john.layt.net

My Desktop Summit was a very busy one, I gave a talk, chaired three BoFs, was on a RadioTux discussion panel, wore a red-shirt but didn't die, attended the eV AGM, participated in many other BoFs, and worked the hallway tracks discussing everything from KF5 / Qt5 to the upcoming Rugby World Cup. I wasn't helped by catching the dreaded conference flu and with all that talking my voice was suffering, but I take it as a good sign that I didn't write a single line of code until the Thursday when things finally started to wind down. Oh, and apparently there were parties. And it rained.

Among the highlights for me were:

• The Simon speech recognition talk and demonstration showing just how powerful and easy voice control can be. I want it, and I want everyone else to have it too :-) If you're an app developer you really need to upload a scenario to enable support.
• The Toaster Project keynote, a very funny but thought-provoking talk that mixed the Open Source ethos with conceptual art and experimental Archaeology. Well worth watching when the videos come online.
• A very well deserved Akademy Award to Toma and the Sysadmin team, who as well as keeping the existing infrastructure humming along so smoothly also found time this last year to build a world class Git host.

The best part was that this Desktop Summit didn't feel like two separate conferences under a single roof, but a genuine attempt at collaboration with two communities starting to mix together and explore what common ground they have. This was especially true of the BoF sessions where we had cross-desktop groups sitting down and talking to each other to work out practical collaborations, sometimes for the very first time. I was personally involved in such sessions on Colour Management and Printing, but I also saw groups on Hardware, Bindings, Multimedia, Accessibility and several other topics getting to know each other. Given the issues in the last few years around infrastructure projects being delivered without KDE integration it's great to have the people involved building the relationships required to ensure these things go smoother in the future.

I came to the DS with some reservations about whether it was something worth doing again, and while there were still a few incidents that gave me pause for thought, overall I'm now a lot happier for a third DS to take place, hopefully with a greater involvement from some of the other desktops and platforms (XFCE, LXDE, MeeGo, etc). We're learning as we go, but it's on an upward curve and well worth the effort. My only real disappointment was that freedesktop.org wasn't discussed, it's the one time we have all the key players on hand but it became the elephant in the room. I'd really like to see some fresh thinking around what fd.o should do besides being a hosting site / dumping ground for any project trying to claim cross-desktop credibility.

I was also one of the lucky number who attended the Intel AppUp session where, as well as learning about the possibility of using AppUp as a KDE distribution channel on MeeGo (and maybe Windows?), I also got a 'new' ExoPC tablet on loan to play with. You may be wondering what a libs hacker like me needs a tablet dev platform for? Weeellll… If all the plans for KF5 and Qt5 come off, then I will have largely done myself out of a localization job and I'll be looking for something new to hack on. I have some ideas for a touch-friendly calendar-widget, there's Marble stuff I'd like to get into, my long-planned genealogy program (the reason I started all this date and calendar and localization stuff in the first place) would be great to browse in tablet/touch form especially when doing archival research, and then there's the possibilities of using tablets in the field for archaeology that could be a good MA research subject if I decide to go back to school next year. Oh, and a touch-friendly print dialog would be good too. Hmmm, that's a lot to be getting on with, guess I better hurray up with that Qt5 stuff eh?

I'll try blog a bit more soon about my talk, the RadioTux panel, my plans for localization and printing in KF5 / Qt5, what changes I made in KDE Platform Release 4.7, perhaps some more thoughts on fd.o, and just where the heck I've been these last couple of months (hint: some of it involves a couple of blokes called Tony and Phil and a lot of mud).