GUADEC 2012 Program Published

The full program for this year’s GUADEC conference has been announced. GUADEC is the premier GNOME conference, and is being held in a Coruña, Spain, from July 26th to August 1st. A total of 46 talks will be held during the core conference days, as well as 4 keynotes and a number of lightning talk sessions.

This year’s keynote speakers are Jacob Appelbaum, Yorba’s Adam Dingle & Jim Nelson, Alex “Skud” Bayley, Federico Mena Quintero, Jonathan Blandford & Dave Mason.

Jacob Appelbaum will speak about “The Tor Project: Anonymity online” and how this project has enabled roughly 36 million people around the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the Internet.

Adam Dingle & Jim Nelson will give a talk titled “Crowdfunding GNOME Application Development”, which is based in their experience at Yorba and GNOME projects as Shotwell and Geary.

Alex “Skud” Bayley will speak about “What’s Next? From Open Source to Open Everything” based in her experience of being involved in uncountable open projects ranging from copyright reform to community schools,

Federico Mena Quintero, Jonathan Blandford & Dave Mason will give a history of GNOME, recounting the early days of the project to our recent present.

The four core conference days will be followed by three days of working events and hacking sessions, which will give the GNOME community an opportunity to work and plan together.

More information about this year’s GUADEC, including how to attend, can be found on the conference website.

Call for GUADEC 2013 Proposals

The GNOME Foundation invites proposals to host GUADEC 2013. GUADEC is the biggest gathering of GNOME users and developers and includes a three-day conference, the annual general meeting of the members of the GNOME Foundation, and a week of coding, meeting, and discussion. Those who would like to host the next GUADEC are hereby invited to write a formal proposal to the board of the GNOME Foundation at board-list@gnome.org. Deadline for the proposals is July 20, 2012 and bidders are invited to present in person to the board of directors at this year’s GUADEC on July 24 or on another day during the conference.

Do you think your city would be a great place for GUADEC? Key criteria for a large GNOME event like GUADEC are:

  • Cost and ease of travel from major European cities and airline hubs
  • Local GNOME community with strong leadership and support for hosting the conference
  • Venue, cheap housing and nice hotels, and the distance between them
  • The budget for infrastructure and facilities required to hold the conference
  • The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food and drinks
  • Spaces for “hallway” tracks and social activities
  • Local industry and government support

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during summer. Dates should avoid other key free software conferences. See the GUADEC check list and How To for an overview of the kinds of things you should include in the proposal, and check out the bids from previous GUADECs for more information.

Organizing a conference of this size is a lot of hard work, but there are people in the community with experience who can help you. Feel free to contact board-list@gnome.org for more information or guidance.

GNOME having fun at Desktop Summit 2011

Friday, 5 August – preparing

Friday, 10:00, August 5, 2011. A big group of people was standing a bit lost in the cloakroom of the Humboldt University at Unter den Linden, Berlin. They were the volunteers for the Desktop Summit 2011 – but without guidance and leadership, they were just nervously looking around and talking to each other.

But at 11:00, Mirko Boehm came in, gathered everyone together and told them what to do! Tables got moved, tape stuck to floors, posters hung up. From then, things really took off.
Continue reading GNOME having fun at Desktop Summit 2011

GUADEC Feedback (we want it!)

The GNOME Board of Directors, as mentioned briefly during this year’s GUADEC closing ceremony, would like to invite you to give us your feedback about this year’s (and possibly previous year’s) GUADEC.

We’ve already received some feedback for this year, and we’ll be collating it into a Wiki page, which we’ll make public as soon as reasonably acceptable.

The feedback page on the Wiki will be editorialised, and the ideas and comments anonymous, unless you specifically request that they are not.

So tell us how good or bad this year’s GUADEC was at board@gnome.org

This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.