Category: KDE

moar tasks!

We’ve got quite a few tasks for Google Code-in now but still not enough on the wiki page: http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas. Please help fill it. It needs to have a lot of tasks (at least 5 in each area) on Nov. 1st (org application deadline). I’m sure there are a lot more of those “oh man I wish I had more time to get this done one day” tasks. This is your chance!

For more details check my initial announcement. There are also more task ideas in the comments there that are looking for a mentor in case you are not very creative today 😉

If you have questions please find me in #kde-soc on freenode.

 

PS: Please only add tasks with a mentor.

I need your ideas for Google Code-in

It is time again to prepare for Google Code-in. We have 2 weeks to collect tasks that we’d like high-school students aged 13 to 17 to work on. Last year GCI was an amazing success and I hope we can take part again this year.  For this I need your help.

We need to fill this page with as many tasks as we can in the next 2 weeks: http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas  Unlike last year we will not be able to add more tasks for the students until the middle of the program so we really need to have as many as we can by the time the program starts.

We are again looking for tasks in the following areas (we need at least 5 in each of them):

  • Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
  • Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
  • Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
  • Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
  • Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
  • Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
  • Translation: Tasks related to localization
  • User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

If you are unsure how tasks should look like:

http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas is waiting for your ideas. Go Go Go! 😀
PS: If you are a high-school student who wants to take part in GCI and have a task you’d like to work on: Get in touch with the team you want to work with and ask them to add the task for you now!

15 years of KDE

15 years ago today marks the beginning of what today is a large, worldwide, rocking team producing Free Software. We’re creating programs that are used by so many people all around the world – on their desktop, netbook, tablet, mobile phone and in the cloud – allowing them to be free.

I joined KDE around the time when 3.5.6 or so was hip – I was fascinated by the code and the people behind it. Boy, we’ve come a long way since then on so many levels. It’s been a joy to watch and be a part of. Just as Cornelius, I can say I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. I’ve made the best friends one could imagine, learned more than I could ever wish for, traveled around the world, found love – all that while doing my small part in changing the world. Thanks KDE! I owe you.

But let’s not forget that the ride has just started! In the next years I want KDE to have a significant part in helping make people more free, allowing them to do amazing things that we can’t imagine today. And I want KDE to grow in numbers, scope and financially without losing its identity. It’ll be a challenge but we can make it happen. And you can be a part of it!

Help KDE e.V. secure funding for a sprint with just a few clicks

KDE e.V. needs your help to secure funding for one of our next sprints. All you have to do is click a few buttons. A German bank is giving away 1000 Euro each to the 1000 associations who can get the most votes. Everyone has 3 votes. Please do vote with all 3 for KDE. With just a few clicks you can make a difference!

Here’s what you have to do:
1) go to https://verein.ing-diba.de/sonstiges/10115/kde-ev and click “Stimme abgeben”
2) enter your email and the captcha it asks for and then click “absenden”
3) you’ll get an email to confirm your vote – click the link in the email
4) you’ll get to a website – click “Stimme abgeben”

You can do this 3 times in a row. If KDE is among the top 1000 associations we’ll get 1000 Euro.

Teaching the next Adas – join KDE for Ada Lovelace Day tutorials

October 7th is Ada Lovelace Day, a day where people write about women who influenced them in their science, technology, engineering or math career. KDE wants to celebrate the day a bit differently this year. We will help the next generations of Adas find their way in KDE and Qt. We’ll do this by holding a tutorial day for women and their friends (meaning women are the main focus of the event but everyone else who’s nice is welcome as well). The tutorials will be given by the excellent Myriam Schweingruber and Dario Freddi. Don’t forget to sign up.

  • How To Help With Bug Reports (5PM UTC)
    Coding in a Free Software project is a very important part, but by far not the only one. One of the possible fields where non-coders can get involved is bug triaging. This course will give an overview on bug triaging and testing. After the course the participant should be able to pick their preferred application and start helping in bug triaging. Myriam will talk about all the fine details of becoming a bugmaster from choosing the right project for yourself to figuring out what is missing in a bug report. This is probably one of the most valuable skills you can bring to KDE right now.
  • Building your own launcher (3PM UTC)
    In this tutorial, you will create a basic application launcher for KDE. Yes, a full-fledged one you can then have fun in turning into a real “start menu” with your new skills. While doing that, Dario will teach you the basics of KDE, Qt and QML, which will empower you to create your first shiny application.

    Requirements:

    • Basic knowledge of C++, mainly syntax-wise
    • Beginner knowledge of Qt could be preferred, but not a requirement
    • A Linux+KDE installation
    • A working KDE development environment (Show up early in the channel if you don’t have that set up yet so we can still do that together.)
    • KDevelop 4.2+ (preferred) or Qt Creator, or your IDE of choice 🙂

    You will learn about:

    • Basic usage of CMake for building your project
    • Basic Qt paradigms
    • Some of KDE’s basic APIs such as KService, KIO, Solid
    • Basic QML programming
    • The Model/View paradigm and how to use it with Qt/KDE
    • Interaction between QML and C++
The tutorials will take place in #kde-tutorials on freenode. (You can use the webchat if you don’t already have a working IRC client.) Each course will last approximately 1 hour and will include a question and answer part.
Join us and spread the word to your friends 🙂

Sign up for the tutorials!

Akademy 2012 Call for Hosts closing soon

This is a quick reminder that the Call for Hosts for Akademy 2012 is closing on October 1st. If you are planning to send in a bid please do not miss this deadline. You can find details in this pdf and if you have questions you can email kde-ev-board@kde.org. I’m looking forward to reading your bids and a great Akademy 2012 for our community.

Desktop Summit Survey

Inu has just sent out an email to all registered Desktop Summit attendees with a link to a survey about the Desktop Summit in Berlin. Please help us improve future events by filling it out. You’ll earn +3 community cred 😉

(If you’re interested in earning more there’s another +50 community cred available for helping write the dot stories summarizing GSoC and SoK. Poke me if you’re interested.)

GSoC 2011 finished

I can’t believe Summer of Code is over again already. But well, it is. It’s been a great few months with our students and they’ve done really amazing stuff. You’ll get to read about all the projects soon in an article series on dot.kde.org. I’m really happy to announce that of the 51 students that started with KDE 47 finished successfully and passed the final evaluation – 1 left us after midterm for a job he couldn’t say no to. Thanks for rocking! I hope  you’ll stick around and we’ll get to see more of you in the future 🙂  A huge thank you of course also goes out to our mentors without whom this would not have been possible and who I am sure had a few sleepless nights every now and then. And last but not least thank you to my co-admins Valorie, Leo and Jeff.

Season of KDE students have just been sent a link to their final evaluation form. I’ll tell you more about that next week. So far it looks like the Season of KDE students rock just as much. (Not that I ever had a doubt about that ;-))

Akademy 2012 – looking for hosts

The Desktop Summit is barely over (said bye to my last DS guests last night *sob*) and KDE e.V. is already working hard on the next conference. It never stops 😉 We’re looking for proposals for Akademy 2012, KDE’s annual gathering. If you’d like to do an amazing service to the community and your city consider sending in a proposal. We’re collecting them until October 1st, 2011. Check the dot and this pdf for more information. If you have questions feel free to contact the board at kde-ev-board@kde.org.

Desktop Summit recap

Wow. I finally made it back home after over a week of Desktop Summit and visiting family on the way back. What a ride it was… Let me recap some of it:

  • Meeting some of the best friends I have all in one spot is the best thing ever. It’s great to catch up on important things and also talk about non-sense for a week.
  • I’ve spend quite a lot of time talking to people in GNOME about mentoring programs and community management. Very useful and not really possible to that extend outside the Desktop Summit unfortunately. The lower software stack isn’t the only place we can and should collaborate. The social stuff is just as important and maybe even easier to collaborate on sometimes.
  • I got really really nice gifts from India and the US. Thank you so much folks!
  • Seif Lotfy and I gave a talk about what GNOME and KDE can learn from each other. I’ll try to post a summary soon. It was well received and we got a lot of great questions from the audience.
  • I chaired the intern showcase (which was a lightning talk session by students from GSoC, Season of KDE and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women). It was stunning. Each of the presenters did a really great job showing the work they’ve done. I was sad to not have been able to have more students present (time was limited). What made me really really happy is the fact that at least two of KDE’s GSoC students paid their trip to Berlin from India from their GSoC money. You have no idea how thrilled I was to hear that it means so much to them to meet the community they’ve worked with even without getting sponsored. The other thing that thrilled me was to see how many women we got on stage for the intern showcase. Rocking!
  • KDE e.V. organized a professional mediation training for the members of the Community Working Group and a few others. Attending it was very useful for me. I hope I’ll not have to put my mad skills into practice soon of course.
  • We held a few feedback sessions on the activities of the Community Working Group over the last year. This feedback was very useful and lead to proposing a few changes we’ll implement over the next weeks. Stay tuned for more info.
  • I was elected into the board of KDE e.V.  and Cornelius was re-elected. This hasn’t really settled in just yet – probably will in the next days. The main thing I want to work on in the next weeks is making the work of the board even more transparent and getting a lot of the tasks that the board currently does into the e.V. membership and the community at large. This should allow the board to concentrate more on tasks that only the board can do. I need your help for that and I’ll ask for it every now and then.
All in all I consider the Desktop Summit a huge success and am looking forward to the next one (after an Akademy ;-)). Mad props to everyone who helped organize it.

So what’s up next for me? (Let me know if you want to meet up.)

  • I might go to Paris for VideoLAN Dev Days to meet some of our friends from VLC and co and to go back to lovely Paris.
  • I’ll be speaking at openSUSE conf about social skills for geeks (a session I’ve done before together with Hanne and Alexandra at the Qt Contributors’ Summit) and do a BoF about how to get more women (and diversity) into openSUSE.
  • I might come to Oslo for a few days in the next months to visit friends and disconnect.
  • We’re planning a KDE e.V. sprint to work on things like Join the Game. I’ll help with getting that rolling.

PS: I’m likely looking for a full-time job soon – preferably related to community management/engagement or project management. Check my CV and get in touch if this sounds interesting.