I spent per week at GUADEC 2022 in Guadalajara, Mexico. It was a wonderful convention, with some good talks, good individuals, and a pleasant hallway observe. I feel everybody was excited to see one another in particular person after so lengthy, and for a lot of attendees, this was nearer to dwelling than GUADEC has ever been.
For this occasion, I used to be sponsored by the GNOME Basis, so many due to them in addition to my employer the Countless OS Basis for each encouraging me to submit a chat and for giving me the chance to take off and drink tequila for the week.
For me, the massive themes this GUADEC have been info resilience, scaling our group, and the way these matters match collectively.
Introductions
Entering into the Guadalajara Connectory for the primary time, I couldn’t assist however really feel a bit misplaced. Everybody was extremely welcoming, however this was nonetheless my first GUADEC, and my first actual in-person occasion with the desktop Linux group in ages.
So, I used to be blissful to come back throughout Jona Azizaj and Justin Flory’s collection of considerate and alluring workshops on Wednesday morning. These have been Icebreakers & Group Social, adopted by Unconscious bias & imposter syndrome workshop. They eased my anxiousness sufficient that I wandered off and missed the follow-up (Exploring privilege dynamics workshop), however it regarded like a cool session. It was a superb concept to place these sorts of classes proper at first.
The workshop about unconscious bias impressed me to consciously combine up who I used to be going out for lunch with all through the week, as I spotted how straightforward it’s to create bubbles with out interested by it.
Past that, I attended fairly a number of attention-grabbing classes. It’s all the time enjoyable listening to about bits of the software program stack I’m unfamiliar with, so some standouts have been Matthias Clasen’s Font rendering in GNOME (YouTube), and David King’s Cheese strings: Webcams, PipeWire and portals (YouTube). Each extremely advisable in case you are thinking about these elements, or in studying about some intelligent issues!
However for probably the most half, this wasn’t a really code-oriented convention for me.
Accessibility, variety, distant attendance
This was the primary hybrid GUADEC after two years of operating a virtual-only convention, and I feel the format labored very properly. The remote-related stuff was easily dealt with within the background. The volunteers in every room did an excellent job relaying questions from chat so distant attendees have been represented throughout Q&As.
I did want that these distant attendees — particularly the Berlin Mini-GUADEC — have been extra seen in different contexts. If this format sticks, it could be good to have a tool or two arrange so individuals in several venues can see and work together with one another in the course of the occasion. In any case, it’s unlikely that in-person attendees will spend a lot time chat rooms on their very own.
However I undoubtedly like how this seems to be. I feel having good illustration for distant attendees is essential for accessibility. Pandemic or in any other case. So with that in thoughts, Robin Tafel’s Keynote: Peeling Greens and the Craft of (Software program) Inclusivity (YouTube), struck a chord for me. She elegantly explains how making something extra accessible — from vegetable peelers to sidewalks to software program — comes again to assist all of us in quite a lot of methods: elevated variety, higher designs normally, and — let’s face it — an enormous variety of individuals will want accessibility instruments sooner or later of their lives.
“We’re all quickly abled.”
Group, ecosystems, and offline content material
I particularly loved Sri Ramkrishna’s considerate speak, GNOME and Sustainability – Ecosystem Administration (YouTube). I got here away from his session pondering how we don’t simply must recruit GNOME contributors; we have to join free software program ecosystems horizontally. Discover these like-minded individuals in different tasks and discover locations the place we will collaborate, even when we aren’t all utilizing GNOME as a desktop setting. As an example, I feel we’re doing an excellent job of this throughout the freedesktop world, however it’s one thing we might take into consideration extra extensively, too.
Who else advantages, or may benefit, from Meson, BuildStream, Flatpak, GJS, and the various different applied sciences GNOME champions? How can we advocate for these applied sciences in different communities and use these as bridges for one another’s profit? How can we get their voices at occasions like GUADEC, and what stops us from lending our voices to theirs?
“We have to develop and feed our ecosystem, and construct relations with different ecosystems.”
So I used to be fairly excited (principally anxious, since I wanted to make use of printed notes and there have been no podiums, but in addition excited) to be doing a session with Manuel Quiñones a number of hours later: Offline studying with GNOME and Kolibri (YouTube). I’ll write a extra detailed weblog put up about it in a while, however I didn’t anticipate fairly how neatly our session would slot in with what different individuals have been speaking about.
At Countless, we’ve got been working with offline content material for a very long time. We construct customized Countless OS photos designed for various contexts, with large libraries of pre-installed instructional sources. Assets like Wikipedia, books, instructional video games, and extra: all chosen to empower individuals with restricted connectivity. The trick with offline content material is it entails an entire lot of very massive information, it must be attainable to replace it, and it must be straightforward to quickly customise it for various deployments.
That turns into costly to take care of, which is why we’ve got began working with Kolibri.
Kolibri is an open supply platform for offline-first instructing and studying, with a robust native utility and an enormous library of freely licensed instructional content material. Like Countless OS, it’s designed for troublesome use instances. For instance, a group with sporadic web entry can use Kolibri to share Khan Academy movies and workout routines, in addition to assignments for particular person learners, between gadgets.
Utilizing Kolibri as an alternative of our older in-house resolution means we will collaborate with an present free software program mission that’s devoted to offline content material. In flip, we’re studying many attention-grabbing classes as we construct the Kolibri desktop app for GNOME. We hope these classes will feed again into the Kolibri mission to enhance the way it works on different platforms, too.
Giving our speak at GUADEC made me take into consideration how there’s a lot to realize once we convey some of these tasks collectively.
The hallway observe
Like I wrote earlier, this wasn’t a very code-oriented convention for me. I did sit down and poke at Break Timer for some time — particularly, reviving a department with a GTK 4 port — and I had some good chats about varied different tasks persons are doing. (GNOME Crosswords was the silent star of the present). However I didn’t discover many alternatives to actively collaborate on issues. One thing to goal for with my subsequent GUADEC.
I’m wondering if the early 3pm cease every day was a little bit of a contributor there, however it did make for some glorious outings, so I’m not complaining. The photographs say so much!
Everybody right here is wonderful, humble and type. I actually can’t suggest sufficient, in case you are thinking about GNOME, try GUADEC, or LAS, or one other such occasion. It was tremendously precious to be right here and meet such a variety of GNOME customers and contributors. I got here away with a greater understanding of what I can do to contribute, and a renewed appreciation for this group.
