GU4DEC Live On The Web

Programmers and others interested in the GNOME desktop environment gather annually for an event called GU4DEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. This year, there's extensive live coverage of GU4DEC (currently in progress, at Trinity College, Dublin) on the web, including a growing online photo album, audio recordings and video streams, and presentation materials. (The schedule is handy if you want to follow along.) I hope there's a similar sort of integrated documenation / dissemination from the upcoming KDE developers' conference at the Czech Republic's Nove Hrady.

Comments

Just gotta be there

[TopShelf]

A conference in Dublin live on the web??? Only if they can provide a virtual Guinness...

Trinity College WTF?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Trinity College Dublin.

WTF is up with this? I thought it was bad enough when people called every machine on their LAN after a Matrix character!

You can bet your ass my kids won't be going to Neo College, Dublin or Morpheus College, Dublin.

graspee

GNOME in Ireland?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Q: What do you call a GNOME in Ireland?

A: A leprechaun.

Methinks that the conference's local profile might benefit from a name change.

How do you get a job like that?

[airrage]

I hope this doesn't get modded down, but you know there all these conferences, trade shows, demos, etc., and exactly what kind of technical job do you have if you get to go to all these?

I mean if I told my boss I was going to take a week off and go to Electronics Expo in Vegas he'd have a fit. Sounds like a great conference, but who get's to attend?

Who, I ask, are all these people attending conferences? Are they some sort of neo-efficient coders? Any one have any ideas?

Signed,
Chained-to-Cubicle.

Re:How do you get a job like that?

[IamTheRealMike]

I mean if I told my boss I was going to take a week off and go to Electronics Expo in Vegas he'd have a fit. Sounds like a great conference, but who get's to attend?

Well, people who work for slightly more understanding bosses :) When I went to FOSDEM it took place over a weekend, so I took a day off to recover and went along. I'm hardly a neo-efficient coder (which is what, exactly), but it was great fun regardless.

If you look at the people going, it's basically:

a) Professional GNOME hackers from Red Hat, Ximian, Sun etc

b) Volunteers who have taken time off/combined it with a holiday to Dublin.

So you don't actually need any job at all, just a bit of spare cash and an interest.

On the use of proprietary video streaming

[ciaran_o_riordan]

I emailed the organisers about the use of proprietary video formats for streaming video. Here's the response I got:

I fully agree with you, Ciaran. I think in this case it may have been a matter of under-staffing (or under-volunteerism) to organize the event.

I've searched the foundation-list mailinglist and have found no discussion about the use of this format.

In short: the use of this video format was not a decision of the GNOME Foundation.

Free Software has proven that it is a viable alternative to proprietary systems. We have come too far to now ask people to compromise on the beliefs that have gotten us to where we are today.

I hope future decisions are given a public discussion.

Ciaran O'Riordan