[dot] Akademy Hackathon Starts as Contributors Conference Wraped-up

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1159367947/

From: Adriaan de Groot <groot at kde.org>
Dept: undulate-your-conference
Date: Wednesday 27/Sep/2006, @07:39

Akademy Hackathon Starts as Contributors Conference Wraped-up
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   The KDE contributors conference part
[http://conference2006.kde.org/conference/program.php] of Akademy 2006 
[http://conferene2006.kde.org] in Dublin kicked off Saturday morning
bright and early, much to the dismay of those who had been out late the
evening before at the registration desk, conveniently located in a pub.
Read on for a full report.
    Akademy 2006 Group Photo
[http://static.kdenews.org/jr/akademy-2006-group-photo.html]
     The inspirational Aaron Seigo started the conference off in a
confrontational manner by looking the KDE project community in the eye
and asking "who are we?". Punctuated by some awful music and a
rapid-fire slide-show of contributors, Aaron outlined what he thought is
the most important aspect of the KDE community:
  Building communities around Free Software and  bringing Free Software
into communities.
     This shows how we create code and exciting groups of people around
those code products but also bring those products into communities where
they are useful.

     After Aaron's keynote, the 180 attendees spread out over two
parallel tracks; the cross-desktop track contained talks on issues that
affect all of the Free desktops out there. The cross-desktop
technologies of DBus and Portland were explained briefly. We looked at
standardisation efforts such as the Linux Standards Base and security
issues in web browsers in general. Gnome's John Palmieri told us a nice
allegory about inline skates manufacturers and how competition (on the
desktop) and cooperation (in underlying technology) are not mutually
exclusive. Embedded systems from open platform printer manufacturer
Ricoh and the future of X with Keith Packard rounded out the
cross-desktop lineup.

     In the room opposite cross-desktop, the KDE4 track focused on new
technologies for KDE4 and our user-centric workflow approach. Ellen
Reitmayr kicked off the track by Keeping Users in Mind. After sketching
some basic usability notions such as personas and the trade-off between
features and happiness she examined the challenges faced by both
application developers and library developers in incorporating usability
advice into their designs.

     John Cherry from the OSDL spoke about the state of the Linux
desktop, in particular analysing multiple market studies and how that
reflects on the uptake of Free Software in various (national) markets.

     The community entered the fray at the end of the day with
presentations by Claire, Martijn, Kevin and Inge. Organising KDE events
was the topic Claire and Martijn addressed. This was a practical session
with tips and checklists and a script for the organization of trade-show
visits and developer sprints. Local groups events such as a BBQ can also
gain benefits from such a structured approach. Kevin Krammer brought the
message that providing *support* to individual users is an important
aspect of being a developer - you can't hide from it. Selecting
appropriate channels of communication is essential to making your users
more comfortable when dealing with their support requests. Persistent
channels such as forums can be preferable to ephemeral channels like
instant messaging because they foster the creation of shared knowledge.
Inge Wallin covered some basic marketing principles and gave suggestions
about how to apply these to Free Software applications. He emphasised
that communicating about your program and showing new developments,
ideas and plans attracts new developers and users.
   The hacker labs
     On Sunday morning Anne Østergârd spoke about Women in Free Software
and the efforts undertaken to increase the participation of women in all
aspects of Free Software. This led to some lively discussion about what
the KDE project in particular can do to help.

     Eric Laffoon spoke about the question of "how do you eat" (what
buys your cookies, for instance) and that a Free Software project needs
to have some way of keeping its developers alive. Here, passionate
developers (eager to learn and contribute) are even more important than
skilled ones (who have the technical skills but not the passion). The
messages from Inge's talk about communications returned, and the talk
wrapped up with some fund-raising tips and techniques.

     Coffee (with cookies, because the Akademy organisation team is
really cool) followed, and then the Programming and Applications tracks
started. Applications included the English Breakfast Network
[http://www.englishbreakfastnetwork.org/], the KDE code quality checking
site, the best practices of the Debian team responsible for packaging
KDE "extras", applications of KDE in schools  and for craftsmen (a good
example of how the KDE platform can really support the development of
niche applications) and the state of KDevelop (tremendous technological
innovations occur there).

     Julian Seward showed remote virtual KDE execution by running a
complete KDE session in Valgrind. This helps discover errors in running
KDE code through Valgrind's suite of detection tools. Valgrind has grown
into a complete simulation tool framework, now powerful enough to tackle
software as complex as KDE is.

     spectaKle is a new QtRuby/Korundum based application for doing
digital signs and video on demand. We could have used this at Akademy
itself to point participants to the right lecture hall during the day.
As it stands, paper and pen had to do the job. It is a cool illustration
of classical frustration with proprietary software development and the
itch-to-scratch inspiration for Free Software.
   Outside the Googleplex
     Stephan Kulow showed the technical implementation of usability 
testing at Novell, where they videotaped users trying to perform a range
of tasks with KDE. The puzzled look on the guys face when the k-menu
doesn't do what he expected speaks volumes. It made us laugh, but also
realise all the more that what we think is usable may not be so for
people with different expectations or background. A new implementation
of the K-menu was demonstrated, which was very impressive in how it
integrated usability improvements with new and old features (like the
hidden calculator in the miniCLI).

     Slides are available
[http://conference2006.kde.org/conference/program.php] by following the
links from the timetable, write-ups from some of the talks
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Talks+%40+aKademy+2006] are
available and videos should be online soon.

     On the Monday we enjoyed the hospitality of sponsors Google at
their European headquarters for some very welcome food, beer and a
fridge full of ice cream.