Author: rodrigo

Things to improve in GUADEC’s

Before I forget them, here’s a list of things that could be improved in GUADEC (not specific to Vilanova, it applies to all):

  • People from Latin American countries (and I guess Asia and Africa) find Europe quite expensive, so for them going out for lunch/dinner with US, Australia and Europe people is unaffordable, which makes them having to go on their own to look for cheaper places. So, I think it would be a great idea if we had, like in Copenhagen, free lunch for everyone at the venue. Thus, everyone, regardless of the country they are from, would have lunch together, making it easier for everyone to meet and talk.
  • I like a lot how the Boston summit was organized, with lots of informal BOFs going over all the time. I think we should have a room devoted, all the days of the conference, to have a continous BOF about all the aspects of the GNOME project. I think that is much more useful for people involved in the project than going to presentations that, if you follow regularly the mailing lists, don’t contain anything really new. Of course, having talks is still needed, but it would be nice if there was some more emphasis on having BOFs. That is, it would mean making official and public all the conversations that take place in the corridors.
  • The GUADEC-ES talks this year, oriented to beginners, have proven to be really useful, at least for a few people that, as I said in my previous post, were after that perfectly integrated in the GUADEC core, knowing now their way through the project. It would be nice to do this every year, in the local languages if possible.

GUADEC 2006

Back from Vilanova i la Geltrú, where, once again, I’ve enjoyed myself a lot. Here’s a short summary about the social events. For technical details (gnome-control-center, gnome-session and atomato related), I’ll post individual posts in the following days, when I’m recovered from the terrible heat and lack of sleep hours. Fortunately, here the temperature is much better, just 16ºC right now, so I’ll sleep tonight like a baby.

During the warm-up weekend, I devoted all my time to the GUADEC-ES talks, and more specifically to the tutorials we (Germán, Claudio, José and I) had prepared. The audience was low, but of high quality, having get the attention of a few probably new developers, which were hanging around in the “big” GUADEC the following days.

On Sunday, there was the big event, the GNU FreeFA Cup, which, as expected by all the sports analysts, was won by the official GUADEC football team. Lots of emotions, with even a semifinal being decided in the penalties. The tandem Dave Neary/Alvaro del Castillo in our defensive line proved to be unbeatable in the final.

The Fluendo party on Monday night was great, what a great place they choose for the party, a beach for us alone. And, as you all already know, lots of free alcohol. So, some people seemed to think that
we were supposed to drink it all and not leave a single drop, and that resulted in some people being very drunk, and most being tipsy. Everything was being perfect, good place, good people, happiness, people getting naked to have a bath on the sea. Everything was being perfect, it looked like we were in Paradise, until someone passed his drinking limit and thought it would be funny to insult the waitresses (which, BTW, were very very nice to all of us). The owner of the bar came to us to protest about it, so we had to apologize to him and all the waitresses. I think we cleaned our image, but still, something to think about for those people that don’t know how to drink. We all know that having some drinks with fellow hackers is one of the best things of GUADEC, but there is no need to drink through these limits.

The other party, the Nokia party on Tuesday, was also great, with a new thing to GUADEC that we should keep from now on, the GUADEC band concert. It sounded great, more given that they had just practised for 3 hours. At the same time, lots of people, France and Spain supporters, followed the World Cup game on a big screen specially set up for the occasion. It was bad to see Spain lose, but well, since we had already won the really important competition (GNU FreeFA Cup),
losing in this 2nd class competition wasn’t that hard to assume.

But well, as always, GUADEC (and GNOME)
is about people, and being with these people for a few days, is one of the best experiences I’ve got from being involved in GNOME.

And yeah, more news on atomato soon.

Moltes gràcies Vilanova

Catalan/Spanish

Murray, everyone in Cataluña speaks Spanish. Most people have Catalan as their mother tongue, but Spanish is still an official language in Cataluña, and most people (if not all) speak Spanish, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practise your Spanish. And if not, you always have the Spanish-speaking Armada to talk to.

GUADEC 2006

Heading tomorrow to Vilanova for GUADEC, arriving early evening to Barcelona Sants train station. Very excited to go this year, since I missed last year’s, and missing GUADEC, even if only one, is very hard when you know what it is about. You usual GUADECers know what I talk about :-) Also very excited about the GNOME Village, it’s gonna be very cool to stay out at nights, hacking, talking and drinking some beer with fellow hackers, and listening to the music from the GUADEC band. And the FreeFA football tournament is going to be quite funny, I guess, and probably shadow that competition in Germany that people are watching all day.

About the content, I think lots of new ideas will come out from this GUADEC (like in all previous ones, really), and I hope to have some time to work a bit more on a couple of real things (rather than just ideas) I wanted to “present” in my talk (don’t miss it, Unix Power for Desktop, Wednesday 10 AM), to have them work well enough to show attendants what I am trying to accomplish with this.

So, yeah,
see you….
in Vilanova i la Geltrú!

Talking with Microsoft

Last week I went to Tudela for a talk as part of the Semana del Software Libre organized by Fundación Dédalo. There were a few talks the previous days, which I missed them all, but on Thursday evening, it was the last debate, with 2 guys from the Microsoft camp (José Parada, Microsoft employee, and Chema Alonso, from Informatica64 and who works closely with Microsoft Spain) and 2 guys from the Free Software camp (Sergio Montoro from Knowgate, and myself). Each speaker had 20 minutes for their presentation and then 1.5 hours of debate.

José Parada talked about the new? concern about security in Microsoft, and all the things they’ve been doing for making their systems more secure. He mentioned User Account Protection and the automatic tools they use for finding exploits (not like in Free Software, where they use nothing).
Then Sergio Montoro talked about the businesses that can be made with Free Software, and then I talked about what FS represents for all users, developers, companies, public administrations (based on a presentation by the great Jesús Barahona). I tried to focus the debate on the real differences between propietary and free software, that is, the social, technological and business advantages. But then, Chema Alonso used the number of vulnerabilities argument to demonstrate that Free Software is more insecure than propietary software :( Not sure if he succeeded in convincing the few people that attended the debate, since his talk was really funny and might have catched better the attention of the attendees than Sergio’s or mine. But, as I told him after the debate, it is a bit unfortunate to see the same argument over and over.

It was a pity I hadn’t prepared the “Microsoft is insecure” part of my talk, since that would have served as a good counter-argument. I didn’t think that was the argument to defend (attacking your enemy might be seen from the outside as a lack of arguments on your part) though.

I also was given a Microsoft t-shirt, which I was planning to wear in all FS-related events, but unfortunately I left it in Tudela :) I’ve been also invited by Chema to visit the Microsoft offices in Madrid, on a guided tour. It might be an interesting thing, given that Chema was asking if Microsoft could create its own Linux distro (he seemed to not get the point, since he had doubts about it), so maybe I could spy a bit about their MS Linux plans :)

All in all, a good debate, and a pity I had to run back home after the talk, so missed the pintxos (tapas) in Tudela.

Countryside

Since I bought my bike, I’ve been riding a lot around the infinite paths there are around Peralta, and took some photos of some very nice places, like the view of the Arga and the Aragón rivers getting mixed in their way to the Ebro (a few kms away from the point where the photo was shot):

Or the Peñalén:

Doing so, I’ve also found lots of new friends:

I’ve also just uploaded all the photos we took last Easter, when our friend Conchi came to visit us. We went, with Uxue and Pato (although Pato is on none of the photos, he didn’t want to get shot :), to the “Venta de Juan Pito”, a restaurant in the Pyrenees, surrounded by huge mountains and where you can eat lots of home-made food for very little money. We had “migas”, “alubias” and then some meat, to finish so full that we needed to walk around a little bit before getting into the car.