Events – Page 7 – GNOME Foundation

GNOME contributors prepare for Developer Experience Hackfest

Over 20 GNOME contributors are preparing to travel to Brussels, Belgium, for a three day hackfest this week. The event aims to improve the GNOME development experience by making it easier to create GNOME applications. Hackfest participants have wide-ranging plans and will be looking at development tools, documentation and development frameworks. They will also work on plans to make it easier to install and distribute GNOME applications.

Collaboration is an important part of GNOME’s culture, and the project is seeking to work with other upstream communities in the effort to improve its developer experience. As a result, members of the Linux kernel community will be joining the GNOME contributors in Brussels, where it is hoped that an agenda for future collaboration can be established.

The FOSDEM conference immediately follows the Developer Experience Hackfest, and the hackfest participants will be there in full force. FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of free and open source software developers in the world, attracting several thousand hackers annually. There will be several presentations made by GNOME contributors, as well as a GNOME Booth and GNOME Beer Event.

The GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest is being sponsored by the Betagroup Co-working Space and the GNOME Foundation.

GNOME_Foundation

GNOME WebKitGTK+ hackfest

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce the conclusion of the WebKitGTK+Hackfest. The hackfest was held December 9-12 and was hosted once again at the Igalia offices in A Coruña, Spain. This hackfest has been very successful with more than twenty attendees from Igalia, Collabora, Adobe, Intel, Samsung and Red Hat.

WebKitGTK+ hackfest 2012 picture by Joone Hur

The hackfest was extremely productive, and highlights of the tasks that were worked on there include:

Many improvements in Web, the GNOME web browser: a new incognito mode to minimize the risk of being tracked both on the internet and in your own computer, a slick new UI for the search, revamping the creation of Web applications by selecting better icons and names, adding undo close tabs, preventing empty download-only windows and preliminary work for the integration of the Document Viewer in the browser.
Switching from Pango to Harfbuzz to render complex text.
Porting the WebAudio backend to GStreamer 1.0.
Better DOM bindings.
Many bugs fixed for accelerated compositing with Clutter, both in ELF and GTK+ ports.
Stabilization of the libsoup API.
Improvements in the memory use of the V8 Javascript engine.
2D-canvas accelerated support using Cairo OpenGL.
Better HTML5 media controls.
A new API to retrieve a screenshots from web pages.
Progress in accessibility support.
Documentation.

The GNOME Foundation and community are very grateful to the sponsors of this event:

GNOME.Asia 2013 to be held in Korea

The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce that Seoul has been selected as the venue for the upcoming GNOME.Asia Summit 2013.

The Asia Summit organizing team was very impressed with the Korean local organizers’ proposal. The GNOME community in Seoul is committed to GNOME’s success and to promoting the use of GNOME and GNU/Linux in Korea and the rest of Asia. The local community has been very active, organizing monthly events called “The GNOME Tech Talks & Hackfest”.

Seoul is a convenient and exciting place to hold the conference. With great public transportation and solid international flight connections, it will be easy for attendees to travel to the event. Seoul also has great tourist attractions, many universities with strong student communities, and is home to many of Korea’s largest technology companies. Interest in Free and Open Source Software is growing more than ever in Korea. The organizing team believes that hosting the event in Seoul will expand GNOME’s presence and increase participation in the area.

“We are excited about the high level of interest in GNOME in Asian countries. By having an annual GNOME event in Asia, we further our goal of spreading Free Software and provide venues for GNOME collaboration,” said Karen Sandler, the Executive Director of GNOME.

“The conference will allow interested parties to discuss the then released GNOME 3.8, the future of GNOME, as well as other topics, especially concerning the needs of GNOME developers in Asia,” said Simon YoungKi Hong, lead of the local organizing team. “With various stakeholders of different aspects in GNOME, the conference will be a great opportunity to celebrate and discuss features and enhancements to GNOME.”

The conference will be held this summer. More information will be posted on the website gnome.asia as the event is planned.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the GNOME.Asia 2013 bidding process, especially the great work from Team GNOME Seoul and Team GNOME Beijing!

Brno to host GUADEC 2013 and Strasbourg to host GUADEC 2014

It is with great pleasure that the GNOME Foundation announces that Brno, Czech Republic has been selected as the venue for GUADEC 2013. Each year, the GNOME User and Developer European Conference gathers GNOME community members from all across the world. We hope we’ll see you at Brno University of Technology from August 1-8, 2013.

During the bidding process, the GNOME Foundation received a second outstanding proposal. As a result, the Board of Directors is also pleased to announce that GUADEC 2014 will be held in Strasbourg, France. Selecting the venue earlier will give the Strasbourg local team more time to prepare the conference, which has been asked for by previous organizing teams.
For more information about GUADEC please visit the event website: www.guadec.org

Follow our updates via identi.ca / Twitter at: @guadec

Read the full press release

GNOME Asia Summit 2013 – Call for Hosts

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting proposals to host the GNOME.Asia Summit during the 2nd quarter of 2013. The GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME 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, Bangalore and Hong Kong respectively over the last five years. The Summit’s preference is to find new locations each year 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 be interested in hosting the next GNOME.Asia Summit in 2013 you are hereby invited to submit a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list <at> gnome <dot> org . The deadline for the proposals is October 28, 2012. Please email 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 second week of November, 2012.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during the 2nd quarter of 2013 (between March and June). Final event 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.
Provide plans for fundraising at a local level.

Please check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list and howtos 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!

User Observation Hackfest Announcement

A group of GNOME contributors will be gathering to accomplish important work. A User Observation Hackfest that will be hosted at the openSUSE Summit in Orlando, Florida (USA), on September 21-23, 2012. The purpose of this hackfest is to gather knowledge to seed GNOME’s Pattern language for user interfaces and consequently improve the GNOME 3 experience for users.

One key aspect of this hackfest is a day trip to the City of Largo, Florida. The City of Largo has a significant deployment of GNOME in the public sector. Giving us an exciting opportunity to watch and talk to every day people who use GNOME on a day to day basis and observe how GNOME works for them.

The User Observation Hackfest is open to everyone. If you are a passionate about GNOME 3 then we would love to hear your voice. Please come down, register, and see us at the hackfest!

You can learn more about the User Observation Hackfest on the event wiki page.

As a side note, the openSUSE Summit will be running an original fundraising event called Pie for Pi in order to help the GNOME Foundation to sponsorize contributors to attend hackfests.

Official Announcement and Invitation to Boston Summit 2012

This year’s GNOME Boston Summit will be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Columbus Day Weekend (6th – 8th October), at the MIT Tang Center.

The Boston Summit is a three-day event for GNOME developers and contributors. Unlike traditional conferences, Boston Summit is all about getting developers together and getting things done. There will be lots of discussion and planning, as well as hacking and a small number of presentations. There are also plans to run sessions for newcomers and GNOME users, such as a GNOME “installfest” and opportunities to learn about GNOME technologies.

If you are planning on coming to Boston Summit 2012, please tell us!

GNOME UX Hackfest Kicks off in A Coruña

GUADEC is only a few days away, but GNOME contributors are already gathering in A Coruña and getting down to some important work. Today marks the beginning of a two-day design event that is being hosted in the Igalia A Coruña office.

The UX Hackfest brings GNOME designers and developers together to review ongoing development initiatives. Features that are in development will be tested and discussed, and future development activities will be planned. The event aims to ensure that the next version of GNOME is the best ever.

The hackfest brings together members of the GNOME design team, in addition to key developers. It also involves a number of new GNOME contributors with the help of Google Summer of Code and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.

This event could not have taken place without the support from sponsors: Igalia and Red Hat. It has also been supported by the GNOME Foundation. Many thanks to all.

You can learn more about the UX Hackfest on the event wiki page.

hackfest-sponsors-vertical

Interview with GUADEC Organizer Emilio J Padrón

Our next interview comes from another member of the local GUADEC organizing team Emilio J Padrón.

Whats your name?
Emilio J. Padrón

Where do you live and/or work?
I both live and work in A Coruña, though I often stay in Ourense as well, my hometown.

What do you like to do in your free time?
Mainly reading. I also love playing (and watching) basketball. What I really-really hate is all kind of computer stuff. The last statement is not true most days. 🙂

What is your favorite part of A Coruña (and/or the surrounding area)?
In the city… probably the ‘Paseo marítimo’ (promenade/seaside). In the surrounding area I like ‘O Seixo Branco’, a beatiful place near Mera (a village nearby).

Why did you want to hold GUADEC in A Coruña?
Just for fun! … and also because as a free software zealot I like to help the community in all ways I can.

Have you attended GUADEC in the past? If so, when/where?
Nope. This will be my first GUADEC.

Has organizing GUADEC been fun?
Sure! Anyway, I think ‘the best is yet to come’.

What was the most challenging aspect of organizing GUADEC?
Scale! It is a bunch of people attending the conference.

What are you looking forward to most?
As a member of the local team, I hope everything in GUADEC 2012 works as well as possible. As an attendant I am interested in multiple talks. Besides, I look forward to meeting some interesting people 🙂

Any other thoughts on GUADEC this year?
I hope everybody has a nice time in A Coruña.

Interview with GUADEC Organizer Francisco Javier Tsao Santín

Our next interview comes from the President of the GPUL-Linux Users and Developers Group, Francisco Javier Tsao Santín. GPUL is the main local organizer involved in the organization of GUADEC 2012 in A Coruña, Spain.

Whats your name?
Francisco Javier Tsao Santín

Where do you live and/or work?
I live in a little coastal village called Pontedeume, between the cities of Ferrol and A Coruña. I work as programmer in the School of Civil Engineering in A Coruña.

What do you like to do in your free time?
What is free time? 🙂 Seriously, I like to experiment with several OS’s, to improve my programming methods, to learn about structural engineering and urban planning, reading Poetry and Philosophy. And, of course, I like music, cinema and sports too.

What is your favorite part of A Coruña (and/or the surrounding area)?
My favorite part is the medieval town (Azcárraga-María Pita-España squares). There are some pretty places to go for a walk, nice restaurants, funny pubs…

Why did you want to hold GUADEC in A Coruña?
Since its foundation in 1998, GPUL have been organizing meetings spreading free software philosophy and helping to developers to integrate into free software projects. GUADEC is the greatest meeting we have ever celebrated, and it is a challenge and an honor for us.

Have you attended GUADEC in the past? If so, when/where?
No. But I was in the local team we organized GUADEC-ES two years ago in A Coruña.

Has organizing GUADEC been fun?
Of course it is very fun… but I’m a little nervous now 😉

What was the most challenging aspect of organizing GUADEC?
We’ll try to make everybody feel comfortable like they were at their homes.

What are you looking forward to most?
Mmmm… network running fine? People enjoying food?

Any other thoughts on GUADEC this year?
I wish that our effort could help to push GNOME to be the favorite desktop for disabled people.

Tag: Events