life at the end of the universe

Only one week left until the Desktop Summit. Man, I’m so excited. Unfortunately not everyone will be able to be with us in Berlin in person. If you’re one of them, here’s what you need to stay up-to-date on things happening at the Desktop Summit:

• identi.ca:  search for #ds2011, the @desktopsummit account and the !desktopsummit group
• twitter: search for #ds2011, the @desktopsummit account
• flickr: search for the ds2011 tag
• irc: the #desktopsummit channel on freenode
• Planet KDE and Planet GNOME
• the dot
• the conference program
• slides will be uploaded on the DS website after the talks
• videos will be recorded of all talks on Saturday, Sunday and Monday and if there are no problems uploaded a day or two later

Most of these have RSS feeds you can subscribe to – use them

See you in Berlin next week!

The European Space Agency is running their own Summer of Code-like program this year as a trial. It’s called ESA Summer of Code in Space. Wohooo for ESA! ESA selected KStars and Marble as two of 20 projects taking part this year. So if you want to hack on Marble or KStars and become famous here’s your chance. For more details check out Torsten’s blog post.

Oh and hurry: Application deadline for students is on July 27th, 11:00 AM (UTC). Don’t miss your chance to show us how much you rock!

We’re still looking for more volunteers to help with a few things at the Desktop Summit in Berlin. The following tasks still need volunteers:

• registration
• session chair
• video operator
• odd tasks

KDE’s 4.7 release party in Karlsruhe will happen on 29th of July. We’ll be meeting at Vogelbräu Karlsruhe again at 19:00. You should be there  To attend please add your name to the wiki page or send me an email.

No party near you listed on http://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/Release_Parties/4.7 yet? Start one now!

We are still looking for more volunteers for the Desktop Summit. Especially needed at the moment are for example session chairs. As a session chair you introduce the speaker, make sure they have everything they need and start and finish on time. People who sign up first get to chose with parts of the program they get. So be quick!

The Desktop Summit is an event for the community by the community – help make it happen and sign up as a volunteer now: http://wiki.desktopsummit.org/Volunteers

Another 6 months passed pretty quickly if you ask me. It’s time again to get together and celebrate a release together with fellow KDE contributors and users.

Ingo was so kind to prepare a wiki page for the 4.7 parties at http://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/Release_Parties/4.7. Organizing a get-together? Add it quickly. The release is planned for 27th of this month.

If you have no idea what this is all about:

• KDE people will meet all around the world for nice chats and a fun time for everyone to celebrate the 4.7 release.
• Everyone can organize a party. Just add it to the wiki and let people sign up.
• What happens at the party is up to you! Everything from meeting in a bar for a drink to a full event with talks and stuff is allowed. Be creative!
• Everyone is welcome – contributors, soon-to-be contributors, users and close FOSS friends alike.

If you have questions email me or kde-promo at kde org.

The last release party here in Karlsruhe was great fun and got KDE a new awesome maintainer for Step.

And now go and reserve a table at a local restaurant (There really isn’t more to do than that, a blog entry and maybe emailing a few locals. Oh and you should of course show up for your party )