Linuxtag was a very cool event, my second time at Linuxtag this year. KDE really was the project with
the highest profile — our booth looked slick (Oxygen-slick!) and we really had something to show — KDE4 in its current
(alpha) state. I met quite a lot of new and old KDE people, that shows that our community really is healthy
and growing. I gave a talk about KDE4 at Linuxtag, and it was very well received. People were excited that all the
improvements aren’t only eye-candy, but that there’s a profound improvement in pretty much every area of KDE
coming up.
For demoing KDE at this kind of events, one of the things we’ve missed in the past has been example data. For some
time already we have the kde-promo demo user in KDE’s SVN, a set of data that can be used to show application’s
coolness — think of photos for digikam and krita, free music to demo amarok and so on. One of the problematic
parts has been PIM data. You do need an address book with working email addresses, you want some emails in the inbox,
for being able to show kopete, you even need people that are online and can do a short chat. Enter
KeepInKontact.org. This site provides a Kolab server, for exactly this
kind of stuff. It’s a great way for people to contribute a bit of their time. So don’t hesitate and register
yourself!
the Oxygen palette, but it definitely impressed me (and others). There’s also a crate of beer in the trunk so
it has inner value. Today, I spent most of the day on catching up on CodeYard things, it’s currently quite silent — summer
vacation is around the corner and students tend to go swimming, rather than coding. Oh well. My colleague
Donna has gone off to Brazil to promote techstuff and Free Software among the local women there. Most of the afternoon, I spent working on the KDE e.V.’s
Supporting Membership Programme,
contacting companies (we have some announcements in the pipeline) for information and creating two folders
for advertising this programme. There’s also an extension to this, the Corporate Partnership Programme which
I’ll blog more about once I’ve got some things up in the air. Its purpose is to improve corporate access to
the KDE community and make it easier for companies to sell KDE-based solutions. In the meantime, I’m keeping an eye on KDE development. I’ve got a couple talks about KDE4 coming up (if
they’re accepted, of course), and I’d like to demo the shiny and new stuff.