White noise from a gearhead
Posts tagged Akademy
AK2010, D+4to6: Hectic and wrapping up
Jul 9th
OK, once again I didn’t quite manage to write a blog each day… It always starts well and then the hackathon kicks in. 
The last three days, I had more meetings again. We made quite some progresses on our plans for Solid. I even got some more people to write on backends for libsolid, really neat. Looking forward to share the load in this way.
Of course hacking in between, and in particular today where I made quite some progresses on the new version of Zanshin which I neglected completely for the past year. Also notable was yesterday day trip, we spent the afternoon next to a nice lake. Kind of reminded the day trip in Glasgow, except that we had great weather this time, and hungry mosquitoes.
People started to leave already, I’m part of the last group of fearless hackers here. Tomorrow it’ll be my turn to move back home, not really looking forward to the trip itself, but having some rest at home will be welcome after such a hectic and awesome week!
AK2010, D+3: Meetings, Meetings, Meetings
Jul 6th
Unlike planned today, I actually hacked until early in the morning… But managed to get enough sleep to be lively today which was basically a long stream of meetings for me. Two highlights of the day:
- KDE Mobile BoF, where actually quite a few people attended, many more than I expected. We made nice progresses there, discussing the ecosystem how to integrate there, how to push forward the modularization of our platform. Very nice group we had there, although it was somewhat large it was also very well disciplined. I’ll have to update our wiki accordingly now;
- KDE PIM BoF, discussing post 4.5 plans and so on. That’s where I’m sitting right now.
Nice day overall, looking forward to tomorrow where I’ll put my metalworker hat on with a couple of Solid BoFs.
AK2010, D+1: Let’s be elegant
Jul 4th
A few nice talks today, I found Lubos talk on performance quite interesting, definitely give some ideas on what and what not to do when trying to improve your application performances. Also interesting was Sebastian talk about the project Silk which nicely shapes up, I hope to see more of his ideas deliver in the coming months/years.
Obvious highlight of the day: Aaron Seigo’s keynote "Reaching for Greatness". Once again it was a very good moment of introspection on what’s going on in the community, and giving directions to satisfy our urge for excellence. I very much liked how he tied that to the concept of Elegance (yes, using an upper case E even). I won’t give more details as I far prefer people to actually watch the recorded version once it’ll be available.
I have to confess that I didn’t attend many talks today. I spent quite some time discussing architecture of our platform with people in the hallway.
Tomorrow, probably no blog from me as we’ll have the full day KDE e.V. general assembly. Looking forward to the hacking marathon starting on tuesday. We actually kind of started as I’m sitting in a room full of hackers in the TOAS Student House right now.
AK2010, D+1: Thought of the day: Aaron Seigo’s facts
Jul 4th
Sooo… People recovering from last night party hangover as I’m typing, attending the first talk of the day. And suddenly, an idea crossed my mind: in order to satisfy Aaron Seigo megalomania, we should start an "Aaron Seigo’s facts" website. Here is my first contribution to it:
"Aaron doesn’t have a God complex, it is God who has an Aaron complex".
Hugs everyone!
AK2010, D-Day: I see mobile talks everywhere
Jul 3rd
Today we had the first day of conference of Akademy. Plenty of nice talks (surprise!). Quite a few mobile related (surprise!). I was really looking forward to the development track which had only interesting topics, but unfortunately for me it wasn’t conveniently placed regarding my own talk and the talk of my students. So I could only attend the first one from Thomas McGuire, which was really good. Oh well, I guess I’ll virtually attend the other ones thanks to the recorded videos when they’ll be online.
Other highlights of the day were basically PIM on Mobile by Till, and Plasma Mobile by Alexis and Artur. Very nice talks as well!
My own talk about the KDE Platform Mobile happened at the end of the mobile track which was inconvenient for the aformentioned reason, but also because it was competing with the end of some random soccer game. 
Last but not least, we had the talk done by my students about the projects in the Toulouse University. And they did a really decent job although that was really a first for them to hold such a talk in an international context. Definitely not an easy exercise which can be frightening at first. Well done guys!
And now that my talk is behind me I can feel free to hack late at night again… unfortunately not tonight as I’m nursing a terrible headache (which is why I left the party early unfortunately).
AK2010, D-1: Touchdown!
Jul 2nd
I arrived in Tampere yesterday around 10pm. The trip was uneventful (nice!), but somehow long. Anyway managed to meet a few people already. Heard a few horror stories about lost luggage already, luckly I was not affected… and apparently their luggage appeared this morning. Now plotting for a group lunch before the Akademy welcome opens.
Glad to be here. Stay tuned!
AK2010, D-3: Getting ready
Jun 29th
Just like the fellow gearheads who already published this kind of blog, I’d like to claim that, yes!
This year I will be spread on several fronts (like every years in fact), but you will for sure meet me during the following events:
- My talk about KDE Mobile, which will happen on saturday afternoon;
- The KDE Mobile BoF which I will be moderating, people willing to discuss the future of the KDE Platform and how to contribute more to the the Maemo / MeeGo ecosystem;
- The Solid BoFs where I’ll meet my fellow metalworkers, strengthening our plans for 4.6; note the plural there, there will be two of such meetings (because some people will attend remotely, and then because of timezone constraints).
Apart from those three events, I’ll run around as usual, probably trying to poke a bit the Plasma people as well or furiously hacking somewhere.
Looking forward to meeting you all!
Memories of Akademy 2009: Sleeping beauty
Jul 20th
Of course, we had parties during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. Quite a few of them… And obviously we had some casualities. Most notably Alexis couldn’t handle it all:
So Alexis, is that what you’re doing while you pretend working?
Memories of Akademy 2009: Yes, we’ll save the world
Jul 20th
One of my good memories from this year Akademy will be about Glyn Moody’s keynote. I admit I was a bit skeptical at first with the title:
It could sound like a somehow arrogant way of seeing the hacker community… Except that Glyn has an outsider point of view primarily beeing a journalist. And as a good journalist he gave us facts, simply about what already happened (the genome sequencing example was particularly inspiring as free software saved the day there), and how the free software movement influenced other movements. It looks like a snow ball effect leading us toward more sharing and less egoism. I think that most of us started contributing to free software out of some sort of optimism and because we’re aiming at some utopia. Along the way we might loose hope, and not have the idealism in mind anymore simply trying to see free software have more market shares, etc.
Thanks a lot Glyn for reminding us why we started contributing at all, and for all the hope you gave us by simply showing that free software is already making a difference in this world.
Memories of Akademy 2009: Best talk ever
Jul 20th
Those who know me also know that because of both my research career and my free software involvement I attended a lot of conferences and talks. And I really mean a lot. Still, I had to wait for the very first keynote of the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit to attend the finest, and brightest talk I ever attended.
It was very rich, didn’t simply stick to the technical side of things but got deep into various fields, most notably philosophy. Of course the speaker deserves credit. So if you see this man giving a talk near you:
Simply run and attend his talk. He’s also a very nice person, and since he uses free software, he probably matches perfectly his own quote from his keynote (which is getting famous):
Liberal software is software which a gentleman would use.
