[dot] International OSS Desktop Conference aKademy 2004 Ends in Germany

Dot Stories stories at kdenews.org
Thu Sep 2 17:14:36 CEST 2004 

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1094135132/

From: pipitas <>
Dept: we-are-the-champions
Date: Thursday 02/Sep/2004, @16:25

International OSS Desktop Conference aKademy 2004 Ends in Germany
=================================================================

   September 1, 2004 (The Internet) - The KDE Project is pleased to
announce the successful completion of the KDE Community World Summit
("aKademy 2004" [http://conference2004.kde.org/]) in Ludwigsburg
(Germany) taking place from August 20th to 29th.

     With more than 230 KDE core developers, usability and accessibility
experts, translators, editors and artists participating, the event is
expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of
the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment. In addition, 270
visitors from the KDE user base and from other Free Software projects
brought the total number of attendees to 500. The international
participants, coming from 5 continents, took part in 65 talks
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Talks+@+aKademy], 10 full-day
tutorials [http://conference2004.kde.org/tutorials.php] and numerous
BoF-meetings [http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-marathon.php] over the
course of 10 days. Thanks to this huge turnout and the numerous
activities, the event evolved into the largest conference ever held that
focused on a single open source desktop environment.

     The schedule consisted of six parts: KDE e.V. meeting
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+ev+meeting+2004], Developer
Conference [http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-devconf.php], Unix
Accessibility Forum [http://accessibility.kde.org/forum/program.php],
Usability Forum
[http://conference2004.kde.org/usabilityforum/uakademy_schedule.html],
Coding Marathon [http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-marathon.php] and
User Conference [http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-userconf.php].
     Video and audio streams [http://ktown.kde.org/akademy/] from the
Developer Conference (August 21st to 22nd) are available for public
consumption, thanks to the magnificent support of Fluendo
[http://www.fluendo.com/], who provided the technology and manpower to
record all of the talks. A large number of detailed write-ups were
contributed by event attendees and have been published on the KDE Wiki
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Talks+@+aKademy] website.
     During the First Unix Accessibility Forum (August 22nd to 23rd)
developers and disabled people met to improve and advance assistive
technologies for Unix. The following projects and companies contributed
with talks and presentations to the outstanding success of the
Accessibility Forum: KDE Accessibility Project
[http://accessibility.kde.org/] (organizer), Trolltech
[http://www.trolltech.com/] (sponsor), IBM [http://www.ibm.com/], Sun
Microsystems [http://www.sun.com/], BAUM Retec AG [http://www.baum.de/],
GNOME Accessibility Project [http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/],
FSG Accessibility Workgroup [http://accessibility.freestandards.org/],
SUSE [http://www.suse.com/] / Novell [http://www.novell.com/] and
SeebyTouch Project [http://see-by-touch.sourceforge.net/index_.html].
     With usability becoming increasingly important for the broad
success of Linux and other Open Source Software on the desktop, the
Usability Forum (August 24-26) discussed, demonstrated and refined the
means by which KDE can effectively and seamlessly integrate usability
into its everyday development process. The Usability Lab set up and run
by experts from relevantive AG [http://www.relevantive.de/] and their
professional support resulted in many instant changes to the KDE source
code that will significantly advance the user experience in KDE 3.4.
     The Coding Marathon saw the evolution of a great many ideas which
will make it into upcoming 3.4 and 4.0 releases of KDE. Several
completely new projects were also started during the event. One of the
most remarkable ones is the FreeNX/kNX
[http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/FreeNX/] initiative, which
will bring high speed Terminal Services to KDE, that will connect
multiple Operating System platforms and make Linux desktop migration
plans significantly easiert to implement.

     The User Conference featured the first public announcement of
another big public sector organization preparing its move to the Linux
OS platform [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/50491]: all 69 local
tax offices in Lower Saxony and their central office in Hannover will be
migrating the 12.500 desktop workstations of their clerks and employees
to the KDE Desktop Environment, utilizing the Kiosk Mode [
http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool.php] enterprise desktop features
of KDE.

     In addition to general KDE users and developer community,
representatives from the SkoleLinux [http://www.skolelinux.org/] and
Gnome [http://www.gnome.org/] projects were invited and took part. They
helped to further improve close cooperation and mutual interoperability
between these projects.
     Photos of the event are available here
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Pictures+%40+aKademy].
     The KDE team would like to thank the City of Ludwigsburg
[http://www.ludwigsburg.de/] and the Wirtschaftsförderung Region
Stuttgart (WRS) [http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de/] for hosting the
event. Thanks to the City of Ludwigsburg our first social event featured
a delicious buffet. We especially appreciated the hospitality of the
Filmakademie [http://www.filmakademie.de/] -- they were extremely
supportive and hosted our coding marathon. This meant keeping the doors
open for the computer labs for 24 hours a day, on 10 consecutive days,
so that our programmers and contributors could work freely and
unrestricted some of whom wouldn't even attempt to adapt to their
jet-lags.
     The CCC Stuttgart [https://www.cccs.de/], Space.NET
[http://www.space.net/], BelWue [http://www.BelWue.de/] and LF.net
[http://LF.net/] have been an invaluable help to construct a reliable
high bandwidth network and internet connection, providing hardware and
connectivity. Their high level of volunteer organization and work was
crucial to the overall success of the event: you girls and guys rock!
Linux New Media [http://www.linuxnewmedia.com/] and basysKom
[http://www.basyskom.de/] helped us in an unbureaucratic and extensive
way in all matters. KDE developers, users and outside visitors showed a
lot of interest in the available KDE merchandise. We would like to thank
Open Source Factory [http://www.opensourcefactory.com/] and Kernel
Concepts [http://www.kernelconcepts.de/] for satisfying those needs.
     Furthermore we would like to thank the Blue Angel/Blauer Engel
[http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/page/detail.php/16780] for food price
reduction. IBM [http://www.ibm.com/linux/] sponsored "Free Lunch for
Free Software Developers"
[http://developer.kde.org/~binner/aKademy2004/day1/dscf0039.jpg] during
the first weekend -- that was a very popular benefit for the hungry
crowd! Thank you, HP [http://www.hp.com/], for making available
notebooks to our Free Software and KDE developers for a reduced price!
Plus, your notebooks received an excellent rating by our expert Linux
users who in the course of the week installed various Linux
distributions onto the harddisks.
     Special thanks go to the volunteer people running the all-night
shuttle-service from the Filmakademie to the Ludwigsburg Youth Hostel.
Their service was really extremely well appreciated by all those who
avoided 45 minute walks while the German rain was pouring down, as well
as those who were simply too tired after coding for 16 hours, at 4
o'clock in the morning.
     And of course a big thank you to KDE e.V.
[http://www.kde.org/areas/kde-ev/], all the KDE people and other
volunteers for making this year's KDE Community World Summit such a
great, ground-breaking and successful event!
     Many thanks go to our sponsors! Platinum Sponsor: Hewlett-Packard
[http://www.hp.com/linux/], who provided us with more than 50 excellent,
Linux-optimized notebooks for the event! Gold Sponsors: IBM
[http://www.ibm.com/linux/], SUSE [http://www.suse.com/] / Novell
[http://www.novell.com/] and Trolltech [http://www.trolltech.com/].
Bronze Sponsors: erfrakon [http://www.erfrakon.de/], NoMachine
[http://www.nomachine.com/], Parity Software
[http://www.parity-soft.de], xandros [http://www.xandros.com/],
Intevation [http://www.intevation.de/], science+computing
[http://www.science-computing.de/], Danka [http://www.danka.de/], Linux
Information Systems AG [http://www.linux-ag.de/] and LinuxLand
[http://www.linuxland.de/].
     Printer Sponsor: Danka [http://www.danka.de/]. Book Sponsor:
O'Reilly [http://www.oreilly.com]. Compile Kluster Provider: transtec
[http://www.transtec.de/]. Usability Lab Provider: relevantive
[http://www.relevantive.de/]. Media Partner: Linux Magazine
[http://www.linuxnewmedia.com/]. Streaming Partner: fluendo
[http://www.fluendo.com/]. Organizing Parties and Main Contributors: KDE
e.V. [http://www.kde.org/areas/kde-ev/], Wirtschaftsförderung Region
Stuttgart [http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de/], LinuxNewMedia AG
[http://www.linuxnewmedia.com/], basysKom [http://www.basyskom.de/],
erfrakon [http://www.erfrakon.de/], LF.net [http://LF.net] Further
Contributors: City of Ludwigsburg [http://www.ludwigsburg.de/], credativ
GmbH [http://www.credativ.com/], Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB
[http://www.klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se/], LinuxTag e.V.
[http://www.linuxtag.de/] and SourceXtreme Inc.
[http://www.sourcextreme.com/].
     Press Release: Written by Torsten Rahn
 Contact: info at kde.org
     Trademarks Notices. KDE, K Desktop Environment and KOffice are
trademarks of KDE e.V. Incorporated. Linux is a registered trademark of
Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All
other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the
property of their respective owners.

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