KDE at FISL 11

Hi there,

As usual the International Forum on Free Software (FISL) took place in Porto Alegre from 21-24 July and gathered together roughly 7500 attendees (students, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and govern representatives) from 16 countries. About 500 activities (talks, short-courses, and community meetings), 250 exhibitors, and an organizing team with 376 persons (including volunteers, SoftwareLivre Association staff, and hired press office and services) made FISL 11 one of the largest Free Software events in South America. FISL is always a great opportunity to meet new people and widely disseminate what is happening in the KDE world.

We (KDE Brasil) usually coordinate in advance about which talk proposals we want to submit, trying to come up with interesting topics on where KDE is heading to and some roadmap to guide potential new contributors and show off why we are a pretty amazing community :) We usually got about half of the proposals accepted for presentation, activities in FISL program range from highly geek topics with non-sense titles like "The ant meets the elephant, or something like that" :) to educational, bussiness-oriented, and government related talks. So, every year we get a felling of not enough room for KDE at FISL but we'll always be there :), promoting our community and inviting fresh blood to join the game.

Basically we had four KDE-related talks and meetings this year, in addition to the already expected top-talks about Qt from the Trolls and INdT guys. For some still unknown reason :) our talks are always scheduled to some inconvenient slots like 9 a.m. in the day after the FISL party :) or in parallel with THE most expected speaker but ... yes ... So, in a brief:

• KDE Lovelace: free software by women. Unfortunately the guys from KDE-MG (Amanda, Lamarque, Felipe, Anderson e Daniel) couldn't attend FISL this year. Amanda would present this talk with Camila but Tomaz ended up helping her in the last minute. There were three talks about women in free software at FISL 11, the biggest one - in the same slot of ours - brought together 200 participants. Damn :) Sounds like a plan a unified big women meeting next year.
• 3rd Brazilian KDE Users and Developers Meeting. That's becoming a somehow "traditional" event at FISL and it's a nice opportunity to provide recent news to general audience and receive some feedback about how users and developers have experienced KDE SC. In spite of the early morning assigned slot it was a fruitful meeting mainly because a new KDE regional group should come soon, organized by Domingos. Furthermore, it was a chance to promote the "Join the Game" campaign, to spread the technical advances, and say "join us", we are a great and enjoyable family.
• Develop your JavaScript Plasmoid in 20 Minutes. I submitted this proposal some minutes before FISL deadline. My other submition about "KDE Contribution Roadmap and Opportunities" wasn't accepted but anyway I got a chance to fish that "I-dont-like-C++-even-with-Qt" developer or even those with no technical background who would find in JavaScript their way to KDE contribution. I think it somehow worked despite of happening again 9 a.m. :), people were impressed with how easy one could bring their beloved Plasma application to life with fancy animations in 4.5 :)
• 2nd Brazilian Google Summer of Code Students Meeting. Even though it isn't a KDE dedicated event I wanted to organize this second GSoC meeting at FISL motivated by the great audience responsiveness last year. It's been a forum to share our experiences, tell people "You can !", and, of course, talk a little bit about Season of KDE and our achievements along the last years. It's pretty cool to coordinate with previously unknown GSoC-partners and provide a very pleasant meeting. Next year, though, I should delegate that meeting coordination to someone else and really focus on marketing KDE. Every year we get more expertise about FISL, how it works and try to adapt our approach to a more efficient one.
  I'm really sorry, no good enough pictures about that. I was virtually exhausted taking care of such meetings, talks, promo stuff, etc. Ok, our booth. Larger booth areas at FISL are usually quite expensive and we have been using the free user groups area for the KDE booth in last years. It's a cool area that can bring good results if well spent. We haven't registered KDE Brasil as a user group this year since Thiago has kindly offered a joint booth for Qt and KDE and that would be great. A very large Qt poster and TV have occupied the whole booth though and we luckly could find an empty area to hang up our banner. Thiago, thanks again dude ! :)

It's been a busy time since I arrived from Tampere. After applying final exams to my students and publishing the scores, I've just had time to translate the "Join the Game" banner and have it printed out a couple of hours before a left Salvador.


Join the Game banner (pt-BR)

I really love it, colors and design are amazing even though some people took some time to realize that was the KDE booth. The first impression was: "Which game ? Can I play here ? :)" just followed by a "Ohh, I see !". Do we need/have a pretty cool KDE general banner ? Maybe I should have fixed the new KDE Brasil logo right above the Join the Game banner (thanks Anderson from KDE-MG, you rock man !):


So ... no t-shirts, stickers, leaflets this time but we are working to have this stuff easily available to the upcoming conferences. After all, the main reward to attend FISL in undoubtly to meet cool people, talk about KDE, and see at least one or two guys and girls willing to carry on the KDE flag to their new regional groups.


KDE Brasil at FISL 11

Ok, disregard the taker's photographic skills :), from left to right: Melissa (our new friend, PhD in Maths, a very very very geek girl and KDE user :) ), Wagner Reck (KDE-RS) and his wife, myself, Camila (in the center), Tomaz (or part of him :) in bottom), and Danielle (at right), a lovely and talented girl who made a funky brand new icon for Rocs: