Google Summer of Code, and Season of KDE: Past the mid-point

We have now passed the mid-term evaluations for both GSoC, and SoK. Our students are doing a wonderful job in GSoC -- all 51 students passed! We've had a couple of disappointing reports from SoK, which I would like to follow up on. Please, students and mentors, if you are having difficulties with research, coding, or support, contact us administrators. Lydia isn't alone; we are all here to help you.

This past week I was at the Community Leadership Summit and OSCON. A meeting of GSoC mentors and admins during lunch one day was fun, and I'm looking forward to the Mentor Summit in October. I'm so pleased with the creative support that Google is providing to KDE and the rest of the FOSS projects. This last year, they added the spectacular Google Code-In, and it seems likely they will offer that contest again this fall. New in 2011 is the Documentation Sprint, which I've applied to attend. If accepted, I'll be in Mountainview for a week, for the Sprint then the Mentor Summit.

Thank you Google, thank you KDE mentors, thank you wonderful students, and thank you to Lydia, Jeff and Ingo, my fellow administrators. This has been a great ride.

PS:

Cool Summer Stuff

First,

I'm so happy to be headed to Europe again, especially for this huge event. I look forward to meeting more of my KDE team, but also many Gnome developers. Next month, I'll head down to Portland again and attend both CLS and OSCON. Looking forward to that as well. I'm thinking of doing a lightning talk at CLS, and hope that that springs me forward to start public speaking again.

Finally, I've Joined the Game, and am now supporting KDE quarterly. If you are using a KDE-provided platform and applications, you might join too! See Join the Game for more information.

Linux conferences 2011

Started filling out the calendar with all the events I'd like to attend this year, if I get sponsorship, and can arrange care for Rhys during the weekdays I'm gone. It looks REALLY busy and exciting!

First will be Camp KDE, which I've never attended. This year it's in San Francisco, at Hotel Kabuki, 4th and 5th of April. Right after is the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which takes place April 6-8, 2011 at the same place. However, that is invitation-only, and I'm not invited. :-) . So the cost would be the hotel and travel to and from SF. I'll have to ask around and see if it would be worth the time and money!

LinuxFest Northwest is next, April 30th & May 1st. I'm registered, Thomas has already said he wants to go with me, and our room is booked at the Bellingham Hampton. :-)

A *week* later, UDS in Budapest! Starts: 12:59 UTC on Monday, 2011-05-09, Ends: 12:59 UTC on Friday, 2011-05-13. I would probably want to fly out on Friday, to give myself a bit of time to adjust to the time change, and recover from the really long flight. Ideal would be to fly to the east coast and then a few days later, fly to Budapest, but..... probably not gonna happen. I've applied for sponsorship, and registered. I can always participate remotely if sponsorship is denied.

To my surprise, I've been asked to attend the KDE WebWorld2011, at LinuxHotel in Essen, Germany from 1 to 5th June 2011. If I get sponsorship to UDS, perhaps I should just stay in Europe for those two weeks? Otherwise I would have to choose one or the other. I'm a Kubuntu, Washington LoCo and Ubuntu-Women member, not a KDE member. I would choose UDS first.

In July, again this year there is CLS 23rd-24th July, 2011 in Portland, Oregon, followed by OSCON that next week, the 25th through the 29th. Looking for a room mate for this one, hopefully at a hotel across the street from the convention center. That was slick!

Finally, I've also been told (not asked, LOL) I'm coming to Akademy this year, which will be held in conjunction with the Open Desktop Summit, http://dot.kde.org/2010/10/06/kde-and-gnome-desktop-summit-2011-6-12-august, from 6 to 12 August at Humboldt University in Berlin.

If I attend all these events, and stay in Europe between UDS and WebWorld, I'll be gone more than I'm home! So I'm not sure it's all possible.

Off to CLS and OSCON

What a string of letters! CLS is the Community Leadership Summit, http://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/, July 17-18 at the Oregon Conference Center in Portland, Oregon. "CLS brings together community leaders, organizers and managers and the projects and organizations that are interested in growing and empowering a strong community." I've not attended before, so it will be all new to me. It's free, and an "unconference," which sounds interesting. That's this next weekend.

Next week is OSCON, O'Reilly's commercial conference in the same venue. I'll be staffing a table with the Oregon LoCo, for Washington LoCo, Ubuntu-Women, and Linuxchix. You can bet I'll do my bit to support Kubuntu, and Amarok of course.

Lydia and Jeff from Amarok will be in town for CLS and part of OSCON, and I'll be sharing a room with Meryll from Seattle Linuxchix. I hope to see more of our Seattle members at OSCON as well.

If you are coming and want to meet up, please email me. So far, Monday evening looks interesting.