[dot] Akademy 2008 - Day 2 and the Akademy Awards

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1218497374/

From: jospoortvliet <jospoortvliet at gmail.com>
Dept: having-a-7-hour-meeting
Date: Monday 11/Aug/2008, @16:29

Akademy 2008 - Day 2 and the Akademy Awards
===========================================

   The second Akademy day started a bit later in the morning than the
previous one, yet somehow most visitors managed to look much more tired.
Maybe the social event (read Nokia sponsored beer) from yesterday has
something to do with that. Even tired, people visit the talks and write
code, so you can expect more code, discussions and blogs today. Read on
for more!
    The Akademy Audience
     The day kicked of with several technical talks, like the talk about
the Qt component framework by Prashanth Udupa
[http://www.prashanthudupa.com/], and about applications like Digikam
[http://digikam.org] and KMyMoney [http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/].
These talks are being recorded and videos will be put online, most
likely somewhere next week.

     During and in between the talks you could see a lot of code flowing
over the screens. Outside the 2 conference rooms there were people
hanging around in the large lunchroom downstairs, which featured two
always-busy table tennis tables. It was great to see the KDE guys &
girls have fun batting that little ball around...
   Playing Table Tennis
     During lunch a long but fast moving line developed for the food
tables again. We found the Gnome [http://live.gnome.org/VincentUntz]
from yesterday among them, who noted he was 'hungry!' again. Boy, these
Gnomes, they eat a lot... Those who got their lunch gathered in several
places, continuing hacking and talking. The division of work generally
seemed to be one person hacking, while the other looked over his/her
shoulder eating his/her lunch. The weather got better, so many were
eating outside on the tables, Aaron walking around calling people sexy.
Not sure what response he was looking for. We found blue-haired Seli
[http://blauzahl.livejournal.com/3675.html] sitting on the floor, not
willing to get in line yet. When asked about his blue hair, he noted he
would do "anything for KDE", then claimed we would abuse that quote.
We'd never do that, of course?

     A surprising number of people can be found wandering the corridors
of the building, looking for other people. Yeah, Google doesn't really
help here, so they are harassing others with questions like 'has
Sebastian Trueg arrived yet' and 'where is Paul, have you seen him?'. A
second Gnome came by, and told us he enjoyed Akademy a great deal. And
Niels Slot, new at Akademy, noted: "wow, I just spoke to the guy writing
the KWin effects, and I've been drinking beer with the hacker from the
KDE Ruby bindings, how cool's that?". Yes, people enjoy it here.
Although Chani was complaining about a lack of sleep - and not the only
one. Better get used to that, guys and gals...
   Waffle Queue
     The Nepomuk talk was given by Laura Josan
[http://www.deri.ie/about/team/member/laura_josan/], and she mentioned
the recent improvements to Nepomuk. Dolphin already had Nepomuk
integration, and Konqueror has followed, allowing you to tag and rate
websites. Amarok and Gwenview also support Nepomuk these days, and a KIO
slave for Nepomuk search has been implemented. This allows you to rate a
music file in your file browser and see the changes in Amarok. Laura
presented a compelling vision, talking about how Marble and Amarok could
work with Nepomuk to show artists from a certain area in the world using
Last.FM information. If you want to know more about Nepomuk and how to
integrate it in your application, there is a website
[http://nepomuk.kde.org], a mailing list
[http://lists.semanticdesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nepomuk-kde] and an
IRC channel: #nepomuk-kde.
   Organiser Bart Commands All
     In the last time slot of the day, Zack Rusin
[http://akademy.kde.org/conference/presentation/9.php#bio] presented on
Gallium 3D: Graphics Done Right
[http://akademy.kde.org/conference/presentation/9.php]. A historical
walk through graphics history (dinosaurs, Pong and VA Linux) set the
stage for Tungsten Graphics [http://www.tungstengraphics.com], creator
of Gallium 3D. This new framework intends to bring sanity to the
graphics driver world through a sensible abstraction layer
[http://www.tungstengraphics.com/wiki/index.php/Gallium3D]. Gallium3D
will hopefully not only accelerate graphics but graphics driver
development. This model also allows for platform portability, and this
portability can be tested with back-end simulators. Gallium 3D is
currently at 0.1 version (although not reflective of its maturity),
however Zack expects an update before the end of this year. The talk
concluded with graphics demos and explanations.
   Zack the Bling
     After the last talk everybody gathered in the main room for the
closing of the conference part of Akademy and a little community love.
Adriaan de Groot led the ceremony for the Akademy Awards. Danny Allen,
well known for the Commit Digest and Matthias Kretz, the writer of
Phonon, formed the Jury with Sebastian Trueg from K3B fame. Being the
hot guys from last year, they were the perfect candidates to tell us
what the new black is - and who wrote it. Unfortunately Sebastian Trueg
could not come - fortunately, it is due to his wife and him having a
baby - so congratulations to them!
   Akademy Award Winners, Oxygen
     The three prizes, application, non-application and jury's award,
were announced by Danny and Matthias.

     Application Award: Mark Kretschmann and the Amarok team.   We all
love Amarok, and welcome it to join our plans for world domination! It
has raised KDE's profile as the best multimedia application on the free
desktop (and probably even on other platforms as well). Mark Kretschmann
started this, and it is still his strong vision and leadership which
pushes the project forward.

     Non-application Award: Nuno Pinheiro and the Oxygen team. Oxygen
brought a breath of fresh air to our desktops with KDE 4. He has formed
a bridge between developers and artists and lead the artwork team in an
amazing way. As he was not at Akademy, the members of the Oxygen team
who were, Ruphy, Marco Martin, Lydia Pintscher and Urs Wolfer received
the award in his name.

     Jury award: Aaron Seigo for his work on Plasma. As someone we all
love, for providing leadership and guidance to the community,
representing us and for his work on leading a full refresh of a
fundamental piece of our Environment, Aaron received the Jury's Akademy
Award.
   Ade the Compere
     After the awards, everybody went rather silent. Adriaan noted this
was a kind-of sad moment, considering the fact the first two days are
over. But he cheered everybody up by telling us we have another award to
give out: to the organisers of Akademy, Bart Cerneels and Wendy van
Craen, for their hard work! They came forward, and we gave them a
well-deserved standing ovation, while they asked the whole Akademy team
to come forward.

     Photos by Bart Coppens, more photos are linked from TechBase.
 [http://techbase.kde.org/Events/Akademy/2008/Photos]