Category: News

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting proposals to host GNOME.Asia Summit during the 1st quarter of 2012. GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei and Bangalore respectively over the last four years. We would like to continue finding new locations as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://www.gnome.asia

For those of you who would like to host the next GNOME.Asia Summit in 2012 you are hereby invited to write a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org . The deadline for the proposals is July 4, 2011 Monday UTC 2359. Please send your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org. We might invite you to present your proposal in more details over our regular IRC meetings, or send you additional questions and requests. Results will be announced by the end of July 2011.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during the 1st quarter of 2012 (January to March 2012). Dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may have conflict and will be confirmed together with other GNOME teams which might get involved.

Key points which proposals should consider, and which will be taken into account when deciding among candidates, are:

• Local community support for hosting the conference.
• Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
• Information about how internet connectivity will be managed.
• Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
• The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food/soft drinks/beer.
• The availability and cost of travel from major Asian and European cities.
• Local industry and government support.
• Please provide a reasonably detailed budget.
• Bear in mind that at GNOME.Asia Summit, the hallway track and social activities are also very important.

Please check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list [1] and howtos [2] when putting together a proposal. Please also feel free to contact gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org if you have any questions.

Please help to spread the words and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

GNOME.Asia Committee

[1] http://www.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/event-organization-checklist
[2] http://www.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/summit-planning-howto

Over 140 parties were organized all over the world to celebrate the release of GNOME 3.0. To help capture the moment, we invited people to take photographs of their parties and a competition was held for the best images. The GNOME project received lots of great party photographs, and the competition judges have been hard at work sorting through the entries. They have now come to a decision, however, and can announce the competition winner as well as four runners up. Each will receive GNOME goodies as prizes.

Winner

Runners up

Congratulations, everyone! We will be in touch to organize delivery of your prizes shortly.

Many thanks to everyone who sent us photographs. An online gallery containing many more images will be launched soon.

All the entries are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence (CC BY 3.0).

GNOME’s Membership and Elections Committee has announced 2011’s Foundation elections. Members of the GNOME Foundation will have the opportunity to propose themselves for the Board of Directors and to vote on their preferred candidates.

The GNOME Foundation’s Board of Directors has seven positions; its members work to ensure the effective running of the Foundation and represent GNOME in its dealings with partner organizations. Their election is an annual event.

GNOME Foundation members have until May 22nd to propose their candidacy for election. Voting will take place between May 29th and June 12th.

The GNOME Foundation membership is made up of contributors to the GNOME Project. If you have made a contribution and have not yet applied for membership, you are encouraged to do so. The Foundation’s membership page contains more details.

With the 3.0 release behind it, the GNOME project has already set its sights on the next GNOME release. Developers and designers already busy planning which features will be included in GNOME 3.2.

The 3.2 feature proposal period is scheduled to last until May 9th 2011. During this time, contributors can propose plans for new features to be included in the next GNOME release. Those feature proposals can include proposals for new software modules to be added to GNOME.

Feature planning is a new part of GNOME’s software development schedule which was recently announced by the GNOME release team. The initiative reflects a commitment to delivering major improvements with each GNOME 3 release.

The new features being planned for 3.2 can be seen on the GNOME wiki. They include a new document browsing and search facility, an integrated contacts framework, new facilities for accessibility and color management, and more.

Nearly 150 parties celebrated the release of GNOME 3.0 across the world. We asked people to send us their party photos so we would have a record of all the great release events that had been organized, and GNOME is offering a goodie pack for the best photograph. The photo competition wiki page contains all the details.

The deadline for the photo competition is 24:00 UTC on Wednesday 20th April. So, if you were at a 3.0 release party and took some great photos, remember to send them to us before then: you could win a great prize!

After three years of planning and development, GNOME 3.0 is here. This new version of GNOME delivers an exciting new interface, major improvements under the hood, and enhanced applications. The GNOME release team’s official announcement congratulates and thanks the GNOME community for its hard work on the release:

GNOME 3.0 would not have come to exist without the passion and incessant work of hundreds of people from our community, and without the support of our users. Thanks to the artists, bug triagers, designers, documentors, hackers, packagers, testers, translators and to everybody else who helped us reach this milestone!

You can read about all the changes in GNOME 3.0 in the release notes, and you can find out more about the background and reception to GNOME 3 in the official press release.

Application deadline: April 8, 2011
Program dates: May 23 – August 22, 2011

GNOME is one of many Free Software projects participating in Google Summer of Code this year. Because in the past GNOME had few women applying for Google Summer of Code, we’ve organized Outreach Program for Women internships to engage more women with the project.Learn more about both programs and apply!

The recent GNOME t-shirt competition had an incredible response, with hundreds of people sending in designs for GNOME 3 t-shirts. It took a while for the judges to come to a decision, but now the winners have been announced. Congratulations to Sofie van Schadewijk, Vassilina Pljonkina and Weda Kusuma for taking first, second and third place! All three provided a stylish and original GNOME t-shirt design, each of which will be available to buy through the GNOME store.

For those organizing a GNOME 3.0 Launch Party, here is the good news: The GNOME Foundation will give away some goodies(t-shirts, balloons, stickers…) to support your events. Register now! Please help us spread the word and get a few launch parties in your area.

Happy GNOME 3.0 Release Party!