Month: July 2008

GUADEC/aKademy 2009 in Gran Canaria

I have spent some nice days in GUADEC in Istanbul. This year i was not giving a talk but i have the emotion of the bid we presented for hosting GUADEC in 2009. After attending to a lot of interesting talks yesterday the GNOME Foundation announced that next year GUADEC will be co-located with aKademy in Gran Canaria.

I’ve never been to Gran Canaria, but a have a special relation with the Canary Islands. If you check my weblog header it is me with the Teide like background. I have been 5 times in Tenerife and visited La Palma and La Gomera. i have felt in love with these Islands, each one is different with a special charm. I have been waiting for an occasion to go to Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura so next year i have an excuse and i know that Alberto will be a really nice host in Gran Canaria.

At this point i can only say that GNOME Hispano will give all the possible support that we can provide to Alberto and the rest organizers for organizing GUADEC next year, we have had a great commitment in the organization of GUADEC in Vilanova two years ago, so we have the experience needed for helping them as an active part in the organization.

So as i told Alberto i will try to help him about any request and advise he needs. I would like that GNOME community continue wanting to come back to Spain when it is possible, so that we can convince them to come to Galicia in future editions 🙂

Now we should think about a new proposal for organizing an innovative event in Coruña next year but we should think about this in GPUL because we are celebrating our tenth anniversary.

P.D. I hope that all students of the Master on Free Software of Caixanova are working hard while i am “working” in Istanbul.

GUADEC Core Day 1

It has been my first day at GUADEC, i have met some of the fantastic volunteers that have been collaborating in Vilanova as Gil, Silvia and the organizer Baris. They continue being fantastic people with a lot of energy.

Today talks were quite interesting, I liked specially talk from Miguel about his point of view of the integration of web and desktop app development. On the other side I have been always interested on GPS and the development of Geoclue and Gypsy is going forward with the objective of providing to the Desktop the information about where the desktop is in each moment.
But GUADEC is not just the series of talks in a conference venue, is the social program and meeting people from the GNOME community. Today organization prepared a cocktail with the GNOME Band sound on the roof of the University, with a really nice view of the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn. Claudio is a great musician so I think that when he arrives to Coruña the Igalia band will be possible with the collaboration of Calvaris (classical piano), API (bass) and Andres with the battery 🙂 I’ve been speaking with Ivan Frade remembering my latest PhD research regarding indexation, Information Retrieval and tracker.
Later on the street near our hotel, the one full of pillows, I spend a nice time speaking with Lucas Rocha, German and Pedro.I could practice a little my French too with some people from Fluendo.
Today I first met to Stormy Peters, our new executive director of the GNOME Foundation, she is really motivated in working for GNOME. I have watched her last year keynote at Birmingham and i liked. I believe that she can really help spreading all the fantastic work that GNOME community is doing and I think that she can take this responsibility. She has an extra point, she speaks a really good Spanish.

We will know on Friday where GUADEC is going to be next year, I hope that board will chose our proposal for Coruña, and the same for KDE e.V., but nowadays we can only wait for a decision.
It is too late, and lately Igalians have been closing the pillows GUADEC street, so today we have done it again, thank you Mario for showing us the good path 🙂 Just 5 hours before getting up and i can see the sunrise throw my window. Good day and Good luck.