Tag: gcds

Come back from the GCDS

Last week was amazing. So many interesting people here in the island where I was born…

I met a lot of friends from different projects and people I didn’t know before, or maybe just from their emails and posts.

Thank to everybody for coming. Thanks to the attenders, to the boards and the local team (awesome job dudes!).

Tomorrow at 8 am I will taking my flight to Sevilla. And the day after I come back to work… I’m not really happy with the idea of having between 35º and 40º C , but the GCDS was a great for collecting new ideas for Guadalinex. New contacts, interesting projects, to know the next steps in GNOME and other desktop projects… All of that give me energy to  come back to the office and do some hacking 😉

Now I like to hack a bit with some project, like Mago. I was talking with Ara Pulido at the Summit and I think we (guadalinex) will collaborate with them making new test suits. We need them for our project so we like to make them and share with the community.

Well, let’s pack and go to sleep, tomorrow I have an early flight.

Happy hacking 🙂

Last advices for the GCDS

I know it’s a bit late, but I hope this helps.

I’m from Gran Canaria, the place where the event is going to be, so I like to give you some advices and recommendations:

  • Sun protection. Here the sun can burn you if you don’t take some protections. Some times seems like it’s not so sunny, but it could be dangerous if you are from a northern area.
  • Don’t drink top water. The top water here is supposed to be good enough for human consumption, but the true is that nobody here drink it. We always drink mineral water. And also here was a incident a few month ago about top water’s high levels of boron. That now is normal, but you know…
  • Here there is not so many place with vegetarian food but we try to find all kind places for eat nearby the event. You’ll find that info (which will be updated) at the wiki.
  • The important phone numbers are also at the wiki. Remember the international code for Spain is +34
  • In Gran Canaria (Spain), electricity is provided normally at a voltage of 220 V and 50 Hz. But you’ll probably find adapters at the mall (Centro comercial Las Arenas) just in front the event’s place.
  • Here in Gran Canaria we talk Spanish, so you can find useful the list of common words and expressions we have at the wiki. If you already know Spanish, you need have in mind that here we have some different words (eg. Autobus = Guagua).
  • The most useful lines of guaguas (buses) for going from or at the auditorium are the lines 47 and 17.
  • Taxi is also a good option. Probably you’ll pay 4 € for a normal ride (from the Auditorium to the farthest hotels.
  • There will be a infodesk where you’ll find people who can bring you some help. The contact person will be Fabio, but there will be more people there.
  • I will be also around there during the weekend, I can’t be sure about the rest of the week. Anyways, if you need touristic/local information or just any info of Canarias or Gran Canaria, find me (Juanje Ojeda) and ask me 😉
  • If you have a group of people who want place for lunch of dinner, ask for me at the infodesk, I’ve been talking with some places to try to arrange this king of things.

I just like to add that Gran Canaria is much more than beaches and sun. So try to get into the countryside or to different part of the island. They are so different between them hat people usually get surprised.

I’ll highly recommend to visit Teror, Tejeda, Agaete, Artenara (and the Tamadaba pine forest), Mogán, Agüimes, Santa Lucía and, of course Maspalomas. There are more interesting places, but with those you’ll get the idea 😉

Well, we’ll meet you at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 🙂

Karmic UDS and other events

I still have an hangover from the last week. I was at Barcelona from Monday to Friday at the Karmic UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit).

This is a great event for all those who are interested on knowing how Ubuntu works, but it’s basically oriented to those who are Ubuntu developers or from any of its derivatives distributions (like Guadalinex, which is my case). I think the event is interesting, in general, for any hacker and developer from upstream projects or just people nearby the Ubuntu world, because there is a lot of interesting people from Ubuntu, but also from upstream or derivative projects sharing knowledge and experiences to improve the next version of Ubuntu.

One topic that is always on the table (in many ways) is how to be better FLOSS citizens. I mean, how to do the things in the better way to give back to upstream projects all the improvements they do. And also to give the merit from each thing to its real author, from upstream, from Ubuntu or from the community.
I know (they know as well) that it isn’t always like that and some people from different project complain about that. But I truly believe this is an issue that is very important to them and they try to do their best. But to drive this is not very easy task and take some time.

I’ve been in four UDS (Mataró, Sidney, Seville and this one in Barcelona) and is getting better. The thing I like the most is that after the UDS you know there is a lot of work already done and almost every discussion and conclusion written down. You have a very clear concept about what is going on in the next release, how is going to be approached and who is going to be involved in the task to get them done.

I’ve been in a lot of different kind of FLOSS congress, seminars, summits and so for more the seven years and this is one that I like especially. Mostly because I feel it very productive. In a lot of congress, talks and workshop somebody talk about something you already know (or likely you don’t) everybody feel that could be interesting they talk a lot but when everybody come back to their homes (or a week later) everyone come back to their projects, work and real life and that it. In the UDSs, at least, you got after the event has finished a bunch of specifications, already discussed, with good feedback from different people, tasks in order to get it done and people with those task assigned.

I don’t know. The event is not perfect, it’s not the only way to do the things, but IMHO is very pragmatic and good way to do the things.

I really hope the next GCDS (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit) leave me the same good feeling after it’ll have finished. I know the GCDS is going to be great, but I hope after the event we have some real tasks and aims to follow to get the best for our free desktops.
Anyway, I know the event is going to be great. People form the both desktops (GNOME and KDE) are working hard for it. Also local teams and people are giving all they can (as Luis would say: “dandolotodo” ;-P ) to get the better cross desktop event ever.

Well, thanks to Canonical and the Ubuntu comunity and developers to give me the opportunity of participate in such of event and try to be useful for Ubuntu and Guadalinex. Also thank to the Junta de Andalucía and my company, Emergya, for cover my travel for being there.
I was especially happy to meet again with Daniel Holdbach and Jorge O. Castro, which are really great persons and very hard workers who push and work a lot for all developers and the community. I’m very sorry for not being able to say good by to them. I left in a hurry and I couldn’t say good bye to a lot of friends.

I also was happy to see to a old good friend and amazing GNOME hacker, Rodrigo Moya, which is now working at Canonical and I hope him the best in this new cycle of his life. Good luck Rodigo! 😉

Another person I met there was David Planella, which is new in Canonical as well, but he isn’t either new in the FLOSS world. He is translator in GNOME, Debian and Ubuntu. And now is the head of the Ubuntu Translations. As far I know he is going to be in charge of the coordination of the Ubuntu translations and the infrastructures around (Rosetta, language-packs and so). He is a really nice guy which seems very implicated and with willing of getting the things working.
I’m especially interested in his area because translations ir one of the biggest issues for Guadalinex and the coordination with him and the Ubuntu translations is very important. We also were talking about help from Guadalinex to test the Spanish translations to be sure the updates don’t break any application in the stables releases (as Jaunty in which is based the last Guadalinex version).

Well this post is long enogh, so I’ll save some thoughts for the next ones 🙂

Happy hacking to every one 😉

Break and FOSDEM have finished

It was a really good experience going to the FOSDEM. It was my first, but I hope it won’t be the last.

I had the opportunity of knowing a bit Brussels: the beer, the chocolate, the waffles, the city center… very nice place… errr, but the weather… rains and cold… not really my type.

The FOSDEM itself was amazing. So many people from so different projects (hackers and users).

Kudos for the organization people, they did just great. Huge and great work! 😉

I missed some friends over there but I met new friends and I could talk a lot about the GCDS (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit), which is going to be a very important event. It seems that people from GNOME and KDE are ready for collaborate as much the time over there let us.

I very exciting about the event and all the think are coming with it.

By the way, there are new mail list for the event:

http://mail.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/mailman/listinfo/gcds

Stay tuned! 😉

The other thing I want to write is about my break.  I was in a break of my job for having time for me and some personal stuff. Well, that break is now over 🙂

On Monday I come back, but I have some changes. I’m going to work on a six months project, out of the office (actually at the client office) but in a good a nd interesting (at least for me) Spanish free software project.

I’m really exciting about this too, but I’ll wait until I start (on Monday) to talk about the project and what I’m going to do in it.

Well, I’m keep reading, learning and searching some stuff more that on Monday I have to be prepared 😉

See you! Happy hacking! 😉

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 España
This work by Juanje Ojeda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 España.