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Only a few days left before the Desktop Summit 2011, I’m really looking forward to wander around in Berlin again. I’m excited and almost counting hours before my flight out on friday morning! Yes, I’ll be there:

And I’m not just attending, I’m also giving a talk on monday during the afternoon (3:20pm to 3:50pm). It’s titled “We’re a family” and it’s a look back at the efforts I put into a Community/University collaboration in Toulouse for the past few years. I had talks around that topic already for an Akademy, but this one is going to be special for two reasons.

First, it’ll be much less about the organizational challenges such a collaboration carries than the human impacts it can generate. Here it’ll really be about showing the bonds it created among the people participating in this collaboration, and the opportunities it created for the students in the community projects. It will also cover the local and global influences those students had on the community.

Second, the course of study where this collaboration was taking place is closing… Right now it’s not yet clear if the students projects we had in the past will still be possible. So this talk is really a wrap up about what happened in Toulouse for the past few years, and probably a “goodbye”. Even if we manage to create a new collaboration somehow, this talk marks the end of an era. That’s why we tried and managed to line up several generation of students related to this adventure. We’ll have a lot to share, but maybe not enough time for all the most juicy secrets. ;-)

So, if you’re looking for some laugh, tears, and insights on such a Community/University collaboration, hopefully it’ll be the right talk to attend. Don’t miss it!

On my side I’m putting the finishing touch to the talk, and of course it’ll be ready on time.