[aKademy] Invitation to KDE Quality Team members.

[Tom Chance]

Hello everyone,

Please read this letter from Kurt. It'd be really good if Quality Team members 
could turn up, especially those leading teams.

Tom

---

Dear KDE Quality Team Members,

As you may have read on the "dot" announcement, we chose "KDE Community World
Summit" to name our annual conference. Last year it was code-named "Kastle"
(hinting to the fact that it was hosted in a former castle), this year it is
"aKademy" (inspired by the facts that it will be hosted in the building of
the "Filmakademie Ludwigsburg" -- "Academy for Movie Arts in Ludwigsburg",
and that as a side-program it will also host a bunch of one-day tutorials
led by world-class instructors).

(These tutorials will have to be paid for and we aim to get them filled up
with IT professionals and admins from companies and public sector
administration of the local area. The tutorial income and profit will help
to finance the overall "aKademy" events.)

Ah -- you ask what these other events are? OK, here's the deal:


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  Event: KDE Community World Summit 2004 "aKademy"
  ================================================

  Event-Module 1: Conference of KDE Developers and Contributors        
21st/22nd August
  Event-Module 2: Coding Marathon for KDE Developers and Contributors  
23rd-27th August
  Event-Module 3: Ten Tutorials for KDE and Linux Users and Admins     
23rd-27th August
  Event-Module 4: KDE User and Administrator Conference                
28th/29th August
  Event-Module 5: Festival at "International Software FreedomDay"      28th 
August

  Date of full aKademy: August 21st to 29th
              Location: Filmakademie Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart Region, Germany

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More info is available at http://conference2004.kde.org/
(Bookmark this page, because there will be more announcements and infos
forthcoming!)


"aKademy" 2004 Program Overview
-------------------------------

The KDE aKademy 2004 is a meeting of KDE contributors, active KDE
supporters and KDE power users from all over the world. It will feature...

  ... a two-day "Conference for KDE Developers and Contributors"
      (21st/22nd) of primarily technical talks and mini-tutorials;

  ... followed by a five day "KDE Coding Marathon" (23rd - 27th) -- a big
      opportunity for interested groups of developers and contributors to
      gather together in computer labs for various organized and
      unorganized hacking sessions, spontaneous workshops,
      Birds-of-a-Feather meetings and KDE software design discussions
      until the following weekend;

  ... accompanied by five days of publically accessible general "Linux-
      and KDE Tutorials" (half- and full-day, 23rd - 27th), led by
      world-class instructors in their respective fields;

  ... followed by another weekend (28th/29th) for a public "2004 KDE User
      and Administrator Conference" at the same venue, where we will be
      showcasing all the exciting technologies and applications which make
      KDE the leading, most innovative and best integtative Korporate
      Desktop Environment.(See the separate Calls for Papers/Presentations
      and invitations for the different sub-events).

All KDE developers, documentation writers, translators, promoters, other
contributors as well as KDE power users should consider their active
participation for the complete, or at least a part of this grand "2004
KDE Community World Summit".

I invite your teams and its active and interested members to come and
participate in "aKademy". We are especially pleased if you take the
chance to put up a workshop/BoF/meeting/hackfest/discussion club/whatever
during the week of the "Coding Marathon" (23rd to 27th of August).
Of course, the "Contributors' and Developers' Conference" (21st/22nd of
August) as well as the "User and Administrator Conference" (28th/29th
of August) are also opportunities for you -- but you rather might prefer
to listen to the talks and watch the presentations going on there than
to conduct your Team's business.

The activities, ideas, initiatives and consistent efforts of the new KDE
Quality Teams will proof to be extremely important aspects to KDE and
its future success.

aKademy will be a uniq opportunity for you to interact with each other
and with people from other parts of the KDE project. You can now meet
that one guy you know so well from IRC in person and finally drink that
pint of beer you were so long talking about. You can meet developers
from the KDE programs you work on and personally discuss with them your
ideas. You can do a lot of more stuff for the advance of KDE Quality
which I don't know about because *you* are the experts!

Please do also consider to submit talks for the 2 conferences (Developer
and User).

You would help the organizers a lot if you would indicate as early as
possible what you plan and how many of you intend to come (ask around
in IRC for quick results).

Since normally long-standing KDE contributors are more prioritized
in case there will be overbookins of conference seets, this could
lead to a situation where Quality Team members (who due to the short
existence of the initiative mostly aren't "long standing") could "miss
the boat". We don't want that because we highly appreciate the work
you all do and therefore we plan to reserver a certain contingent of
seats to QT members. However, you yourself should be sorting out whom
you send, should there be a "run" onto the free seats....

As soon as the registration is open (watch out for a "dot" article),
please fill in the forms. If we know early on that the 200 International
Youth Hostel beds we reserved are not enough we can look for more cheap
accomodations. If we see we booked too many, we will cancel part of the
pre-reservations and late birds won't get only much more expensive hotel
beds.

Thanks to you all,
and I am looking forward to meet you in Ludwigsburg!

Kurt Pfeifle

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  Co-Organizer of the KDE Communitiy World Summit 2004 ("aKaDEmy")
  http://conference2004.kde.org/  ------------  <pfeifle at kde.org>
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