Last Monday 15th, Tuesday 16th and Wednesday 17th of December several GNOME and KDE boards members were in Gran Canaria to prepare the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: GUADEC + Akademy 2009. This is not great news only from the organisation of the event point of view, but also because it is a working meeting between two relevant community projects with huge impact worldwide. We will have another meeting during FOSDEM. When I think about this, I realise that events like the GCDS’09 should happen once in a while between different free software projects in order to open new and different ways of collaboration. Many community have great relations with IT companies so improving relation between them will also improve the relation between these companies, which is something positive.
We are used to collaboration between developers but this event can be seen as the first big step toward a more global relation between projects. A new step forward in the software libre path to world domination 🙂
Just stop and think about the companies involved in GNOME and KDE, the technologies used, the number of users, not just right now but also during the following years, that will be affected or influenced by discussions and decisions taken during that week in Gran Canaria, it is amazing, isn’t it?
This event can be a good chance for distros to really raise their voice and discuss with both projects about a variety of hot stuff that affect them. Desktop developers need to hear the opinions from the people that deploy and give support to companies and users. The opposite is also a must. But also it is a chance for them to talk to each other and join efforts or simply discuss about whatever they want to. Translators, artists, usability experts, app developers, etc. will have their space too. Opening new collaboration links with the other desktop project and with distros, IT companies, etc. can also be done during the event.
It looks like some nice cross-project discussions will take place, in addition of what GUADEC and Akademy already are. But, if the people that comes to Gran Canaria wants to, the event can be a lot more. Of course that means to work in advance and to make an additional effort during those days in July, but maybe it is worth it. This is a big opportunity, that’s for sure. I feel both boards perfectly understand this. The local team definitely do. But we are only a small part. You, reader, should be the front man.
We understand that, for many developers, coming to Gran Canaria in July is an unfordable effort because of economic reasons. We are looking for cheap places to stay or eat and, of course, both projects will sponsor trips and hotels like they’ve done in the past. For those who have family, let me tell you that we are organising a parallel track so they can come and enjoy while daddy or mum, boyfriend or girlfriend, is attending to the event. This has been a demand from many of you and we are taking care of it. Also those who are vegetarians will have special menus.
If you don’t like nice weather and the beach… well, probably you will suffer a little, but hey, you still can sit and watch your friends’ white bodies and laugh at them while having a beer and doing some hacking… Is up to you.
Remember to buy tickets as soon as possible. By the way, we have a twitter account: http://twitter.com/gcds_2009
toscalix 