**Disclaimer:** An exceptional post in french, likely the last one
for a while though... Et voilà... C'est déjà passé, la keynote du
vendredi soir s'est bien déroulée, j'ai plutôt eu de bon retours à
son sujet. Le cocktail qui a suivi était très réussi grâce aux
volontaires sur place.
[](http://ervin.smugmug.com/Events/KDE-Release-Party-46-Toulouse/16289654_Loqc8#1224072121_atNHz)
Le samedi après-midi nous avons simplement été pris d'assaut. Les
salles étaient pleines, et la piste contributeurs a eu plus de
succès que prévu! Nous avons même dû permuter les salles pour
pouvoir caser tout le monde.
[](http://ervin.smugmug.com/Events/KDE-Release-Party-46-Toulouse/16289654_Loqc8#1224040996_4KwHV)
Nous avons eu d'excellents retours des orateurs qui sont
visiblement content de l'accueil. Je gage que le repas de cloture
le samedi soir a aidé pour cette opinion:
[](http://ervin.smugmug.com/Events/KDE-Release-Party-46-Toulouse/16289654_Loqc8#1224043141_EzgSQ)
Quoi qu'ils en soit, c'est très encourageant et motivant pour
recommencer. Maintenant nous allons faire notre possible pour
essayer de mettre les vidéos des conférences en ligne le plus vite
possible... stay tuned. Et bien sûr, je tiens encore une fois à
remercier nos sponsors ([Capgemini](http://www.fr.capgemini.com),
[KDAB](http://www.kdab.com) et [Qt](http://qt.nokia.com)) ainsi que
les bénévoles de l'association [Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org)
sans qui cet événement n'aurait pas vu le jour.
**Disclaimer:** Yet another of those somewhat exceptionnal post in
french. :-) Et voilà, le grand jour est enfin là... La journée va
doucement (en fait plutôt "rapidement", elle est bien remplie) vers
la conférence d'ouverture de ce soir. Pour ceux qui n'auraient pas
suivi: Centre Culturel Bellegarde, Toulouse, 20h. Soyez là! Plus
que quelques flyers à récupérer, les petit four pour le cocktail,
transporter le merchandising et le matériel de démo voilà ce qui va
occuper une partie de ma journée. Les autres tâches sont sous la
responsabilité de bénévoles de l'association
[Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org "Toulibre") qui font un boulot
formidable. L'autre partie de ma journée, je vais la passer à
l'Université, il se trouve qu'aujourd'hui tombe aussi la dernière
réunion projet avec mes étudiants. Ils vont défendre le travail
réalisé, qui je dois le dire a été de bonne qualité cette année.
Mais je ne pourrai pas m'attarder cette année, je devrai repartir
au plus vite vers Bellegarde pour notre conférence. Les autres
orateurs sont en chemin, et demain samedi ils prennent le relai
pour une après-midi de conférences. J'ai hâte de voir ce que cela
va donner! Pour plus d'informations sur
l'événement: [http://www.toulibre.org/kde46](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46 "KDE Release Party 4.6")
Et pour le programme complet du
samedi:[http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme\_19mars\_2011](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme_19mars_2011 "KDE Release Party 4.6: Programme du samedi")
**Disclaimer:** Again, an exceptional post in french and again, my
apologies to non-francophone Planet KDE readers. ;-) Nous y sommes,
plus moyen de revenir en arrière (et franchement qui le
voudrait??), tout est en place pour demain. La KDE Release Party
4.6 à Toulouse démarre dans environ 28 heures (au moment où j'écris
ces lignes). Les premiers orateurs vont arriver demain après-midi
(pour ceux qui ne vivent pas sur Toulouse), il me reste quelque
détails à régler pour ma keynote, et j'ai reçu quelques petites
choses par transporteurs que nous nous ferons un plaisir de
distribuer demain soir juste avant de passer au cocktail. ;-)
Pour plus d'informations sur l'événement:
[http://www.toulibre.org/kde46](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46 "KDE Release Party 4.6")
Et pour le programme complet du samedi:
[http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme\_19mars\_2011](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme_19mars_2011 "KDE Release Party 4.6: Programme du samedi")
Et bien sûr, je tiens encore une fois à remercier nos sponsors
([Capgemini](http://www.fr.capgemini.com),
[KDAB](http://www.kdab.com) et [Qt](http://qt.nokia.com)) ainsi que
les bénévoles de l'association [Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org)
sans qui cet événement n'aurait pas vu le jour.
**Disclaimer:** As an exception this post will be in french since
it's mostly relevant to people understanding french. Still, it's
pretty much relevant to the KDE community. Expect a couple more
such posts before friday, my apologies in advance to
non-francophone Planet KDE readers. ;-) Nous sommes donc à
seulement quelques jours de la KDE Release Party 4.6 à Toulouse!
Les préparatifs vont bon train, et à part quelques détails mineurs
tout est prêt pour tenir deux jours de conférences. J'ai vraiment
hâte d'y être, je vais tenir la keynote le vendredi soir, et le
samedi nous aurons des conférences pendant l'après-midi... Nous
avons la chance d'avoir la crème des contributeurs français
présents le samedi, avec un excellent programme, il y en aura pour
tous les goûts aussi bien pour les contributeurs que pour les
utilisateurs. De plus, toutes les conférences seront filmées, et
nous espérons les mettre en ligne assez vite après la fin de
l'évènement. Enfin, en marge des conférences il sera possible de
rencontrer et de discuter avec les contributeurs français de la
communauté. Nous aurons la chance d'avoir des piliers toulousains
de la communauté
comme [Jean-Nicolas Artaud](http://blog.ben2367.fr/2011/02/16/i-will-join-the-kde-4-6-release-party-in-toulouse/ "Jean-Nicolas Artaud")
(Calligra)
et [Anne-Marie Mahfouf](http://annma.blogspot.com/2011/02/india-and-toulouse-in-march.html "Anne-Marie Mahfouf")
(KDE Edu) qui ont déjà annoncés leur présence. Pour plus
d'informations sur
l'événement: [http://www.toulibre.org/kde46](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46 "KDE Release Party 4.6")
Et pour le programme complet du
samedi: [http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme\_19mars\_2011](http://www.toulibre.org/kde46programme_19mars_2011 "KDE Release Party 4.6: Programme du samedi")
Et bien sûr, je tiens à remercier nos sponsors
([Capgemini](http://www.fr.capgemini.com),
[KDAB](http://www.kdab.com) et [Qt](http://qt.nokia.com)) ainsi que
les bénévoles de l'association [Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org)
sans qui cet événement n'aurait pas vu le jour.
Once again I didn't blog in a while... In particular I didn't blog
about this year project students even if they got covered once in
the commit digest. Now we're two weeks away from the official end
of those projects, so I thought it might be a good idea to show
some of their accomplishment.
**Kapman**
This year we experimented with a project starting from scratch, and
apparently we had some demand for a copy of an old famous game...
hence why now we have Kapman! It's kicking and alive, it's in a
pretty good shape already so maybe it'll be able to enter kdegames
in 4.1. Of course it's all SVG based so you can freely resize it
(**artists wanted!**).
[](/share/pics/kapman_sshot.png)
**Kscd**
We also poked the good old Kscd... Our team made quite a lot of
improvements in there. In particular it's now fully themable using
SVG (**artists wanted!**), and uses MusicBrainz to identify discs.
Of course it also got the expected KDE4 refactoring: it got ported
to Phonon and Solid.
[](/share/pics/kscd_sshot.png)
**Ksirk**
Ksirk is one of those games we have in playground for quite some
time. One of our team has been working on it to improve its quality
and make it releasable... It's definitely getting there. They
mainly worked on improving its usability and that shows in my
opinion. At least now I feel like I could play with it for hours.
:-)
[](/share/pics/ksirk_sshot.png)
**Kopete**
Last but not least, this year we got a team working on Kopete. They
did an awesome job, it's harder to demo or to make a screenshot for
it, but they mainly focused on integrating support for UPnP and for
the new live messenger protocol. On the UI front it looks less
impressive, but I'm very proud of this team, they definitely had
the hardest project to work on and learned a lot. Since I had no
screenshot to offer, here is a picture of today's "Kopete Gang of
Four" who attended the hacking session:
[](/share/pics/kopete_gof.jpg)
From left to right: Maximilien Verdier, Michel Saliba, Romain
Castan, Kevin Kin-Foo.
**A few words on the hacking sessions...**
Of course, after last year projects we kept the good habit of
having KDE Hacking Sessions in Toulouse, we even have now a few
people who are coming regularly... the community is definitely
growing here. And during the student projects we have an unusual
amount of my students showing up. ;-)
[](/share/pics/hs_march2008.jpg)
From left to right: Sylvere Lestang, Kevin Kin-Foo, Romain Castan,
Michel Saliba, Maximilien Verdier, Stanislas Krzywda, Anne-Marie
Mahfouf.
Missing on the picture: Thibault Normand who arrived later, and
Alexis Menard who is unfortunately sick today.
Last week-end we had the release event in Toulouse, it has been the
only french event and that's why I decided not to go to Mountain
View. On friday evening we had a long user oriented talk with some
bits of Aaron's keynote, followed by a cocktail and a merchandising
booth. It's been a real success, I expected not more than 20 or 30
people... but it turned out that the room was full, some people had
to stay outside. Also I was the one giving the talk, and I think I
didn't screw up from the questions I had after the talk and people
reactions. Of course, I played our
[first KDE Commercial](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afXWczd_MFA),
especially since it's been secretly done by a couple of people in
Toulouse. They really did a great job in my opinion.
On saturday, we had technical conferences for the whole day. We had
a really nice bunch of speakers. Aurélien Gâteau, David Faure and
Lauren Montel travelled in Toulouse just for this event and give
talks. We also had our local gems: Anne-Marie Mahfouf and Alexis
Ménard. I also gave a couple of talks. The atmosphere was quite
nice, people had interesting questions and David even implemented a
feature request almost in realtime (after screwing up his
desktop).
We (the speakers) ended up the saturday evening in a restaurant,
[Aux Fils de l'Aligot](http://www.auxfilsdelaligot.com/), were we
had an excellent regional food. Laurent and David didn't knnow what
aligot is so we had to help them discover it. Too bad Aurélien had
to leave in the afternoon... next time Aurélien you'll have your
share of food too. ;-)
Finally, I'd like to thanks all the people who made this two days
event possible:
- our sponsors, [C&S](http://www.c-s.fr) and
[KDAB](http://www.kdab.net);
- all the speakers who made this event possible;
- all the people from [Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org) who
were really supportive;
- Michel Saliba who spent hours coordinating the necessary work
to subtitle Aaron's keynote;
- and a special thanks to Alexis who really did a great job
organizing this, he was so active I didn't have much left to do.
:-)
It's really nice to see how the Toulouse community pulled such an
event almost from nothing... I think it was a good test run for us,
maybe next time we can try something bigger. Akademy 2009 or 2010
anyone? :-p
Past week I've done some KDE promotion. It was interesting because
I did this using two radically different methods.
On monday and tuesday, I gave two talks in my university about Qt
and KDE as a development platform. I gave Kubuntu CDs to the
students and since they are in computer engineering they'll
hopefully install it. It seems that they enjoyed the topic. They
started to wonder why they had to suffer with other non-free
toolkits when I showcased Qt and QtDesigner. Then they were
impressed about the niceties provided by kdecore, kdeui, and DCOP.
After that, I explained them how to use the KParts and their jaw
dropped when I showcased the small browser George Staikos wrote for
[OSDW](http://www.osdw.org). And finally having network
transparency in their applications using KIO finished to convince
them. I also took some time to present what will hopefully be in
KDE4
The result? Several amazed students, that will surely want to
experiment with Qt and KDE in the future. It even looks like some
of them are really hooked and I had the opportunity to discuss more
with them on friday answering some late questions.
On saturday, I participated in an event organized by
[Toulibre](http://www.toulibre.org). I showcased a laptop running
Kubuntu, there was also some boxes running Ubuntu. A talk took
place, but I didn't attend since I was involved in the booth with
the rest of the team. People were really interested in the topic
and we even had a journalist from the local press that came and
asked questions for a paper. I think we were all impressed by the
age diversity of the attendees (the youngest was under 10 and the
oldest surely over 70). I find nice to be able to propose KDE to
people that could be your grandparents for their daily use.
Really a nice week, I'd love to have more occasions to do this kind
of things... I'll surely try to invest more of my spare time for
promotion.
