We don’t see many products running an OS based on Linux and GNOME advertised on bus stops around here, but look at this one … 🙂

So many things happened during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit that it’s impossible to summarize them all, but here’s a list of the ones that come to my mind now:

• Alfredo Kraus auditorium is a great venue, and its location couldn’t be better.
• The University was less spectacular, but from a functional point of view I think it was more suited to this kind of conference than the auditorium (to begin with, Internet connection worked better). Its main problems: distance to the city center and lack of places to have lunch.
• When Jos van den Oever said: we not only share specifications, we also share code, and everyone in the room started to applaud.
• Despite that, and at least for me due to the packed schedule, I couldn’t attend any of the KDE talks. I don’t know if other people had the same feeling, but I left Gran Canaria a bit skeptical about the actual usefulness of having both conferences together.
• All keynotes were good.
• Moblin 2 looks promising.
• GNOME Shell, Zeitgeist, Clutter, WebkitGTK+, client side windows.
• The hacking sessions at the hotel lobby.
• Nokia’s announcement that Maemo will switch away from GTK+. While this is a complex decision with a lot of causes (probably some of them political and some of them technical), I think it’s fair to say that this is (at least party) a failure of GNOME/GTK+, and deserves some debate inside the GNOME community.
• Few women giving talks. I hope there comes a day when the number of women in free software conferences is not a matter of mention.
• The weather was too hot for me (although at night it was fantastic).
• The beach at night.
• Canarian food at the dinner with the GNOME Hispano team.
• Fernando and Xan’s GNOME 1, 2, 3 show.
• The GNOME band.
• Kimmo using a whiteboard for his talk.

Following our traditions, last Tuesday we had a very big party on the beach where we set everything on fire (this pic is not from this year, though).

That means one thing: Summer is finally here!

That also means that in less than 10 days I’m flying to Gran Canaria, along with many other Igalians, for the Desktop Summit. We have a few talks there this year, I’ll give two: an introduction to the new Hildon 2.2 and a Git workshop (this one at the Spanish GUADEC).

I’ve already been to Gran Canaria once some years ago, and I keep very good memories of that trip. The island is not very big and has some amazing landscapes, specially in the central part. The Maspalomas Dunes in the south are worth a visit too (a trip is being arranged by the organisation, see here, and hurry up if you’re interested), although that part of the island is full of hotels and I didn’t find it particularly beautiful.

I was in Las Palmas for less than a day and I remember it as a nice city. I think it’s going to be a great place for the Summit. I’m looking forward to seeing many people that I haven’t seen for a long time, and I hope that grouping together the GNOME and KDE teams in the same place for such an important event bears fruit sooner or later.

See you in Gran Canaria!