihareswara from her work with Python, GNOME, Zulip, Mailman, MediaWiki, or many other places in the free software world. She’s also hilarious. If you like to laugh, check out Sumana on Friday (24 July) at 21:00 UTC to hear Sumana’s stand-up comedy.

There might not be a Museum BoF this year, but Ayanna Dozier will be bringing the museum experience to us on Monday (27 July) at 21:00 UTC. Ayanna Dozier is a scholar, filmmaker, and performance artist, and the Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum and an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University. She’ll be introducing us to modern art (1930 – 1965) through key artists and important historical events.

Social Hours

Every night after the evening social events, you can attend or host a Social Hour. Social hours are a time to get together around any topic you’re interested in. These will include a Tea Party, GNOME Beers, and a GLBTQ+ social time. We especially encourage Social Hours based on non-English languages. If you want to host a social hour, please sign up for an account on and add it to the wiki.

Notes

Ingredients for Drinks

Cocktail 1

  • Beer (ideally Mexican beer)
  • Tomato Juice
  • Lime Juice
  • Optional: Worcestershire Sauce, Hot Sauce, Tajin Seasoning, Lime wedge
    Non alcoholic version – all of the above minus the beer!

Cocktail 2

  • Tequila
  • Grapefruit Juice
  • Lime Juice
  • Agave Nectar, Simple Syrup, or Honey
  • Salt
  • Ice

Cocktail 3

  • Whiskey
  • Lemon or limes
  • Honey, Simple Syrup, or Maple Syrup
  • Ginger beer or soda water
  • Mint or Basil
  • Optional: Berries for flavor
  • Ice

Cocktail 4

  • Vodka
  • Coconut Water
  • Pineapple Juice
  • Fresh Lime Juice
  • Agave Nectar, Simple Syrup, or Honey
  • Club Soda
  • Ice

Ingredients for Cooking

Recipe 1

  • 1 cup mayonnaise (vegan works too)
  • 1 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
  • 14 oz can artichoke hearts (in brine, not oil), drained and finely chopped

Recipe 2

  • 2 slices of bread
  • Various veggies – mushrooms, carrots, onions, beets, cabbage, green or red peppers – thinly sliced
  • 1-2 TB Mayonnaise (vegan works too)
  • 1-2 TB Cranberry pickle (recipe included)
  • 1 slice of cheese (muenster, cheddar, etc)
  • 1 TB of butter

Cranberry Pickle

  • 2 TB Oil
  • 3 tsp mustard seeds
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 1 cup cranberries
  • 1/2 tsp salt (to taste)
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 1/4 tsp asofetida
  • 1 tsp kashmiri chilli powder
  • 1/4 tsp sugar (optional)

(Some) Highlights from GUADEC

There are so many exciting things happening at GUADEC this year, it would be impossible to highlight everything I’m looking forward to. What really excited me about the schedule this year is how diverse the topics are. I really do think this year’s GUADEC has something for everyone, from people just getting to know free and open source software (FOSS) to people who are hardcore GNOME contributors. Please note that all sessions will be captioned in English.

A woman stands behind a desk, looking up at slides. She has a microphone in her hand and is giving a presentation.
“Guadec 2013: Interns lightning talks” by Ana _Rey is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Staff Sessions

I positively adore my coworkers. I’ll spare you how great they are, and instead focus on some of the talks they’ll be giving.

GKT Core Developer Emmanuele Bassi will be giving two talks: Being a GNOME Maintainer: Best Practices and Known Traps and Archaeology of Accessibility. Being a GNOME Maintainer will discuss what it means to be a GNOME maintainer, and Archaeology of Accessibility will be a technical deep dive into the accessibility work Emmanuele and others have been doing around accessibility. (Note: “Accessibility” refers to the ability of technology to accommodate the needs of users who have disabilities, visual impairments, etc.)

Melissa Wu, who is organizing the Community Engagement Challenge, will give two sessions as well. In her first, Remember What It’s Like to Be New to GNOME, she’ll talk about her experience coming to the GNOME community only a few months ago, getting to know people, and making things happen.

Melissa will also join me for A Year of Strategic Initiatives at GNOME, during which we’ll talk about a range of things that have happened at GNOME over the past year (and some future plans), with a focus on organizational sustainability and the initiatives that make us excited to work here.

Executive Director Neil McGovern will lead the Annual General Meeting, to provide everyone with an overview of what we’ve been doing and what we will do, and answer your questions.

Welcome to FOSS, Welcome to GNOME

New to FOSS? New to GNOME? Not sure what I’m talking about? Check out these sessions!

Building Better Community

In these talks you’ll learn about how to build better, stronger communities and be a better community member. A lot of this is applicable to your life outside of FOSS as well!

Building Better Software

These talks cover ways to build software better. Some of them are focused on GNOME, but all of them will be applicable to whatever you’re working on.

Join us!

Registration for GUADEC is free, but we encourage you to do so anyway. Knowing how many people are attending, and learning about who you are, helps us make GUADEC better every year. Register today!

Meet the GNOMEies: Kristi Progri

With GUADEC two weeks away, this was the perfect time to talk to Program Manager and GUADEC organizer Kristi Progri. To see her amazing work live, register for GUADEC today!

A photo of Kristi Progri. She is wearing a red shirt and fabulous bright red lipstick.
Photo courtesy of Kristi Progri. Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND-SA.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

For people who have known me for a long time, I am Kiki. That’s my nickname, which comes from when I was playing basketball and I had four other team mates with the same name.

I was born and grew up in the country with the largest number of bunkers in the world, left over from the communist era. I finished my bachelor studies in International Affairs and Diplomacy and my Master’s Degree is in ‘Information Systems Security’

A few years ago I co-founded the Open Source Diversity initiative and for around five years I was the chairwoman of a local hackerspace in my hometown that promotes all Free & Open Source technologies and data. For many years I was part of the organizing team for many years of the biggest open source conference in Albania.

What is your role within the GNOME community?

I am the Program Coordinator in the GNOME Foundation where I help to organize various events, leading many initiatives within the community including the Engagement Team, and working closely with all the volunteers and contributors. I also coordinate internships and help with general Foundation activities.

Do you have any other affiliations you want to share?

Before joining GNOME, I was very active in Mozilla community. I have been part of the Tech Speakers program and a Mozilla Representative for more than seven years now. I have organized many events and workshops and also have participated as a speaker talking about Free Software communities at many events around the globe.

Why did you get involved in GNOME?

I was introduced to Free Software when I was in high school, my friend had a computer running Debian and he started explaining how it worked. This was the first time I heard about it and I immediately understood that I would never be part of these communities. It looked so complicated and not my cup of tea, but it looks like I was very wrong. Once I went for to a hackerspace meeting I completely changed my mind and from that moment the hackerspace become my second home.

Why are you still involved with GNOME?

Diversity, people, community, sorting out dramas in and outside community, are some very important keywords that drive me to love working in such environment. I am working full time, so GNOME gets a big part of my attention everyday, which I am happy to share.

What are you working on right now?

My working desk is full of post-it notes of to do tasks :D

My main thing now is organizing GUADEC online edition, working as well Google Season of Docs, University Outreach Initiative, other activities and tasks part of the Engagement team, and many others things which I am sure I have missed.

What are you excited about right now – either in GNOME or free and open source software in general?

We are building a new GNOME Community in Africa and spreading our community more in Asia, I am so excited to know what the future will bring us and how big GNOME will get. I feel like we are gaining momentum and I see very motivated people coming and contributing.

What is a major challenge you see for the future of GNOME?

As in many Free Software communities we have a big challenge with how to get newcomers on board and to keep them motivated to continue contributing. We need to have a very good structured way within the community to guide people for the tasks we need contributors and show them the way. Another major challenge I see is how GNOME will adapt with the new changes that are occurring in the world due to Covid-19 in terms of events, conferences, and hackfest organization .

What do you think GNOME should focus on next?

Financial sustainability and keeping the shiny growth rate we have right now should be one of the most important focuses. As previously mentioned these are difficult times we are currently living in, in the making the world a bit unsafe and therefore this might mean that finding the resources and donors will be challenging.

What else should we have asked about that we didn’t? Please answer :)

Whats you favorite physical activity? Weightlifting

Answers edited for length.

Friends of GNOME Update June 2020

Welcome to the Friends of GNOME Update

A photo of ten people on a rooftop. Some have their arms crossed. They look Very Serious.
“Group picture (testing)” by mariosp is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

A Victory for Open Source!

We are so, so excited to share the settlement in the legal case levied by Rothschild Patent Imaging against the GNOME Foundation. Ten months after Rothschild Patent Imagining first alleged that GNOME was in violation of one of their patents. In the settlement, Rothschild dropped all charges. Additionally, their patent portfolio is now available for any project using an Open Source Initiative approved license.

You can read an interview between Executive Director Neil McGovern and OpenUK’s Amanda Brock about the case.

GNOME on the Road

The Pan African GNOME Summit might have been postponed, but the organizers are hard at work making community meetings happen. At the first meetup, Neil, Program Coordinator Kristi Progri, and GNOME contributor Sriram Ramkrishna presented on various topics. Melissa Wu, organizer of the Community Engagement Challenge, joined for the second.

GUADEC 2020

The GUADEC 2020 schedule is in place, we have some amazingly generous sponsors, and registration is open!

Why register for a remote, free, online conference? Registering for GUADEC 2020 helps the GUADEC team and the Foundation. By understanding who is attending, where you are coming from, and what your needs are, we are able to plan better conferences in the future. Please consider [registering today][].

Community Engagement Challenge Updates

The deadline for the Community Engagement Challenge is coming up on July 1. Don’t forget to submit your ideas on how we can bring new contributors into free and open source software.

For the Challenge, we’ve recruited four amazing judges: Gina Likins, Manuel Haro Márquez, Murray Saunders, and Allison Randal. They represent a wide range of experience across free software, education, and community and technical excellence.

We Finished the Annual Report!

We published our annual report! Check it out if you want to know what the Foundation accomplished in 2019 and highlights from community successes.

We Had a Fundraiser!

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who supported the Spring fundraiser. For it, we asked people to think of their donations as votes for where we should focus efforts in the upcoming months. We had two “buckets,” WebKitGTK development for GTK4 and supporting building a stronger GNOME community in Africa. I’d like to also thank Caroline, Emmauele, and Regina Nkemchor Adjeo for their help.

GTK (and Accessibility) Updates

Core GTK Developer Emmanuele Bassi has, as always, been working hard on pushing forward GTK development. In addition to working on vital infrastructure like technical documentation, Emmanuele wrote an outline for upcoming accessibility rework.

Flathub (In China)

Flathub uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that does not work in China. Our SysAdmin team noticed this and went on a quest to find a way to bring Flathub to China. We are now using Oracle Cloud to deliver service to China.

Welcome to the New Board!

Just days ago, GNOME Foundation members voted in the Foundation’s annual Board of Directors elections. We’re excited to welcome (and welcome back) Regina Nkemchor Adejo, Robert McQueen, Felipe Borges, and Ekaterina Gerasimova. This will be Regina’s first term on the Board.

Thank you to our departing Board members! Running a foundation is hard work, and we appreciate their volunteer efforts to set vision, direct the Foundation’s activities, make decisions on finances, and go to a lot of important meetings.

GNOME Stands with Black Lives Matter

Earlier in June, Neil published a statement in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Personally, I am proud to be a member and employee of an organization that understands our role in fighting racism, and how we as a free software community can do better and need to.

From the Community

Thank you!

Thank you for everything you do for GNOME! Whether you are a Friend of GNOME, Foundation member, donor, contributor, or enthusiast, we wouldn’t be here without you!

A conversation with Outreachy student Sonja Heinze about Fractal

Sonja Heinze was an Outreachy intern for GNOME from December 2019 – March 2020. She worked on Fractal, GNOME’s Matrix client. She was interviewed by Oliver Propst during her internship.

Do you want to introduce yourself?

I’m a mathematician and have just finished a PhD in algebraic singularity theory. Last year, I went to a place called Recurse Center for three months with the idea to figure out if programming would be a fun alternative to an academic career.

Can you tell us about the work you’re doing?

At the moment, I’m implementing a video player in Fractal. Fractal is a communication app for the GNOME desktop based on the Matrix protocol. Communication is organized into rooms. With my contribution, video attachments get handled as follows: any message with video attachment that appears in the room history (i.e. list of messages sent in that room), gets provided some own little space where it gets auto-played in a loop without sound.

Of course, when the user scrolls up or down in the room history and the video message gets out of sight, it stops playing. When clicking on the video, the media viewer opens. There, the user can play and pause the video and seek in it (see second picture in mail attachment). Furthermore, in the media viewer the user can go forth and back through all the media sent in that room (i.e., images and videos). Both, in the room history and in the media viewer, the video widget dimensions get adjusted well according to the video resolution ratio.

Why did you choose this project?

The project seemed the most interesting and challenging one on the Outreachy list. For me, learning through the internship is just as important as starting to get to know the open source world. I hadn’t seen GTK or GStreamer before and reading about them seemed very interesting. Furthermore, Fractal is written in Rust.

I hadn’t seen any code written in Rust before, but Rust had already caught my attention during my time at the Recurse Center. I guess, if the project was written in a very common language that I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have chosen that project. But for a newish language like Rust, it seemed more acceptable and learning Rust through the project was a motivating idea. Also, contributing to a non-commercial open source communication app alternative to the mainstream ones was another mo titivating factor.

How would you rate the development experience?

It has taken me a little while to get used to the general work flow programmers are used to; as in, when to ask in a private chat, when in a public chat, when on GitLab and, if on GitLab, where. I find GitLab very user friendly. Also, whenever I don’t know about a functionality that’d be useful, my project mentors tell me about it. And whenever I know about one, but don’t know how it works, the documentation is very useful.

What are your impressions about the GNOME community and how do you feel about contributing to GNOME in general?

My two mentors for the project are super nice and helpful. And the other community members I’ve interacted with so far, are so as well. I haven’t interacted with that many people yet, though. Contributing to GNOME is cool. I see GNOME as part of a non-commercial open source alternative to Windows or Mac and contributing to that is, for sure, worth the while.

Your work on Fractal involves using GStreamer can you and tell us something about GStreamer?

GStreamer is a library used for media reproduction. In Fractal, GStreamer was already used for the implementation of the audio player that appears for messages with audio attachment in the room message history.

GStreamer reproduces audio or video by means of a pipeline, i.e. a system of connecting pieces, called elements, that manipulate the media in one way or another. In Fractal, we use a high level API provided by GStreamer for that called GstPlayer. In the end, I’ve been able to do almost everything through GstPlayer. But on my way there, I’ve sometimes manipulated the pipeline directly and through that I’ve learned a little bit about how GStreamer works. 

For example, I’ve read a little about how communication with and inside the pipeline works. The way a pipeline communicates internally is by sending events from one element to another. There are different kinds of events. Some of them are responsible for informing all pieces of the pipeline about an instruction that might come from outside the pipeline. 

An example is wanting to access a certain point of the video and playing the video from there, called seek event. For that to happen, the application can send a seek event to the pipeline; that’s one way of communicating with the pipeline from outside. When that happens, that seek event is put on all sink elements of the pipeline and from there sent upstream, element by element, until it reaches the source element, which then pulls the requested data and sends it through the pipeline. 

Events are just one example of pipeline communication. To mention some more ways to communicate with the pipeline from outside: messages the pipeline leaves on the pipeline bus for the application to listen to, state changes and queries on elements or pads.

Anything else you want to add or share?

Fractal uses Flatpak, which provides isolation of the app from the rest of the user’s system. I didn’t know Flatpak before and the concept seems pretty interesting. I hope to find some time to learn a bit about it soon.

We want to thank Sonja for taking time talking with us about Fractal and the work she’s done. More information about Fractal is available on the GNOME wiki.

Meet the GNOMEies: Efstathios Iosifidis

You might recognize Efstathios, or Stathis as many of us call him, if you were at GUADEC 2019 in Thessaloniki. However, he spent so much time running around making things happen, it is just as likely you missed him. A lot of GUADEC 2019 would not have happened without him and the rest of the team, and we’re really glad he’s helping out with GUADEC 2020 as well!

A photo of Stathis, looking unamused.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

I am a veterinarian and I work at a vet practice. In 2010, my friend Kostas and I had a dream to revive openSUSE community in Greece. Our project was very successful, and the global community trusted us to organize the openSUSE conference in 2013. During that period I got involved in other open source projects and communities. Right now I travel to different cities to attend national and international conferences, I speak and represent open source projects on those events. I was in the organization committee of GUADEC 2019.

What is your role within the GNOME community?

I am a translation coordinator in Greece and I do engagement work for the Greek community.

Do you have any other affiliations you want to share?

I am openSUSE member. I also contribute to other communities such as GNU Health, Nextcloud, ONLYOFFICE, ownCloud.

Why did you get involved in GNOME?

My first distro was Ubuntu and then Fedora. Both using GNOME. During my involvement with openSUSE global community, I met my friend Isabel Valverde. She was into GNOME community and she dragged me into GNOME community.

Why are you still involved with GNOME?

GNOME is one of the most important open source software/desktop environment. I would like to thank the community that releases new versions with many features. I use a powerful “tool” for free, so the least I can do is translate and promote it so more people can use it. Although I’m involved in other communities, GNOME is one of the most friendly and awesome ones.

What are you working on right now?

Mostly translating the new version 3.36 and promotion for conferences and organizing events. I help the GUADEC 2020 committee since I have the experience from the last GUADEC.

What are you excited about right now – either in GNOME or free and open
source software in general?

Since I’m in the “health” area, I’m excited about using open source software for health institutions. Everyone must have access to public health and it must be libre for everyone. Open source has the tools to help people and animals to have healthy lives.

What is a major challenge you see for the future of GNOME?

Communities such as GNOME, need to “produce” new developers. Programmers are human beings. Sometime soon they are going to slow down and maybe retire. So we might need a system to inspire new people to contribute. We have people that help new contributors to feel welcome in our community. My guess is that we better find a way to get into universities where students are hungry to learn new things and some might want to create something. We need them in open source in general, but it would be nice if they contributed to GNOME.

What do you think GNOME should focus on next?

I see that GNOME users are supporting mostly distributions rather than a GUI. I think that divides our effort to promote GNOME and gain more users for the sake of open source. GNOME has to focus on uniting all communities to have a more powerful voice on promoting open source.

Friends of GNOME Update May 2020

Welcome to the May 2020 Friends of GNOME Update!

A photo of Marina Zhurakhinskaya in front of a photo of a group of women from the GNOME Women's Dinner.
“Women party at guadec” by gonzalemario is licensed under CC BY 2.0

GNOME on the Road

We might be at home, but we still have a lot to say!

Community Engagement Challenge Update

Free software projects want to grow their contributor bases, and one of the most important ways to do that is to make it easy (and hopefully even fun) to get involved. We’ve teamed up with Endless to work on the Community Engagement Challenge, to get more people involved in GNOME. There is the opportunity for over $20,000 USD in prizes. Entries for ideas for projects to engage new and potential community members are open until July 1.

GNOME Social Hours

Deb Nicholson joined us for the Social Hour this month. She is an expert in free software policy and communities. The conversation focused on how roadmapping and delegation can help grow a healthy community.

There will be another Social Hour in early June, which will be announced on Discourse.

What counts as “GNOME”?

The Board of Directors proposed a new system for how GNOME software is defined. It includes official GNOME software, which will be decided by the release team, and GNOME Circle, apps using the GNOME platform and libraries which extend it. The conversation is happening right now on Discourse, so please join in and share your thoughts.

GTK4 Updates

Core GTK Developer Emmanuele Bassi continues to work on GTK4, including on accessibility and documentation.

Infrastructure Updates

The Infrastructure Team has recently updated a lot of really important software for us, including Discourse, Indico, and Rocket.chat. On a personal note, I am extremely excited about their work updating etherpad.gnome.org, a collaboration resource I use every day.

Interns, Interns, Interns: GSoC and GSoD

We are so pleased to share that we have selected our Google Summer of Code interns! We are very excited to work with these 14 interns on their projects, which cover everything refreshing gnome.org, UI improvements, and development of adaptive technology. Mentors come from across the project, and include Brand Manager Caroline Henriksen.

We will also be participating in Google Season of Docs. There are three mentors, including Emmanuele, ready to work with technical writers who want to help make GNOME a better project through better documentation. You can read about our projects.

Posts from the Community

Thank you!

Thank you for supporting us in the ways you do! If you’re not already a Friend of GNOME, please consider joining to support the activities of the Foundation and its staff.

We’re currently running a Spring fundraiser geared towards growing GNOME in Africa and WebKitGTK development. Tell your friends!

 

Help Grow WebKitGTK

We’re asking you to help us set our priorities when you donate to the GNOME Foundation this spring. You have the option of asking us to focus on building GNOME in Africa or WebKitGTK development.

A banner that reads "Growing Together" with photos of the GNOME community and GNOME logo.

WebKitGTK is not only an exciting project for GNOME, but a necessary step in preparing for our GTK4 release. We’ve been growing the project, with a new release just the other day! We have a lot more development to do, and it’s something we are hoping to prioritize. You can let us know if you think WebKitGTK should be a priority by donating today and marking your donation in support of WebKitGTK development.

WebKitGTK is a rendering engine for projects that need any kind of web integration. It can handle HTML/CSS applications and web browsers, and is useful for everything from desktop computers to mobile devices like phones and tablets. We believe the web is for everyone, and we support this belief by making accessibility one of the project’s core principles.

Right now, the main focus is cleaning up the project to make the port to GTK4 smoother. In addition to ensuring there are fast paths for efficient rendering, moving existing users, and incorporating user requirements, this will make it easier for future contributors to find new pathways to get involved.

In order to accomplish this, we could use funds in a number of ways:

  • paying for developer time;
  • hiring an intern to work on WebKitGTK;
  • supporting hackfests; or
  • purchasing equipment necessary for development.

We’re asking you to help us grow the WebKitGTK project. It’s a necessary step in the development of GTK4. WebKitGTK will help build a free web by helping more people create the tools they and others need. So please, donate today and vote for WebKitGTK.

Friends of GNOME Update April 2020

Welcome to the April 2020 Friends of GNOME Update!

As spring hits the Northern Hemisphere, the GNOME Foundation staff is busy indoors working on our laptop screen tans hacking, logisticating, organizing, writing, and trading recipes for baked goods.

Pink, purple, and yellow flowers growing in the spring.
Photo courtesy of JeepersMedia on Flickr. CC-BY 2.0

GNOME at Home

We might not be on the road, but Melissa Wu, organizer of the Community Engagement Challenge, wrote up a trip report from SCaLE 18x, which has been posted online for your reading pleasure.

Every month there is a Social Hour Event organized by Kristi Progri, Programs Coordinator. This month we had Marie Nordin, Fedora’s new Community and Impact Coordinator.

If you’ve missed seeing us in-person, Executive Director Neil McGovern recently did an interview on the Mike Dominick Show.

If you would like to have Neil, or anyone else on our staff, on your podcast, please drop us a line at info@gnome.org.

GUADEC Updates

After a lot of discussion, GUADEC has moved to be an entirely online event for 2020. While we are disappointed to reschedule our trips to Zacatecas, Mexico to the summer of 2021, we are very excited to meet and learn from GNOME contributors and free software community members who would otherwise be unable to make it.

As GUADEC 2020 will be online, we have extended the call for abstracts, and the deadline is now May 1. If you have an idea for a talk, please share it with us! If you have questions or want someone else to read over your proposal, drop by the #GUADEC channel on the GNOME Rocketchat.

Community Engagement Challenge Launched!

The Community Engagement Challenge is open for Phase One! During Phase One, you are invited to submit proposals for projects that will help get coders involved in free and open source software communities.

If you have any questions about the Challenge or are interested in helping to promote it, please email cechallenge@gnome.org directly.

Outreach Updates

The GNOME Engagement Team launched a University Outreach Initiative! Their purpose is two-fold: to increase awareness of GNOME technologies in universities and education institutions; and increase awareness of opportunities within the GNOME community. You can get involved by visiting the channel on Rocketchat or Discourse.

Technical Updates

Accessibility in GTK4

Emmanuele Bassi, core GTK developer, has been working on unraveling the construction of the accessibility stack. He fixed several issues, and has clear next step plans.

Data Centers and Services

We’re moving data centers! Andrea Veri and Bartłomiej Piotrowsk have been taking us across the United States as we transfer data centers. They have setup three new servers and upgraded 15 virtual machines.

News From the Community

Thank you!

Thank you for reading! If you’re not already a Friend of GNOME, please consider becoming one and helping to support the Foundation and work we do for the community.

SCaLE 18x

Melissa Wu is organizing the Community Education Challenge. She attended her first conference with the GNOME Foundation at SCaLE.

The 18th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) took place on March 5–8, 2020 in Pasadena, CA. As the largest community-run open source and free software conference in North America, it was interesting to see the variety of corporate and non-profit exhibitors all united under their passion for open source.

A photo of the GNOME booth, featuring a blue GNOME table cloth and exciting GNOME swag, including bugs, t-shirts, and a tote bag.

The GNOME presence was felt throughout the conference with a special GNOME Beers and pre-release party on the first day of the conference, Thursday, March 5th. GNOME information flyers were also included inside every attendee bag.

This presence carried on to our booth where we were able to connect with GNOME community members, contributors, and enthusiasts as well as tote our merchandise, including a brand new GNOME t-shirt, and stickers. Thank you to the number of supporters who assisted us at the booth including Foundation staff, Melissa Wu, Caroline Henriksen, Neil McGovern, and Rosanna Yuen, along with Foundation members Matthias Clasen, Sriram Ramkrishna, and Nuritzi Sanchez.

A photo of three people showing off temporary tattoos of the GNOME logo.