[dot] KDE at LinuxWorld Toronto 2006

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1147223935/

From: Inorog <tibirna at kde.org>
Dept: all-over-again
Date: Tuesday 09/May/2006, @18:18

KDE at LinuxWorld Toronto 2006
==============================

   Cristian Tibirna [http://http://people.kde.org/cristian.html]
represented KDE at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo - Toronto 2006
[http://www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca/]. Here follows his report of this
event.
  At the request of KDE's representative for North America, George
Staikos, and thanks to the sponsoring granted by Plum Comm. Canada
[http://plumcom.ca], the organizers of the Toronto LWCE, I was able to
go to Toronto on April 25th, and to give a three hours tutorial:  Why
KDE for the desktop
[http://ktown.kde.org/~ctibirna/2006-lwet/lwet2006-tibirna-kde-desktop-tutorial-FULL.pdf]
and a one hour conference: Take a Hold of the Rapidly Maturing Linux
Desktop
[http://ktown.kde.org/~ctibirna/2006-lwet/lwet2006-tibirna-desktop-hold.pdf].

     I also wanted to run a KDE stand, but it turned out not to be
possible for me (given work-related constraints) to stay through both
days as required.

     My tutorial and conference didn't gather full rooms but I think the
conference as a whole was a bit less active than usual. I found the
experience interesting nevertheless. After the tutorial, two engineers
came to me from Xerox, who showed to me the new printing driver dialog
that they have written for Linux, which their colleague, David Salgado,
had already mentioned to me at the Atlanta printing summit but didn't
have the means to demo it to me. Also, the president of a local software
development company (Advidi of Nepean, Ontario), came to me after the
tutorial and told me I helped him a lot to make a better idea and inform
his choice for a development framework. I strongly hope that I helped
him choose KDE ;-).

     Many of the attendees were eager to take home one of the Kubuntu
CDs that Jonathan Riddell [http://www.kdedevelopers.org/blog/57] had
kindly delivered to me beforehand.

     On the show floor, the usual commercial players were present but I
only saw a small number of stalls for free software or community
organisations. John Hall was at the Linux International booth but I
didn't find an opportunity to meet him and make my greetings. Of the KDE
people, Waldo Bastian was there and he did presentations on Portland
[http://portland.freedesktop.org] and ODF in the on-floor conferences
series.

     Overall, it was an interesting experience and for me an occasion to
re-confirm the high profile of Free Software in general and KDE in
paticular here in Canada.