[dot] First KDE Education Meeting a Great Success

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1196894336/

From: Frederik Gladhorn <frederik.gladhorn at gmx.de>
Dept: e-team-meetings
Date: Wednesday05/Dec/2007, @14:38

First KDE Education Meeting a Great Success
===========================================

   Last weekend the members of the KDE-Edu team met in Paris
[http://edu.kde.org/events/paris2007/] for a meeting about the Education
project. The meeting took place at the Mandriva
[http://wwww.mandriva.com] office, where the members got to know each
other and started vivid discussions about their applications, life in
general, as well as the future and vision of the Edu module
[http://edu.kde.org]. Read on for the report.
    KDE Edu Developers: Anne-Marie Mahfouf, Jeremy Whiting, Carsten
Niehaus, Patrick Spendrin, Mauricio Piacentini, Vladimir Kuznetsov,
Aliona Kuznetsova Frederik Gladhorn, Jure Repinc, Albert Astals Cid,
Peter Murdoch, Johannes Simon, Benoît Jacob, Aleix Pol See more photos
[http://edu.kde.org/events/paris2007/pictures.php]
     While everyone meets quite often on IRC and talks via email, this
was the first face-to-face meeting for many of us. New people from all
around the world were welcomed heartily.

     Vladimir and Aliona of Step [http://edu.kde.org/step]; Jeremy, who
seems to be everywhere, takes care of KAnagram
[http://edu.kde.org/kanagram] in particular; Johannes and Frederik
working on Parley [http://edu.kde.org/parley]; Aleix Pol with his
KAlgebra [http://edu.kde.org/kalgebra]; Peter improving KPercentage
[http://edu.kde.org/kpercentage]; Jure for translations and Patrick
struggling with "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" (Windows). Long term
contributors like Albert, Benoît, Carsten and Mauricio worked on their
projects and helped the others with their insights. Benoît and Vladimir
spoke about using Eigen2 [http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/] instead of GMM in
Step. And of course the amazing Anne-Marie who helped getting KDE
Education started in the first place.

     Software libre seems to attract nice people, everyone was really
friendly and fun to talk to. The organisation of the meeting was not
overly formal but since we all were really motivated, the result was a
flow of ideas, code and motivation in all directions. Patrick gave a
presentation covering the state of KDE on Windows
[http://edu.kde.org/presentations/kde-edu-meeting paris.pdf] and
explained his special affinity to the education team. The chance to have
Edu well supported on Windows is especially great for us to reach more
teachers and pupils to get them interested in software libre. And even
schools that use free operating systems will like the opportunity to
provide the software used at school to their pupils easier.
   Step, physics simulator
     The entire team was euphoric and somewhat overwhelmed by the talk
on Step [http://edu.kde.org/step], the physics simulator, due to be
released with KDE 4.1, but already in a great state. You should
definitively give it a try. It is located in playground and to get
started we recommend opening some of the great examples. Wow!

     On Saturday evening we all went out to visit Paris, lead by Benoît.
We saw the Palais Royal, the Louvre and then went to a restaurant where
we waited for ages! This allowed us to chat and carry on exchanging
ideas.

     We are looking forward to getting KDE 4.0 out of the door and our
applications into the wild in order to receive more feedback and harvest
the fruits of our work. Mauricio worked hard, successfully getting his
recently adopted child, KTurtle [http://edu.kde.org/kturtle], into a
releasable state so it will ship with KDE 4.0. Aleix worked on usability
enhancements in KAlgebra [http://edu.kde.org/kalgebra]. Albert and Jure
fixed some deeper bugs to allow our applications to actually start, and
of course Albert was helping here and there just as great as he is on
IRC. Jeremy, who lately was pushed to adopt KHotNewStuff2, got pushed by
Frederik to actually implement some yet-to-be done parts of the
collaborative data sharing framework.  Finding spots that have simply
not been implemented is a challenge there.

     The chemical division has a lot to offer, and many people are
involved. Carsten and Benoît were there to represent them. Not only
Kalzium [http://edu.kde.org/kalzium], but also libraries like OpenBabel,
Avogadro and the related Strigi plugin make the chemical desktop very
attractive. Johannes worked intensively on redesigning parts of the
Parley [http://edu.kde.org/parley] interface. We hope we can turn his
very promising ideas into reality for KDE 4.1. Frederik's todo list grew
hourly, as Carsten also had some great suggestions for the interface of
Parley [http://edu.kde.org/parley]. Anne-Marie gave a short presentation
about the state of various applications for KDE 4.1
[http://edu.kde.org/presentations/roadmap.pdf], such as KMathTool
[http://edu.kde.org/kmathtool/] that seemed somewhat unmaintained. Also
the general consensus was to merge at least KBruch
[http://edu.kde.org/kbruch] and KPercentage
[http://edu.kde.org/kpercentage] since they are quite strongly related.

Everyone noted just how greatly our communication improved, as well as
the friendships and new cooperations which came into existence. We would
also like to thank Mandriva [http://www.mandriva.com] very much for
providing us with a great room to work in, two laptops, free coffee, tea
and chocolate, as well as wifi. A big thank you also goes to the KDE
e.V. [http://ev.kde.org] which sponsored travel and lodging. A special
thanks from all participants goes to Anne-Marie Mahfouf, who brought us
together in the first place by organising this great meeting. Fourteen
happy Edu developers have returned to their homes with renewed
enthusiasm.