Chema Casanova's Blog

It’s a long time since my last post, so if you ask why is this guy writing about GUADEMY its because i haven’t written about that wonderful experience.

I think that GUADEMY was one of the more interesting activities organized by GPUL, the experience of meeting with all GNOME friends and having a nice weekend all together with KDE people was wonderful . I would like this experience could be repeated next year, i don’t know if should be at Coruña again or in another place. But by the moment that many people from the organization would like to repeat this experience.

Even that i sent this post to late, i would like thanking all the people that attended GUADEMY.

By the way DUDESConf was really amazing too.

Esta semana está siendo bastante frenética en el local de GPUL, como se nota que este Viernes empieza GUADEMY, esperemos que dejar todos los detalles atados, ya sabemos que tenemos las comidas del fin de semana encargadas, tenemos un acto inagural con una representación de la Xunta de Galicia y de la Universidade da Coruña, las acreditaciones están ya casi impresas, tenemos todo lo reservable en la Facultad de Informática a nuestra disposición y ya contamos con una segunda cámara para grabar las sesiones paralelas.

Ya hemos encargado la cena del Vienes y la cena del congreso ya está también reservada. Ya tenemos todas las horas de llegada y podemos confirmar que podremos ir a recogerlos a todos a aeropuertos y estaciones de tren. El partido de futbol sala GNOME vs KDE probablemente se convierta en una realidad.

Ya hemos ido a realizar la compra de alimentación, así que nadie se quedará sin programar por falta de café o colacao a parte de unas cuantas cositas que hemos cogido para matar el hambre entre horas. GPUL tiene su primera cafetera de la historia y con la de Emilio y la mia tendremos un buen ancho de banda de cafeteras. El blog del evento está casi listo, y las bolsas de los participantes están pendientes de los últimos detalles.

También tenemos unos cuantos sacos y esterillas por si las moscas le hace falta a alguna gente. Así que podemos decir que mañana por la noche empieza a rodar esta GUADEMY a la vez que es el patrón de la facultad de informática, así que no os asusteis si veis una fiesta brutal en la facultade ya que el jueves va a ser la tempestad previa a la GUADEMY, los que dormís en nuestras superinstalaciones, no os olvideis los tapones de oidos 🙂

Como siempre hay unos cuantos que dejan las cosas para última hora, hemos extendido el plazo de registro GUADEMY hasta este domingo 18, así que si estás interesado en asistir date prisa para inscribirte.

De todas formas si al final pasas de inscribirte y te quieres acercarte, la organización no se podrá hacer cargo de entregarte el material que preparamos para los ponentes, que tengas sitio para dormir, que tengas un sitio donde comer cerca y esos pequeños detalles que hacen que tengas cubiertas las necesidades básicas, a un coste razonable y de forma cómoda.

Esto va a para los últimos de filipinas, que cubrir un formulario de inscripción lleva poco tiempo. 🙂

Last november i applied for being member of the GNOME foundation, after reading a post from Quim Gil at the GNOME planet just before the GNOME Foundation board elections.

When i decided to apply for the membership i had to think about what i had done about GNOME last years. I’ve been a GNOME user since the version 1.4 running in my old Debian Distribution.

When i started working at Igalia, we chose GNOME because we thought (and still think) that it was the best platform to develop Desktop Applications. It used standard technologies like CORBA and it was Free Software. I remember that Felipe and Alex went to the GUADEC in Sevilla.

But my first real contact with GNOME community was during first GUADEC-ES in Almendralejo in 2004, there i met face to face the other nice people working in GNOME in Spain, and important part of the GNOME HISPANO community. I presented there the GNOME Barnacle from Fisterra project where i really coded a lot of GObjects. After this first edition Juanjo and me, decided to promote a second edition of the GUADEC-ES at home. We organized the II GUADEC-ES at University of A Coruña with a really great group of collaborators. It was really an successful event and we could bring nice people from Chile as Fernando and Germán, and Ariel from México. It was really funny and some photos can explain it really well.

Last year experience working for the GUADEC 2006 organization in Vilanova and knowing such a fantastic person as Quim provided me reasons for applying membership of the Foundation. At GUADEC i knew all the international world of GNOME, all the volunteers, the speakers , the developers and the lot of friends i made there (i can say that i was in the group of the Mediterranean Sea pioneers as Palomo and ACS at the fluendo party). I prefer not been recognized with the name Quim gave me: “The man with the money”. I’ve almost finished with all the accountability of last year GUADEC, there is only a pending invoice to be paid.

So finally i would like to thank to the people that supported my application: Quim Gil, Rodrigo Moya and Izabel Cerqueira. There were really nice comments about my contributions to GNOME community. Please remember me that i owe you a drink at Birmingan.

I expect include next GUADEMY as my next contribution sharing my efforts with the rest of the people from GPUL.

In GPUL we are really proud about the feedback the community is providing us about GUADEMY. We have received the support of two free software companies like Trolltech and Igalia that have became sponsors of GUADEMY. We are waiting the reply from other companies and institutions for our Call for Funds.

Tomorrow i hope we will publish GUADEMY timetable and the public call for participation. We have only send this news to the people involved in the community, because at GPUL we didn’t want to flood the medias with our activities. We have organized today and interesting workshop about free software and graphics (3d, virtual reality, animations). I feel that is was really an success, because the room was full of people and the speakers were amazing.

If you haven’t registered at GUADEMY yet, please do it quickly, we have at the moment 40 participants registered, and after the public announce we hope that we reach the 80-100 number of participants we are expecting.

If you are thinking about booking your flight to A Corunha to participate in GUADEMY. These are the official dates you should think to get your planes. You should arrive on Thursday March 22nd at the afternoon/evening and you may go back home on Sunday March 25th after lunch. The GPUL team will have prepared the free GUADEMY accommodation during this period of time.

If you have to flight from/via Madrid there is an special offer from EasyJet until 27th February because they are promoting their new route A Corunha-Madrid. In other case just use Iberia, Spanair or Portugalia, if you come to GUADEMY by plane.
We will open registration next Monday, February 26th 2007.

See you at GUADEMY.

Last week we finished the official Call for Hacking for GUADEMY, we have received a lot of interesting hacking proposals. I feel that this first experience of GUADEMY will be fantastic. Almost everybody from GNOME Hispano community has submitted very nice activities. We have also interesting people coming to Coruña as Aaron Seijo from KDE.

We will publish the registration and the hacking proposals early this week. If you forgot about sending your proposal, please send it quick, before we publish the program. We are still looking for Sponsors, if your are interested please contact with the organization.
I’ve been working with the registration forms, and this year we have found and interesting software developed by CERN. That allows to manage from a simple lecture to a complex conference. I think that GUADEC organization should evaluate it. It is called CDS-Indico and is complete developed in python. I have prepared a CDS Indico – Debian – MINIHOWTO about how to install it. If you find any mistake in the instructions please let me know.

Today, the english version of the GUADEMY website joins the galician and spanish ones. So now there is no excuse, the international hackers are all invited to attend to GUADEMY.

Don’t forget send your proposal soon, it would take no more than 10 minutes.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, the GPUL has released today the Call for Hacking for the GUADEMY, the first GNOME & KDE hackmeeting in Spain. Two years ago, in 2005 i was involved in the organization of the II GUADEC-ES which was really a success. I liked a lot that event because i could bring to Galicia really interesting people who was working with free software and a lot of good friends of the GNOME HISPANO community.

This time with the great support of GPUL, based in the Idea of collaboration and the diversity we have in our LUG, i love GNOME desktop and other people love KDE desktop. We use to collaborate in a talk to the newbies at our faculty of Computer Science where we explain how to use the more extended free desktops (KDE/GNOME).
We also have participated together in our funny talk about KDE and GNOME in our yearly GPUL workshops, explaining the latest improvements of the two desktops.

This year we decided to extend this experience to our nearest community as an experiment, with the objective of create a meeting point where GNOME and KDE community could have a nice weekend, hacking, learning, teaching and coding, in one phrase sharing our knowledge. That’s the most important about Free Software.

GUADEMY = GUADEC + AKADEMY = KDE + GNOME = GUADEMY Destroys Myths

We are ready for meeting anyone interested in Free Software Desktops during 23,24 and 25 of march in Coruña, Galicia, in the North-West of Spain.

I want to give thanks to anyone who has helped to get this event here this year, mainly the GPUL people like emilio j (our great president), juanjo and josé millán (authentic kde fans). The same to the people of the GNOME Hispano community and the KDE-HISPANO developers, who were really interested about GUADEMY when it was only an Idea. And i don’t forget about Igalia’s people who had confirmed me their commitment with GUADEMY and all the people that has helped to spread the news about the event like quim, rodrigo, álvaro and esteban. But this couldn’t be posible without the collaboration of CESGA, Mancomún project, the Industry ministry of our regional government the Xunta de Galicia and expecially the University of A Coruña that provides a nice place to organize GUADEMY.

And finally, what it is really important now, we are looking for GUADEMY sponsors. Don’t miss contact with informacion (at) guademy (dot) org if you can help us.