J5’s Blog

Istanbul was a great place to have GUADEC this year though I wasn’t really able to be a part of the regular conference schedule due to my Foundation duties.  These days I am mostly around for the community aspects and to get a feel for where said community is headed.  To that effect for me GUADEC is mostly about friends, food, beer and moving GNOME forward in a stampede of boisterous hackers with common interests.  Along those lines here is a summary of GUADEC though my eyes

• GNOME’s is still growing up and a hugely important aspect of that was the board’s hiring of Stormy Peters.  This is most likely the biggest development that came out of GUADEC for a number of reasons.  We now have an experienced person to deal with growing the Foundations external relationships and making sure initiatives we start have the resources, motivation and continuity that they need.  Most of this was carried out by “very” part time board members and those who the board delegated tasks to, which while very successful in its own right could not overcome the need for food, sleep and sanity.  Hiring Stormy allows us to move forward with someone who can address the needs of our members while not worrying about earning a living from somewhere else at the same time.  She will still be delegating tasks to the board and asking for help from members but she will be able to concentrate on areas where the board could not devote enough focus to.

  To tell you the truth, if things hadn’t fallen into place during the Linux Foundation’s Desktop Architects Meeting in Austin we would most likely still be running as we have in the past. The board had an action item to find an Executive Director but was not fond of the idea of someone who we didn’t know.  This left the applicant pool very small.  As luck had it Dave Neary said something to Stormy who said something back and all of a sudden we had one of the most qualified people we could think of applying for the position.  For my part at GUADEC I spent a large amount of my time getting to know Stormy personally and was even more convinced we made the correct choice here.  All those who agree should signal their approval by contributing to GNOME

• Culture is a large part of every GUADEC but this one really drove the point home.  Lefty gave an emotional speech during the closing ceremony in which he illustrated the point that no matter whatever race, creed or color we all come together during GUADEC with the shared goal of making the project better year after year.  Even after the conference is over we still collaborate with people from all over the world and when we do disagree on technical issues we are still able to work and share together.  Istanbul’s diverse population and rich history reverberates with this sense of unity and common goals.  While most of our time was spent in Europe, a quick trip over the strait brought us to Asia.  There are few cities in this world where one can hop continents in a matter of minutes.  Being at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East greatly alludes to the core of what holds our community together.  We are a crossroad for many diverse people to come and share ideas and knowledge.

• Food of course was a huge part of the trip and Turkish food is quite good though there were a few failures here and there. One particular place I went with Stormy and some of the Imendio crew was tucked underneath a Chinese restaurant, down slope from the main drag on the hills of Taskim. We noticed that there were a ton of locals dining there and were not disappointed. I spent a lot of dinners getting to informally know new faces and catch up with old friends. I encourage more of the new faces who come to GUADEC to just tag along with some of the old timers in the GNOME community. These small settings allow for deeper interaction outside of the larger group gatherings.

• Pillows and beer, what else can one ask for? During the nights and after any of the after parties a lot of us would retire to “the pillows” near where most of us were staying. These series of restaurants would put pillows out on the street where we could sit and order drinks (both alcoholic and non) until early morning if we wished. Here is where the most important work is done in GUADEC. While relaxing and talking about GUADECs past focus inevitably creeps to the question of GNOME’s future and many ideas and partnerships are formed here which will become the basis for future development.

• Have you ever seen a gnome dance?  Well they did at Collabora’s after party on a boat cruse around the strait.  Guess what?  Some of the GNOMErs had rhythm while the majority of us just had fun. Miguel even started up a conga line which quickly grew as we wound down the night. The single malt club SMASHED was in full force with many high end bottles being donated by various “members of the club”. Next year I hope they remind us to pitch in and bring a bottle of our own to share. Whiskey tasting is just another activity that some community members decided to start a tradition of. It originally started after guys who were leaving a bit later than the rest of the conference attendees passed the time with some conversation over sips of a good whisky. After the boat docked Aaron Bockover led a large crew for some Tacos up the hill. I myself went back to the hotel to finish up the slides for the Foundation Members update.

• The Drooling Macaque band diverted their tour to throw a last minute concert just for GUADEC.  For those who don’t know who they are (doesn’t everyone know them?) the band is simply made up of anyone in the community who is willing to pick up an instrument and play.  Thanks to Baris for renting us pretty good equipment.  It was only confirmed a couple of days before we all left for GUADEC but we were able to put on a decent show with people rotating on the stage.  I did a couple of solo songs and played some guitar and sang with the rest of the band.  Jono participated this year with his rocker style.  The usual suspects hit up the Jazz and Rock scene while Chris Lord formally became a drummer for the band this year.  Even Lefty rotated in on the vocals.  The highlight of the evening was when Baris’ brother started playing a traditional Turkish stringed instrument.  He was quite amazing.  The band itself represents the creativeness of our community and is just another place where we have impromptu collaboration.

• Visions for GTK+3.0 and GNOME 3.0 were presented by the GTK and release teams.  Rather than be a revolutionary change they have taken the evolutionary track while introducing changes that would allow us to inovate much faster and depricate old functionality.  These changes are currently only proposed but the general feeling I got was most people think this is the way to go.  Assuming we do go forward with these plans 3.0 won’t run into the massive issues we had during the 1.0 to 2.0 switch over.  In fact most users won’t even notice other than an opening up of possibilities in the directions we move in.

• This year I had my first Advisory Board meeting. The Ad Board is a collection of representatives from companies and organizations that support the Foundation financially (as well as in other ways). I have learned a lot this year and now that we have Stormy at the helm we will be able to better nurture these relationships.

As the sun set on GUADEC 2008 Istanbul Turkey I look back and see a highly successful conference. There are things here and there that we can tweak but all in all it is a new standard to shoot for. Looking forward we have the first annual GNOME.Asia summit coming up in October in Beijing China, and for the first time ever we are going to co-locate the KDE aKademy and GNOME GUADEC conferences in Gran Canaria next year. We were able to confirm with the KDE eV Board despite some technical difficulty with our conferencing systems. Both conferences will be keeping their unique flavour and tone but will be held in the same conference venue and have a couple of joint talks and keynotes. Well, that is about it. Until we meet again!

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