Please could people note that we are aiming to have all sponsored participants confirmed by May 31st. This means to process any applications we need to have them filed by the 24th May at the latest. If you think you will require sponsorship, please read sponsorship request page and fill in the requested details on the relevant form.
We will of course continue to process visa invitation letter requests up until the conference start date.
Information about the registration fees, as posted to the GUADEC mailing list, is available below and on the guadec.org website.
We are also having a meeting on the 2nd of June at the venue to do various jobs as well as organising some of the more practical issues. If you would like to help out in a practical way during the conference (i.e. being a steward) then please see if you can make it to the Conservatoire in Birmingham (UK) for 1PM. We also need a volunteer (preferably with relevant experience) to help organise the video/audio side of things during the conference. Please let me know if you think you may be able to help.
Among the other things I did this weekend, I sorted out guadec.org so that it should look much better in other browsers now (i.e. non Gecko based). There may be a few issues left, so please do bug me about them.
As people are probably aware, GUADEC is getting ever closer and we
haven’t yet announced registration. Rest assured, once we have resolved
the current problems, registration will open before the end of May and
will continue right up until the start of GUADEC itself.
Registration fees will be as follows1:
£10 – Student/Concession
£30 – Standard
£140 – Professional (i.e. being paid by an employer to attend)
A 50% discount applies to standard and professional (but not to
concessions) if you are a foundation member. A 50% discount also applies
if you are a organisation that is sponsoring and requires additional
attendee passes.
Many people may be wondering why there are no free registrations this
year, and this is simply because we will be investing a significant
amount of money per registration, and we simply cannot afford to have
people register, pay nothing and then not turn up. If look at prices to
other professional conferences, you will notice that the registration
fees are very cheap by comparison.
Another point of note is that there will not be any formal checks on
status. Instead we are relying on trust that people will pick the
appropriate registration level. We would like to encourage everyone to
consider donating whatever they feel able to afford, as all the money is
spent making GUADEC as fantastic as possible, and any remaining funds
will be transferred to the GNOME foundation to help make the GNOME
project succeed.
1: Approximate currency conversions as of 15 May 2007:
£10 = 14.63 € = 19.82 USD;
£30 = 43.91 € = 59.46 USD;
£140 = 204.90 € = 277.48 USD
A bit rough around the edges, but it’s getting there! Many thanks to Denis and Jens for helping out with this. My current thoughts are:
A lot of people have been asking questions about GUADEC recently, so hopefully I can answer them here.
If you need a visa to travel to the UK and need a letter of invitation from us, please use the invitation letter request form. This will ensure your request is tracked properly, and we can collect the required details. Please read the travel information page if you are unsure about whether you require a visa, or want to know what information we need to send out an invitation letter.
We are fortunate again this year to have funds to sponsor a limited number of people to attend GUADEC. If you think you will not be able to afford travel and accommodation expenses, but would be able to make a valuable contribution to GUADEC, please consider requesting sponsorship. See the sponsored attendance page for details.
Lots of people have been asking where to stay during GUADEC, and unfortunately we can’t offer the excellent level of service provided last year. However, we are contacting hotels and hostels around Birmingham to find you the best possible rates and discounts. When this information is available it will be published on the website.
We are expecting registration to open very shortly. The process will be similar to last year, and we will be asking for a contribution depending on your participating status. Discounts will be available for foundation members, but we would urge you to consider making a further donation to support GUADEC and the GNOME project if you feel able.
In other news, the schedule is now nearly complete, and available on-line. Many thanks to Ross and the papers committee for their hard work in sorting this out.
We’ve also got our line up of keynote speakers available on line. We are lucky again to have some very interesting people giving talks, including well known community members within both the GNOME and wider free software communities.
We also have had another three confirmed sponsors, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to announce them properly. They are HP, Sun and Novell. HP and Sun are both sponsoring at gold level, and Novell is sponsoring at silver level. More details on the sponsors pages.
The GUADEC team are pleased to announce another two sponors! Maemo are sponsoring at Gold level this year, and ACCESS are sponsoring for the first time at Silver level. Many thanks to both these organisation for their support of GUADEC this year!
Maemo provides an open source development platform for Nokia Internet Tablets and other Linux-based devices. It is build from components widely used in open desktop and mobile/embedded systems. The Maemo SDK contains the tools needed to create and port integrated applications, replicating the Internet Tablet environment in a PC. maemo.org offers official tutorials, documentation and repositories of unstable versions for testing. The website enables more services devoted to and maintained by the Maemo community: software catalog, project hosting, documentation wiki, Planet news plus mail and IRC support channels.
ACCESS, a global provider of advanced software technologies to the mobile and beyond-PC markets, is an active member of the open source community, and participates in the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative, the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board, the Linux Phone Standards Forum and the Linux Foundation.
With research and engineering centers throughout the world and an established culture that emphasizes and nurtures innovation and creativity, ACCESS delivers unique solutions that bring value to its customers and partners and which help make people’s lives easier, more productive, and more enjoyable.
Contacts 0.5 has been released! You can grab it from the brand new pimlico-project website.
Contacts is a small, lightweight addressbook that uses libebook, part of EDS. This is the same library that GNOME Evolution uses, so all contact data that exists in your Evolution addressbook is accessible via Contacts.
Overview of Changes in 0.5 (since 0.4)
Straight from the “wow-that-was-quick” department, I have another two sponsors to announce.
The GUADEC team are pleased to announce the first gold sponsor for GUADEC 2007 is the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation (previously OSDL) are renewing their sponsorship from last year, further enforcing their commitment to Open and Free software projects.
Canonical/Ubuntu will be sponsoring GUADEC at silver level for the first time this year. Canonical/Ubuntu is a very big user of GNOME software, so we are particulary pleased that they are confirming their commitment to supporting the GNOME project.
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, it sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms.
Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is a global organisation headquartered in Europe committed to the development, distribution and support of open source software products and communities. World-class 24×7 commercial support for Ubuntu is available through Canonical’s global support team and partners. Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Ubuntu will always be free to download, free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the centre of a global open source software ecosystem.
Download Ubuntu from www.ubuntu.com/download.
To learn about commercial support for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu, please see www.canonical.com/support. For more information visit www.canonical.com or www.ubuntu.com.
I was quite pleased about the response to my Google Summer of Code idea to build version 3 of art.gnome.org. Even better was that three or four students applied to work on the project, and better still was that one of the applications was accepted!
So a big congratulations to Bruno Santos (pheres on irc) for his great application. He’s now been hanging out in #gnome-art on irc.gnome.org, meeting some of the regulars and discussing ideas. He’s started his own blog about the project, which I hope will be included in this years SoC planet (if there is one?).
Many thanks to all those who took an interest in my project. I hope art.gnome.org can now become a real community website for artists in and around the GNOME project.
Ready everyone, it’s BIG SPONSOR LOGOS TIME (again)!
The GUADEC team are happy to announce a further three more sponsors have been confirmed for this year’s GUADEC. Intel and Fluendo are sponsoring at Silver level and renewing their sponsorship again from last year. Collabora are sponsoring GUADEC for the first time this year, also at silver level. A big thank you to all three of them for their support of GUADEC.
Collabora Ltd. is a Cambridge, UK based company specialising in open source development. With expertise in both real-time communications and open-source technologies including XMPP, SIP, RTP, D-Bus, GStreamer and Gtk+, it specialises in bringing companies and the open source software community together. Collabora provides clients, including Nokia and OLPC, with the knowledge, experience and infrastructure to meet their targets whilst allowing them to be an integral part of the open source community. Collabora has created a network of open source engineers from Europe and North America, and continues to expand this web further to include talented developers from around the world.
Fluendo is a company specialized in delivering products and consulting services on Unix and Linux multimedia. Their flagship product is the streaming media server Flumotion. Fluendo supports the development of the GStreamer multimedia framework, which is emerging as the standard media framework on Unix and Linux platforms. This company, based in Barcelona, is heavily involved in various aspects related to GUADEC, like the coordination of the video coverage.
This year 100 million people around the world will discover digital for the first time. This year 150 million more people will become part of the wireless world. This year the living room will grow more interactive and the digital divide will shrink. This year more people will be using technology in more fascinating ways than ever imagined. And behind all of this progress you’ll find innovative Intel® technology. For decades, Intel Corporation has developed technology enabling the computer and Internet revolution that has changed the world. Intel® Software Development Products for Linux allow you to harness the power of on-chip technologies to deliver maximum application performance on Intel® processors. Intel® Software Development Products for Linux are compatible with industry-leading development environments and are backed by Intel® Premier Support to keep you developing with confidence. Visit us at www.intel.com.
Announced at guadec.org…
Two more sponsors have been confirmed, both very involved in GTK+ and FOSS development. They are OpenedHand and Imendio, both sponsoring at silver level. Many thanks to them both for their continued support of GUADEC!
OpenedHand Limited creates, adapts and improves Unix and Linux based open source software for consumer facing mobile and embedded devices. OpenedHand’s expertise has been utilised by some of the worlds leading device manufacturers to help develop high-quality cutting edge products. As well as providing client services, OpenedHand develops unique free software in-house and contributes to numerous FOSS communities including X.org, Freedesktop.org, the Linux kernel, OpenEmbedded, GNOME and GTK.
Imendio is a small European company with a core of expert developer profiles. One of their strongest competencies is in the GTK+ libraries, which is a graphics library collection that can be used on Windows, MacOSX and Linux. Imendio provides hacking skills refined and enhanced by a long running involvement in the open software development sector. Over the years a skill base unmatched by the competition has attracted large customers. Imendio has also a strong involvement in the GNOME community and Foundation.