Category: KDE

Just a quick reminder that there is only one week left to submit talks for Akademy in Tallinn. Submit now, don’t procrastinate! (yeah yeah I know how hard that is ;-))

If you need help with your submission or have questions you can reach the program committee at akademy-talks@kde.org.

Last Saturday Teo and I filled out KDE’s application for Google Summer of Code. I hope we will once again be selected as a mentoring organisation for many excellent students.

If you plan to apply as a student with KDE we have nearly 100 ideas for you to chose from on our ideas page already and I’m sure some more will be added in the next days. And you can of course come up with your own idea, too. (You really should talk to a potential mentor in that case though. But you should do that anyway ;-)) Don’t wait, start now! Oh and don’t forget to read Teo’s advice. As a former student, mentor and now admin he knows what’s ahead of you.

But most importantly: Believe in yourself. You can do awesome, I’m sure 😉 Go pick an idea!

Oh and don’t forget that we’ll be focusing this year’s GSoC and/or Season of KDE on accessibility. Applications in this area are especially welcome.

Some of you need sponsoring from KDE e.V. to attend Akademy. The board will handle sponsorship requests for travel and/or accommodation in 3 rounds. The budget is limited and only the funds not spend in a round will be transferred to the next round. (So you want to be in the first round.) The deadlines for sending requests to the board are:

• round 1: 1st of April
• round 2: 1st of May
• round 3: 1st of June

We try to handle requests within one week after these deadlines.
For more information about reimbursement rules please check KDE e.V.’s reimbursement policy.

Akademy is getting closer and that means it is time to submit talk proposals. I’m sure you have something interesting to talk about. Check out the Call for Papers for more details and some suggestions of what the program committee is looking for. Submit now – don’t procrastinate 😉

Don’t know what to talk about or have questions/doubts? Find me on IRC or email me.

Also don’t forget to register to attend the conference! Akademy is free but you need to register to attend.

As announced earlier KDE will apply to become a mentoring org again for Google Summer of Code in 2012. We decided to focus on accessibility this round should KDE be accepted again. To make this happen KDE’s mentors need help. Most of the mentors do not have the knowledge needed to make good decisions when it comes to making our applications more accessible. We are therefor looking for co-mentors who can help them – people who either have a disability that requires changes in KDE’s software to make their life easier or people who are otherwise knowledgeable in the area. These co-mentors would not have to do any of the mentoring on the coding side but instead advice the student and main mentor on non-coding parts. Does that sound like something you can help with? Then please send an email to kde-soc-mentor@kde.org and introduce yourself and how you could help. Please also pass this on to anyone you think might be a good fit.

At FOSDEM it was announced that Google will run Google Summer of Code again in 2012. Wohooooooo! KDE will apply as a mentoring organisation again. Here are the next steps to prepare:

For students:

• Read the GSoC FAQ and timeline. (Don’t skip this step. It’s important.)
• Read some GSoC infos from KDE.
• Keep an eye on the ideas page to see what KDE is looking for. You’re also welcome to come up with your own idea as long as you discuss it with a mentor.
• Get in touch with a mentor and discuss your idea. Maybe already contribute a little. (The better we know you the time it gets to voting on your application the better.)

For mentors:

• Add ideas to the ideas page. Only add ideas if you are willing to mentor them! Please add them within the next 2 weeks. Earlier is better as students are already looking for ideas now. We will try to give a focus to accessibility this round. This does not mean that all ideas have to be related to that in some way but it would be great if a significant percentage of them would be.
• Consider holding a GSoC info session at a university near you. Get in touch with me if you plan to do that. There are ready-made presentations and flyers available for you.

KDE mentored a lot of students during Google Code-in and I asked some of them to write about their experience. This is the final part of the series.

Alexey writes:

KDE was my fourth open source community to work with in Google Code-In 2011 and I can say I really enjoyed my experience.

First of all I’d like to thank all the mentors assigned to KDE tasks for the quick claim requests responses, reviews and detailed feedback. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about all the other communities I’ve participated in.
I completed 3 translations tasks and my translation included compiling and installing some KDE packages, working with translation system and working with graphical editors to translate some screenshots and edit some pictures.
As soon as I claimed one of the tasks I was able to start my work, because the task information was always full enough.

Of course sometimes I had some questions (for example, I had no clue why I could not install one of the necessary packages), but I always got professional feedback in a short time.

Also I have to record that almost every KDE project has a full and clear documentation.
Of course, the documentation is not always translated to native languages for users, but it didn’t bring any difficulties to me.
And I hope that such contests like GCI will bring more and more developers into your community and there won’t be any problems with it at all.

Evidently, it was a great pleasure to work with KDE. Thank you very much! To be honest, I would like to take part in KDE community, so I’m trying to choose the project I would be interested in most.
I would also like to thank Google for creating such useful projects for open-source world like Google Code-In!

Good luck, KDE!

Edwin writes:

In the beginning, when Google Code-In took place for the first time, I’ve found some information about it on Russian website dedicated to GNU/Linux (its address is not secret: linux.org.ru). I thought it’s a great opportunity to improve some skills, for example, programming or language knowledge.

To be honest: yes, it also was a good possibility to earn some money 🙂

But there is another reason: open souce projects are usually maintained by developers, who contribute their skills and time to make software better. They may create patches for programs, which they use. It’s just their hobby. If you use the software which you have contributed to, you can show a feature and say proudly: “My work!”.

That’s why I decided to participate in the contest.

Although I don’t use the software, which I’ve contributed to during the contest (and probably nobody of my friends does), I have decided to do something. Most of the tasks I’ve done during the contest (both times) are Russian translations (I’m too lazy to work with any code :D). I’m from Estonia, but Russian is my native language.

Last year I’ve done three tasks. One of them was Russian translation of Parley. Friendly mentors and community helped me to work it out at some points. Many thanks to them :).

This year seven of my tasks were Russian translations. Four of them were translations for KDE programs: Kleopatra, KMid, Rocs and PhotoLayoutEditor KIPI plugin. It was hard to translate some words, just because I didn’t know the topic very well. Anyway, I’ve figured it out.

If you don’t like going out, it’s better to spend time improving software rather than just doing nothing. Good luck to KDE developers and Code-In participants! 🙂

KDE mentored a lot of students during Google Code-in and I asked some of them to write about their experience.

Subhashish writes:

Well my first KDE task was “Research: Understanding KDE Users (Individuals)” with mentor Carl Symons (kallecarl). This was my fifth task in the Google Code-In Contest 2011. To be honest, this task (of the three KDE tasks that I’ve completed as of now) was one of my favorite tasks as it was a research tasks in which I tried my best not to leave out any little detail.

It was late night (12:00 AM, Monday, December 5) when I requested a claim for this task. Feeling tired after a nice Sunday, I went to sleep to wake up to a cool Monday morning to see task assigned to me, but I could proceed no more with the task courtesy, the power cuts we are facing here these days. The rest of the day was uneventful for I had to study for my forthcoming exams.

The next day I was able to get kallecarl’s contact details and contact him on #kde-promo. I had a long chat with him about my task asking him what KDE Promo team does, about the Akademy events and many more questions. The best part was that he was patient and was ready to answer my every query. He seemed to be an informative and helpful person (as I observed him) as the other mentors that I’ve worked with.

The above paragraph depicts my normal procedure of starting things with every task that I’ve done. Get the mentor’s email address and most importantly the IRC nick if he/she uses IRC. Then chat with them about the task, its background, scope where things can be improved etc. Then start working on the task.

Research tasks are my favorite because one can get to see how a project functions, which I did get to see but partially, to be honest, little but to a considerable extent. After all how much can one expect to observe within some countable days while working with one part of a project? But as the open source projects are (I mean transparent), one can get to understand it (the project) if one sticks with it and observe for some months which I’d gladly do but that’s another thing.

Understanding what the KDE Promo team needed for the task, I hopped onto the task, put my thinking cap on as I needed to put forward some proposals for conducting the research. I categorized my task’s objectives, looked into what methods may be needed to do the research, borrowed some ideas, drafted a sample document and mailed it to my mentor who politely suggested me some changes and said he was looking forward for more in his reply. From there on, I got excited enough to help me focus more on the task. Funny isn’t it how humans get more dedicated to a task they do if they are encouraged a little?

With that enthusiasm I completed that task and I’ve been completing all of my claimed tasks by doing everything I could to do the tasks justice and which every student participating in this contest would be doing too. Coming to us (the participants), we must realize how great an achievement it is for us to complete at least one task in this contest because we are contributing our efforts to the organizations who need them the most because they serve the humanity by crafting certain free technologies that are class apart and which help the common people. Most of the contributors of these organizations put their heart into these valuable creations in their spare time. These open source organizations, the developers, the contributors and all those who help such projects to improve are the real heroes. Working with them to contribute to their (and ultimately our) cause is a great achievement in itself. It is how I feel and how every participant of this contest must feel.

To be honest, the prizes set for each student who does at least something in this contest are a draw for students like us but it also creates an awareness in us to understand the importance of the term ‘open source’ for those who can see it. I got an opportunity to interact with real heroes who are also nice people. I also understood that there are more ways to contribute other than ‘coding’ and I am really glad that I am doing it. Thank you KDE for giving me a chance voice my opinions! Thank you Google for giving us a rewarding opportunity to work with such amazing organizations!