Another opening in openSUSE Team at SUSE

A few weeks ago I published in this blog the general requirements of the opening for my team at SUSE. I come here again with another description for another opening we have for the openSUSE Team at SUSE. The basic requirements are the following:

We are looking for a web developer, preferably with experience in Ruby - RoR (although other languages frameworks are also valid), that have worked on customer oriented projects. He/she must be familiar with popular Free Software data bases, control version systems, bug tracking tools, etc.

Since this team is very community oriented (20% of the working time will be related with engagement activities), is interesting that the candidate have a FLOSS community background.

The candidate will need to represent the team or openSUSE project in events, giving talks, participating in training sessions, meetings, etc. He/she must have good communications skills. Experience in international community oriented events is a plus.

The position is located in Nuremberg, Germany, although only English is required. Depending on the candidate’s experience and origin, it is possible to move back to his country to work remotely after 18-24 months, having to travel to Germany a few times a year.

In general, SUSE hires people from all over the world. We usually help those who are from outside the EU to get the work permit to work in Germany or Prague. But since we need to fill the position as soon as possible, it will be a plus, not a requirement, if you are a EU citizen or already have permission to work in a EU country. The position is also open for SUSE employees from US, Taiwan, China or other countries.

As a mentioned in a previous post, SUSE are growing and has a very good combination of a hacker and customer oriented atmosphere. The openSUSE Team at SUSE is formed by employees that work full time in this community project, which I think that it gives the position a plus for those who enjoy interacting with contributors and professionals in a learning and innovative ecosystem.

Finally, if you apply for one or our openings but you better fit in another one, or there are several good candidates for a single position, take in consideration that each selection process is not isolated. So escalating through a process for any opening, increases your chances to succeed in another opening for a different department.

• Apply to the opening
• Apply for other openings
• Further information about openings at SUSE

Applying to the opening through the above link ensures that your CV will be received by me, so please follow it so we make sure your CV do not get lost in my Inbox. ;-)

Finally, I want to say that the Team Leaders at SUSE check every CV we receive through HR. But due to the high amount of candidates we usually have, we cannot send a personal answer to every candidate (through the HR Department). Only those candidates that get to the final step of the process received them.


This is probably not the answer that you deserve as candidate from us but we simply cannot handle it in any other way. So if you just receive the standard automatic response, receive my apologies.

Last months

Last four months have gone fast, really fast:

• Akademy-es in Zaragoza
• Flying to Berling to work on KDE eV economic report and LinuxTag
• Moving to Nuremebrg
• Begin to work as openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE
• Prepare my Akademy keynote and my talk about KDE Connect
• Develop and present the economic report during KDE eV AGM plus Board elections
• Complete the administrative work derived from relocation
• Flying to GUADEC
• Looking for a flat and moving.

and working, of course. All of them time consuming, but specially, vital energy consuming. So this August I've been trying to cool down a little and go back to routine, now that I have my flat (how important is this step, right?).

Meanwhile, at SUSE.....

the openSUSE Release team, together with the community, have managed to release 12.2 RC2 on time. This could be no news for openSUSE users and supporters. But for us means that we are delivering even tough we are in a transition phase, and despite the fact that we are reducing the pressure over the Release Team instead of increasing it. Delivering on time is always a good sign.

12.2 RC2 is usable so, if you are a developer or an openSUSE power user, consider installing it and giving us feedback. No major bugs should be expected but your reports are very valuable to us. I already have it in my laptop and, except for little details, it works as expected. If you prefer to wait until September 5th, you will be able to install the fresh 12.2. openSUSE Team at SUSE is finishing these days the last few tasks, specially related with generating the Gold Master and creating marketing material.

This month of August openSUSE Team is also putting energy into the openSUSE Conference organization. As you probably know, this is not a normal event. We host four events in one

• Future Media
• openSUSE Conference
• Gentoo Conference
• Linux Days

so there is a lot to do, as you can imagine. Organizing Free Software events is something that follows me in every job I take, no matter where that is. I'm kind of getting used to it. Don't know if that is a good sign though.

openSUSE community in America has an important milestone in September at openSUSE Summit, the community conference organized right after the SUSE Conference in Orlando, Florida, USA. So if you live in South, Central or North America and like openSUSE, don't miss it. More than 50 people have registered already so it looks like is going to be a good opportunity to give a push to our community in North America.

So September and October are going to be busy months for me and the Team.

GUADEC 2012

I've been a couple of days at GUADEC in July. I realized that I know a lot of GNOMErs already, many more than I expected. It is one of the consequences of the Desktop Summit and having participated in GUADEC Hispana before. I had some interesting conversations with some GNOME developers and some SUSE employees. I had a lot of fun. GNOME is a great and mature community and they organize an awesome conference.

The organization was outstanding. Everybody agreed on that. Congratulations to the local team. Talking about contents, I am very interested in Tor project. If you have the chance to go through the web, don't miss it. It is a great one. They are interested in having GNOME as a platform for more people to take advantage of Tor. It is a great goal.

openSUSE Team at SUSE: we have an opening

As you know from a previous post, I recently joined SUSE as openSUSE Team Lead. After several years of great work, the team is now getting ready to face new challenges keeping the same basic goal: make openSUSE rock.

To achieve this task, we want a senior developer to join us.

openSUSE Team at SUSE is a multidisciplinary group of professionals that works in many different areas in constant evolution so learning is part of our natural process. We have a clear R & D focus. We will work in projects covering several different technologies, so we are looking for somebody that is open minded, not afraid to work with a wide range of tools.

The position involves mentoring. It won't be just about designing solutions, solving problems and delivering, but also about engaging new developers and motivate them. Our team have high exposure to the openSUSE community and internally at SUSE. We also work with other communities and companies. Therefor communication skills (with other engineers) is a relevant skill for this position.

openSUSE Team has members in other parts of the world so having experience working remotely will be a plus. The team is based in Nuremberg. So the new member will be located there and will travel to events a few times per year.

SUSE is now operating as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group, it is growing and profitable. At openSUSE Team we are defining our action plan for the near future and we want this person to get involved in this process. So I think it is a great moment for joining us.


If you are a senior developer, care about Free Software, are a team player willing to help openSUSE and want to work in the open in projects with a great potential impact, getting a lot of exposure, consider applying to our opening. 

Akademy 2012: my story

Another Akademy is gone. This was a good one. Beautifully organized (probably the best one), nice city, good venue... Of course it wasn't perfect, but I've been in way more expensive events where things didn't go as smooth as in this Akademy. Thanks to the Akademy-team for the effort. I liked Tallinn. I'll be back.

I didn't attend to this Akademy in shape. As you already know, two weeks before the event, I moved to Nuremberg to begin my new job at SUSE. Going through the last step of the hiring process, packing everything and moving in just some days was challenging. Add to that finishing the economic report to send it to KDE e.V. members before the event, catching up with KDE Connect activities (and the talk) and finishing the keynote preparation and arriving late at night to the hotel.....it is easy to understand why my keynote wasn't as good as I would like to, and you probably expected.

I'll do better next time. Sorry.

By Sunday I felt much better and my KDE Connect talk was a little better. I explained the basics of the program and I could talk to several companies about it. Congrats to the ones that got an Akademy Award. They are well deserved.

And then Spain won the Eurocup. Oh man, what a feeling. After so many years without winning, these last six years taste like glory for football fans like myself.

I don't even remember what I did the day after. Probably doesn't matter. I will never forget the feeling of knowing we are the best ever.

On Tuesday we had the KDE eV General Assembly. I presented the economic report and the conclusions. I feel good about the presentation since I think I managed to give the message I prepared clearly. I got elected as Board Member so I'm not 'temporary' anymore :-) Congrats to Pradeepto too, who also was elected.

By Wednesday I was in shape, so BoF were smooth.

As usual, when you come back home from these events.....you are exhausted. I was, once again.

I would like to mention here what I already expressed during Nokia's/Qt talk at Akademy. First of all, my respects for standing in front of KDE contributors. These things are not easy. Others in the past didn't even show up. You not just did, but also gave explanations. Yes, the ones you had, but explanations at the end. Thank you. It has been an amazing journey and more is yet to come. We in KDE don't feel this is the end but a new beginning.

I liked to see together once again the KDE Spain crew. They (ups, we) are not kids anymore. We are getting more and more responsibilities within KDE. This is the result of many people's effort, but above all, is the result of Albert passion, hard work and vision. KDE Spain is nowadays not just the most mature KDE little sister, but is also economically healthy and growing, Bilbao is trying to be selected to host next year's Akademy....

Albert...thanks.

The results of the election for the new Board came during Akademy. Aleix Pol is now the new President. He'll be a good one. Congratulations Aleix...and the rest of the new Board members.

I will write soon deeply about KDE Connect and the economic report. 

I have a final request for sponsors, as contributor........

Dear sponsors, in Free Software communities, there are people like me, who do not code, but still have a little sensible heart that suffers while watching others during several days having lots of fun playing like kids with nice new toys (devices) they receive from you during events. 

New life, new country, new job, new community, new....

So yes, everything is new these days for me.

On Monday June 17th I moved to Nuremberg to join SUSE to lead a team that is 'under construction', that will follow openSUSE Boosters experience.In a few weeks I will be able to give you more details about our plans since at the moment I'm working on them along with some Boosters, other SUSE/openSUSE members and new people that is joining us. Obviously openSUSE community members will be the first to know.

So basically, I'm in a new city/country, working for a new company building a partially new team and I will be involved in a new community (openSUSE) .

On the personal side, I'm going through the natural process everybody that moves from one country to another goes. SUSE people is helping me and I have some friends in this city so I'm doing fine.

I will begin to learn German in a couple of weeks, after Akademy. It's going to be a tough task, I know. But hey, it is something I will bring with me forever, right?

I would like to thank SUSE for this opportunity and to my family and friends for all the support I've received the last few months so I could get to this point.

Now it is time to work hard and work smart.

Berlin as Free Culture innovation pole: an idea

In November 2011 I wrote a project for Saragossa city council to create there an innovation pole of Spanish Free software Communities. Two basic ideas were behind this project:

• Hosting in Saragossa the legalized communities that are established in Spain, so they could:
• Share facilities and services for to reduce expenses
• Increase the collaboration between them
• Develop a continuous program of activities in one place that could create enough energy to ignite local impact (a pole) collecting synergies from local organizations.
• Work together on attracting sponsors to cover expenses.

• Helping other non structured or legalized movements and communities to do so by giving them basic services needed at the beginning. After a fixed period, these new communities would become part of the initiative and contribute like normal members.

You can read details about that idea in the following blog post (there are links to other articles It is not 100% finished due to.....oh dear, as usual, lack of time)

I talked to Presidents and Boards from several local communities and initially liked the idea. Now the city Council, like every Public Administration in Spain, are concentrating in cutting down expenses so it seems the initiative will have to wait.

Last week I spent a few days in Berlin. KDE shares office there with FSFE. Other relevant foundations like Wikimedia, LibreOffice, etc. are placed there, know each other and have relations already. 

I was wondering if it would be possible to push such an initiative there. It makes sense to me. What do you think?

Creating an incubator of Free Culture organizations would be possible if the already existing ones join efforts and a local entity provide them (us) the facilities and initial support. We have the resources and contacts to make it sustainable and it would be easier to get sponsors to partially finance the structure needed.

Together we can go much further.

KDE Connect: becoming an official KDE eV program for organizations

During the last 3-4 weeks we have been testing if KDE Connect attract attention from different organizations. To do so, we have done the following:

• Make a presentation during  Akademy-es in Saragossa
• Talk to different organization representatives and KDE people at LinuxTag about the project to get feedback.

Both experience has been positive so we think we are now prepare for the following step, getting the ok from KDE eV to the Action Plan.

Back in February, I presented the project general design to KDE eV and we agree on keep pushing it,  creating a team and developing an Action Plan. After some work, it is time to discuss it. So within the Board of Directors first and then within the eV, we will discuss the proposal made by KDE Connect team to make sure KDE networking program for organizations is a success.

To reinforce the project, along with Akademy team, we have decided to organize a networking session during Akademy 2012, on Monday 2nd, during the afternoon, so organizations attending to our event can participate and get a clear idea of what KDE Connect pretend and how they can take advantage out of it.

If you are interested in attending please stay tuned to this blog or Akademy website. Participation will be free (of cost) but you'll need to register.

Thank you for your monetary contribution to KDE

This post is dedicated to everyone of you who contributes (or did) to KDE with donations, sponsorship or participating in any of our corporate programs we are currently running.

KDE publish a quarterly report where we include the major activities we do thanks to the money we receive from you. We also publish some numbers so we give you some information about how we are doing in terms of income/expenses. During the AGM, the Treasurer presents the report from the previous year and some numbers to give KDE eV members an idea of how the current financial year is going. To that AGM we invite Patrons and supportive members, so they can also have direct information and can ask questions.

But I would like to go beyond numbers and actions, reports or cold analysis. I would like to point out how important is that money for many young students from countries that do not offer the opportunities we are used to in Europe or North America, for example.

For many of them, the economic support we offer them to participate in our activities allow them to become part of KDE. Attending to Akademy or any sprint means much more than just the opportunity to meet KDE developers. For many of them, the economic support we provide them allows them to access to a future avoided for most of their friends, impossible to provide by their families or educational system. It means a passport to a deserving future.

I've seen in the past as a KDE member first, as a Desktop Summit organizer later and now as KDE eV Treasurer, how relevant is that help we provide, how much they deserve it, how good use of it they do in general and how that benefits to KDE. But above all, I've seen how their lives have changed, how many opportunities brings for them collaborating with a Free Software project like KDE and what a great role we play as opportunity providers.

I'm very proud of participating in a project that really change people's life, specially to those that, because of where the live, they have very few opportunities to get what me and many others can get. And it is possible because of your support.

Thank you.

KDE as incubator and as an umbrella for other projects: KDE project definition

In KDE we discussed some years ago about who we were and should we define our selves as a project. In simple words, we came up defining KDE as the community the develop the software.

This could be seem as trivial, but in fact, it has a big impact in many areas beside marketing. We put in value our people and our relations, that mean, our ecosystem, above our technologies or our software. 

KDE is currently discussing another hot and relevant topic for the following years, with implications in many areas. We are trying to define what is a KDE project.

An obvious use case we are trying to give a good solution to is a project that is born in KDE and gets commercial success. KDE is becoming a great incubator for commercial activities run by KDE members, so we need to define a few, simple and basic rules to improve them without hurting the project. We have a huge potential in this incubator role.

But there is also another use case that, to me, could have even bigger impact on us. I'm talking about those project who are not KDE right now but could become part of our ecosystem in the future. To them, the definition we give to a KDE project and its implications are key for their possible future as part of KDE.

Our community is a great place to develop your ideas, to share, collaborate and to become successful from different perspectives, including commercially. We need to improve our role as business/project incubators and, at the same time, attract to KDE those projects who could be more successful under our umbrella than by themselves. There are many of those out there. Let's make it easy for them to join us.

Akademy-es 2012, the annual Spanish KDE event, will take place next weekend

KDE Spain, in collaboration with Saragossa City Council, The Saragossa Knowledge Foundation and the Aragon regional FLOSS SME cluster (CESLA) organizes Akademy-es 2012, the V edition of the yearly meeting where KDE community from Spain meets. It will take place next weekend, from Friday 18th to Sunday 20th in Saragossa.

This year we pay special attention, beside pure KDE contents, to Qt and companies, with several talks related to them. KDE Spain (a legal entity), as usual,  also celebrates its annual assembly on Saturday, May 19th, as part of the event.

We have several sponsors. One of them, Wadobo, is owned by Eduardo Robles Elvira (aka edulix). This is nothing but a confirmation of how Free Software communities, even local ones, work as business incubators, feeding the project back. This is definitely, something to promote even more in KDE.

On Friday 18th I'm giving a talk specially oriented to companies. I will try to explain them the advantages of getting involved in a community driven Free Software project like KDE. On Saturday 19th I will talk about KDE Connect.

I'm glad to see that this year we will also have several talks from representatives of non KDE initiatives that helps us in different ways, like Jesus, G. Barahona, from Libresoft (we collaborate in FP7 project ALERT) or Paul Brown, from Linux Magazine (Spanish version director). We will also have OpenSUSE related contents. I hope next year some other distros propose talks for Akademy-es.

My activity as KDE Treasurer... so far.

KDE is a mature worldwide community FLOSS project. Contributors develop KDE Frameworks, Workspaces and Applications that are used by many people and companies around the world. Some of them get paid for contributing while others do it for fun. All them share an identity and some universal and specific values.

To sustain such a huge activity, resources are needed, and they need to be managed. One of those resources is....yes, money. One of the KDE eV Board of Directors goals is to build relations with organizations that could be interested in supporting KDE activity in many different ways. Supporting us economically is one of the relevant. To improve this goal, KDE eV hired a Business Manager, Claudia Rauch. You can check KDE Quarterly Reports to get information about our incomes and expenses.

KDE eV Board manage those resources, assuming the legal responsibility for them and making sure they serve to KDE goals. Claudia is also of great help in this goal.

Beside contributing in every aspect of the Board activity, as Treasurer, I have three major duties:

http://jointhegame.kde.org/

• Assume the legal responsibility for a correct management of the economic resources.
• Lead the creation of the budget, the financial reports and the everyday control of KDE eV resources. Presenting the year repost to the KDE eV assembly is a major milestone.
• Lead the economic discussions/decisions within the Board to take the better possible decisions to accomplish the action plan, guided by the strategic decisions.

I have previous and wide experience in business and professional associations but this is my first relevant experience as Board Member of a community project. As expected, there are many similarities and a few but relevant differences. Maybe one day I have time to talk about them. I think it could be an interesting post.

I'm still trying to catch up with my responsibilities and it will take me a little while to contribute at 100% but, fortunately, since I'm not working, I have some time to make this adaptation process shorter. The rest of the Board members and Claudia are helping me.

As you can see in the financial section of every Quarterly Reports, a big part of our economic effort is concentrated in two areas, Akademy and technical Sprints. The last couple of months, the Board is taking decisions that have a big impact, in terms of budget, on those two areas, so I've tried to catch up fast to participate with criteria, being useful.

The third week of May I will go to Berlin to work with Claudia on the 2011 report we will present to KDE eV during the General Assembly (check previous announcement), that will take place during Akademy 2012 in Tallinn. I have also to learn a little about German taxes/law that affect KDE eV so it will be more efficient to work at KDE office with her.

LinuxTag will take place during that week so I'll meet Cornelius Schumacher (KDE eV President) and Lydia Pintcher (Board member) there. We will have time to talk about what needs to be done during the second half of the year. With this effort, I expect to be prepare to defend the Board action from past and present year, in the economic area, during the General Assembly.

I have a second personal goal. My election as Board Member and Treasurer ends in Akademy so, no matter if I present myself as candidate for a full period election or not, I would like to leave to the next treasurer the most relevant/urgent decisions related with this year already taken, so he/she will have a few months for landing, evaluate and prepare the budget for next year with little pressure.

In future posts I will write about other aspects of the Treasurer job. I think that in general, they are not well known although they are relevant. During Akademy, Sebas and Lydia (Board Members), will give a talk about KDE eV. Don't miss it. It will be very informative.

KDE Connect progress

The last few weeks KDE Connect Team has been working on different areas. To know a little more about KDE Connect please check the end of this post.

Tools

Thanks to our awesome sysadmin team, we have a management tool to help us coordinating every effort we do. KDE Connect in not an isolated project. We already have or will have relation with many other KDE projects so we want to make sure we are prepared for growing without heavily increasing the administrative and coordination efforts needed to offer a high quality service.

KDE Connect will have mailing lists, IRC channels, forums...everything you expect from a community project. We will be open them up by demand, little by little. So don't expect them as soon as the project is launched.

Artwork and marketing

Asun Sánchez is designing our logo and we are preparing a brochure for organizations that might want to join us. It will include a basic description of the Program and the basic terms and conditions.

KDE Connect will be presented during Akademy-es that will take place in Saragossa from May 18th to 20th.

Akademy 2012 Program Committee has just communicate me that the KDE Connect talk has been accepted so we will have a presentation this summer at Tallin, Estonia.

Procedures and activities

We are also defining the basic procedures that will be followed by KDE Connect team and organizations involved. The networking activities are also being described so KDE Connect Team members can have clear guidelines.

Roadmap

The roadmap is also under development. The initial plan is to launch KDE Connect in May. We will organize several activities during Akademy, so we need to do some previous work with organizations that will attend to our central event.

If everything goes as expected, I will be attending to LinuxTag 2012 helping in KDE booth and doing some KDE eV Board work .

Join KDE Connect Team

I would like to thank all the people that is helping me in this idea. If you are a KDE members and want to get involved, get in touch with me.

KDE Connect previous references

• Please check the previous post about KDE Connect
• Other references:
• KDE Connect early definition
• Some thoughts about dealing with private information in KDE Connect
• KDE Connect structure (check my blog for previous articles since Nov. 2011.

About KDE eV, its Board of Directors and the Treasurer position

What is KDE eV

In order to get to the point where we are right now in KDE, coding is obviously not enough. To be able to ship KDE Platform, Workspaces and Applications, there are non-technicals activities that must be done in different areas. Some of those can be better accomplished creating a legal entity.

To support KDE in some of those tasks, we created some time ago KDE eV, a legal organization based in Germany. It is formed by some KDE members that want to put some time and effort in helping developers to concentrate in what they like the most.... coding, bug fixing, translating, designing, etc.. KDE eV support the community in four major areas:

1. Legal
2. Administrative
3. Economic
4. Institutional

It is important to focus on the verb support, which have little to do with drive or decide. This concept is not easy to understand and, in practice, it brings some challenges. But that idea is part or our identity and differentiate us from many Free Software projects. Like any other legal entity, KDE eV has some duties that we cannot avoid, obviously, but we work everyday to make that compatible with what our community want and demand.

To achieve this goal, we need to be constantly open to what the community is demanding and the best way to do this is involving in KDE e.V. those people who significantly contribute to our project.

A German eV is different in some aspects from a Foundation (in US for example) or an Association (in Spain for instance). These differences explain some of the limitations and improvements we can achieve. Legal entities are just instruments and there is no single universal tool that works for everything everywhere, right?

KDE Board of Directors

Like every legal entity, somebody must be responsible for actions and decisions taken, leading and representing the group. KDE eV Assembly elects a five Board members (individually) for a three year period. Different countries also have different ideas of Board rights and duties.

Please check KDE eV Statutes to know more about our organization.

KDE eV elects a Chairman (we call it President) and two proxies. One of them must be the Treasurer. As you probably know, Cornelius Schumacher is our President. Sebastian Kügler Vicepresident, Celeste Lyn Paul and Lydia Pintscher are also Board members.

Treasurer

A few weeks ago, Frank Karlitschek, resigned as Treasurer to focus on OwnCloud Inc., his successful new project, so a we had a vacancy.

The plan is to open an election during KDE eV Assembly, that will take place during Akademy, to elect a long term Treasurer. Until then, I've been elected as new Board member and Treasurer.

One of the things I would like to do during this period is to write about the economic aspects of KDE. Some of the information I will manage is confidential, but there is room for explaining a lot about how a community driven Libre Software project, like KDE, work. We usually do not have time for things like this but I hope I can, at least, write two or three posts about this topic before Akademy.

I don't want to finish without thanking KDE eV members for supporting me. I'll work hard to live up to the circumstances.

KDE Connect: preparing the new program

KDE Connect preparations keep going. Right now we are taking some key decisions for the future and also preparing the tools and some of the basic procedures to coordinate this effort. Every goes slow but forward. We are in no hurry since we want to make sure we do it well.

Yes, we changed the name. The Program won't be called KDE ON anymore but KDE Connect. We think is closer to the project goal.

KDE Connect is our effort to create an ecosystem of companies, educational organizations and non-profit entities around our community. We pretend to structure the early stages of the involvement these organizations that approaches KDE. But also we want to give them the chance to meet each other, interact and create new opportunities.

Right now we are recruiting a group of people willing to help us with little things or concrete tasks we need to do in order to launch the project as soon as we can, having Akademy 2012 as major milestone. We are also working on the tools we will use to manage the project and defining some procedures for simple and basic tasks.

I'm happy about how things are going since it looks like most KDE members understand how important and the relevant impact KDE Connect can have in the future for KDE. This is the first but mandatory step in order to create a medium term project. We will reach a point where most tasks and procedures will be defined so we will need some people to help us executing them.

Obviously, going through this process will mean that many of them will change. That is the good thing about working with smart people, right? They help you to turn good ideas into great projects.

KDE ON Program: Dealing with private and public

When I began with Free Software I already was CEO of a little company back in the Canary Islands. To me it was a complete shock getting in contact with LTSP first and KDE later. In both cases I had business projects related with their technologies so, at the very beginning, that relation with them was a matter of pure business.

I remember thinking.... If they behave like crazy nuns, fine, I won't. I felt like the The Walking Dead lead actor. Not many months later, I realized I was one of the zombies. Still, both project made easy for me to get involved. No regrets, no blames, no pointing fingers.... just friendly hackers.

This common experience can be softened. Times have changed but business culture not so much. KDE ON Program must reduce this culture gap. One the main issues to do so is clearly defining how to deal with confidentiality, a key point for organizations.

When designing a Program like KDE ON, that deals with organizations, specially with companies, one of the possible conflicts we need to take in consideration is the different views/models/culture we have around confidentiality, about what is public and what should be kept private.

FLOSS communities, like KDE, that evolve in the Open, tend to reduce as much as possible the amount of private information, forums, decisions. Companies usually promote the opposite.

We have a tough challenge ahead of: to bring organizations into the open in a compatible way with their current business culture.

Someone might think that it is just a matter of building trust. But we know that is not enough. We have seen in the past how strong relations between companies and communities fell apart in seconds. We need to establish some procedures ensuring that common spaces can be built where private and open meets comfortably.

KDE-ON Program, our effort to create an ecosystem of organizations around KDE, must define those meeting points without changing our ground rules, which it won't be easy if we want to become attractive to organizations, so they join us. We should not underestimate their fears to the Open, specially when dealing with managers, born in the classic MBA business culture.

We have around KDE (other community projects too, obviously) many companies that, at different levels, understands and/or have experience dealing internally (and with us) with many of those fears, misconceptions, reactions, etc. Along with other experienced KDE members, I feel we can do a great job teaching organizations how powerful and profitable embracing the opening could be.

Don't you remember the first person that showed you how cool Free Software was? We always tend to have a special relation with our first mentor, that special teacher that opened our eyes, that first love that allowed us to discover a new world, right? That is the kind of hit we are able to create in many CxO that, hopefully, will get involved with us through KDE ON Program.

So KDE ON Program should be for participants a learning process that end up allowing them to build long term relations with Free Software community projects in open forums, in a FLOSS life style, accepting some Free Culture principles. At the same time, it should help us to understand them better, so along the road we can become a more business friendly.

Let's see if we do it right in KDE ON, or at least, we create learning spaces understanding we are in a, somehow, R&D environment. So we all judge our mistakes with scientific, or at least not pure business, eyes.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (VII): activities

This is the seventh post of the Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities series. In order to fully understand this one, please consider reading the previous ones.



There are several kind of activities that can be very productive and aligned with the goals of the project. We can group them in several ways. Maybe the most general one is:

• Promotion activities.
• Training sessions.
• Discussion/reflexion.
• Networking activities.
• Demonstrations.
• Administrative/coordination meetings.

Some of the activities will be organized directly by communities. At the beginning of the project they would be the majority. But the project must be open to organize activities proposed by local agents and non members that are aligned with the project goals. Cross-community actions should be also promoted.

Opening a call for activities is a very good thing to do. There has to be also flexibility to allow activities that do not need a lot of effort to organize so they can be proposed with not much time in advance.

Some of the most common activities could be:

• Promotion events (talks, lightning talks, keynotes, etc).
• Demo events.
• Workshops and training sessions.
• Cross-community events.
• Announcements and press conferences.
• Sprints and hackfests.
• Communities Assemblies and board meetings.
• International events.
• Internal meetings:
• General Assembly and Board meetings.
• Other internal meetings.
• Interviews.
• Video and audio conferences. Streamming.

As explained in the Organization section, there should be a comitte that takes care of coordinating the activities so they make sure that there is a variety of them in terms of goals, participants and achievements. This Activities Coordination Group will make also sure that the activities schedule satisfy both, current project members and local agents.

It is desired that every member celebrates in the project facilities at least one activity every year. A good goal could be to celebrate every member annual event each three or four years, so they make sure a relevant one takes place at least once a year. 

It is a good practice not just to generate local critic mass but also to ensure that the project is attractive enough in terms of sponsorship.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (VI): organization

Please consider reading previous post of the Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities  series:

• Introduction.
• Root article (you can access the rest of the posts from this one).

This project must have a legal entity that support the activity it will generate. That legal entity must be as flexible as possible. In Spain, for example, it would probably be an Association formed initially by legalized Local Free Software Communities (LFSC). When new ones get a minimum state of maturity, they will be invited to join the association as members.

Each Association would name a representative for this project. The Association's Assembly then will be formed by representatives of every legal LFSC involved. They would elect a Board, that initially, it would be formed by a President, a Vice-president, a Treasurer and a Secretary.

This Association will represent the project from a legal, economic and "political" point of view. Its basic role is to coordinate efforts and to make the project sustainable, keeping the independence of every member.

The Assembly would organize itself in groups taking care of different tasks. Several groups should be created:

1. Activities coordination group: All the activities, schedule and organization details will be coordinated y this group. The schedule is should be presented to the Board for approval and every year, a report should be made to the General Assembly.
2. Sustainability group: this group will take care of the sustainability of the project, specially the economic side.
3. I recommend to organize another two groups. One specialized in promo actions and another one that help the Board in dealing with administrative tasks, taxes, etc.

Sponsors and local entities should be invited to join these working groups so they become part of the project building relations with Local Free Software Communities.

Study of Spanish Internet users habits

The Association of Communication Media Research (AIMC) from Spain has published its annual study, based on questionnaires. This year (2011) almost 35 thousand people has participated.

This annual survey is the most relevant in Spain. This is its 14th edition. It tries to analyze Internet users habits, specially related to media. The first part of the survey deals with basic questions related with time spent in Internet, tools used, connectivity, SO, browser, frequently used services, etc.

As every year, many conclusions might be taken from this survey. I want to point here some interesting ones:

• The percentage of users that connect to Internet through a Linux based system has grown from 3.3% up to 3.6% last year due to the irruption in the survey of Android (0.7%).
• Microsoft market has gone from 86.1% to 86% during last year.
• Mozilla Firefox has drop from 36.6% to 31.6% but this year is the number one browser in Spain. IE is second with 30.1% and Chrome third with 29% Chrome is growing fast.
• Android is the leading mobile OS (40.5%) followed by iOS (22.4%), Symbian (11.5%) and Blackberry (11.3%). 6.3% admits that do not know what OS is shipped in his/her mobile phone.
• 93.4% of electronic newspaper readers use a PC/laptop/netbook, 12.9% tablets and 34.4% phones (obviously these are not exclusive).
• 45.5% of Internet users listen digital radio stations or on line music services like LastFM, Spotify, etc.
• 52.5% say unwanted/unauthorized advertisement is a big problem and 48.5% say Internet speed need improvement. 

The study is very interesting for many KDE related areas.

Please remember that this numbers are referred to Internet users only.

Links (in Spanish):

• Study presentation (.pdf)
• Full study 2011 (.pdf)
• 2011 questionnaire
• Previous studies

Moving to Madrid for a few weeks

As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking for a new job. I'm moving to Madrid to have some interviews and, hopefully, to attend to some Free Software/Free culture events. Let's see if I can also give a talk about KDE too.

I've been in Madrid many times before. I even have family there, but most of the times, I couldn't enjoy the city or visit some of my friends there since I went to work. It'll be different this time.

During these weeks in Madrid, I'll finish the Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities series of posts and will try to help launching KDE ON Program.

You probably haven't heard anything about it. You can get some idea by reading the following previous posts from my blog:

• Some previous ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects ( I, II, III, IV and V)
• KDE Program: Mission and Goals
• What is KDE Program
• KDE Organizational Network Program structure

Yes, I know, it is too much to read, but hey, I've been busy.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (V): services

Since this is the fifth post of the Building Innovation Nodes Through Free Software Communities, I strongly recommend you to read the previous four (I, II, III and IV)

This post will explain my ideas about what are the basic services that the initiative should provide so Local Free Software Communities (LFSC) and local player might organize activities that allow the project to be successful.

As enumerated in the second post of the series, the basic services that should be provided by the project to its members can be divided in six major areas:

1. Administrative.
2. Legal.
3. Financial and accounting.
4. Marketing and communication.
5. Business development.
6. Facilities maintenance and management.

The rest of the activities needed will be developed by participants, that is LFSC members, the catalyst organization or local players.

1.- Administrative

The administrative service can be divided in the following way:

1. Administrative services related with the project itself.
2. Administrative services targeting Local Free Software Communities.
3. All of the above.

1.1.- Administrative services related with the project itself

• Board support: as you can read in the Organization section, the project will be managed by a Board, elected from the Assembly. This Board will need administrative support.
• Contact/agenda management for project representatives.
• Accommodation management for activities organized within the project.

1.2.- Administrative services targeting Local Free Software Communities.
 

LFSC legalization: help LFSC that want to become part of the project in the near future with the basic administrative work in order for them to become a legal entity.

1.3.- Administrative services for both, the project and every LFSC participant

• Regular post management: notifications, legal papers and material shipment, this is, regular post service is one of those difficult area to manage when you are a distributed organization where board members chance quiet often.
• Membership management: the management of current and new members is a tedious task that every organization must put resources on. Having an administrative service can help them to become more efficient, specially to those where a each member has to make a yearly quota.

2.- Legal

The basic legal services needed are:

• Advice about basic legal aspects related with statutes and everyday decisions and operations for any LFSC and the project itself.
• Basic legal advice about licensing.
• Legalization of LFSC.
• Institutional agreements.
• Legal advice related with funding.

3.- Financial and accounting

This service should be given to the project itself and for every project member:

• Accounting support.
• Budget and economic reports. Costs control.
• Advice in financial decision and taxes.

4.- Marketing and communication

• LFSC and Project activities promotion in mainstream and social media.
• Project press releases and announcements.
• Local marketing actions support.

5.- Business development

Since the project will need to look for funds in order to grow, business development activities become a key part. The project will provide a service in this area that support participants the following areas:

• Relation with local agents/players.
• Sponsorship management support.

In another article I will talk about the resources needed to lauch the project and make it sustainable.

6.- Facilities maintenance and management
 

The facilities assigned to the project will be when the activities take place. The project will provide the following services:

• Facilities management.
• Security.
• Material manage, storage and control.
• Activities support.
• Connectivity.

and others needed to organize and support the activities defined by participants.

FOSDEM 2012 for Toscalix

This was my first FOSDEM without a predefined tight agenda, so I could enjoy more than ever the event. I had a lot of fun and could talk to many people with no stress.

I attended to several talks. I must say that I didn't like many of them. I'll mention the best ones, for different reasons:

• Wayland
• MER
• Qt5
• LibrePlan
• OpenAdvice
• OpenMoko Freerunner 
• Why the community should welcome Average Jane and Joe 

Obviously I didn't attend to most of the talks. There were more than 400 in one and a half day.

I spent most of the late Saturday and Sunday around KDE stand. Many KDE members where there and I could talk to most of them. I would like to mention Jonathan Riddell's work, specially in these hard times for him, Jonathan, you rock!

It was very cold in Brussels. We reached -14ºC the first night. Simply too much for a Canary Island guy. The beer was warmer than the weather. That was weird. Thanks to the Kolab guys, Paul and Georg, I could drink some very good beer and visit cool bars I've never been before.

As you know, we are having a hard time in Spain, specially if we talk about unemployment. Free Software sector is doing quiet good though. On our recent history, one of our structural problems have been exportation. Last two years, due to the internal the economic crisis, we have raised them by 30% and FLOSS companies are no exception. Many Spanish companies had presence in FOSDEM 2012.

On Sunday night I organized a networking dinner with some Spanish FLOSS companies and a representative of the Commercial Office of the Spanish Embassy in Brussels. KDE Spain, Zentyal, Gestiweb, Igalia, Carlos Sánchez and others (up to 24) were there.

The goal was that these representatives could know some entrepreneurs and how the FLOSS sector is doing in Spain. Next year, the day before FOSDEM 2013, we plan to organize in the Spanish Embassy in Brussels some networking activities between Spanish FLOSS companies and foreign corporations attending to the event.

FOSDEM has a great program, but networking is as relevant as talks. So don't don't miss it next year. See you there, hopefully, with better weather.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (IV): localization/facilities

Please keep in mind that this is the fourth of a series of post. Please read previous ones ( I, II and III) before the following.

The venue is very important in order to be successful. I suggest to launch the project in a city with the following characteristics:

• Big not not too much, so activities created have a global impact in the city. 
• With at least one big University with Computers Science and Engineering/Science Faculties. This will ensure potential contributors.
• Well communicated with bigger cities so activities organized can attract visitors from those cities.
• With an international airport so it is easy for the Global Free Software Communities (GFSC) to celebrate promotional and technical activities with foreign speakers and attendees.

The facilities are a key element in order to have success. Some of the most relevant characteristics that the venue must have are: 

• Close to the city center, well communicated with the airport or train station (if there is international airport) and close to the University if possible.
• Close to hotels, hostels or other accommodations. It is important to have cheap accommodation around the facilities.
• Some kind of garden or natural area where to talk comfortably outdoors.
• Cafeterias, bars and restaurants must be close to the facilities.
• Facilities must have, at least:
• A room for conferences up to 75 - 100 people.
• High quality Internet connection. Wifi in the area and outside.
• AC Plugs.
• A meeting room.
• A computer lab or a room prepared for plugging laptops.
• A networking area with some tables.
• Stock

To be successful, the place must have a comfortable atmosphere. It must be a quiet but informal. It must promote interaction but also intimacy. 

Go back to the description post.

Looking for a new job

After some time resting, sharing time with my family in the Canary Islands and working on personal projects, it's time for me to go back into business. So I'll be looking for a new job as my major goal the following weeks/months.

1. I would like to work for a company with business interests in several countries, not just Spain. I'm used to travel up to 75% of my work time and I'm open for relocation.
2. Since 2003 I've been fully involved in projects, non-profits and companies directly related with FLOSS. I would like to work for a FLOSS organization or an entity that would like to open its business to Free/Open Source Software models.
3. Although I studied Applied Physics (electronic), I'm not a technician. I have experience in the business and executive field. I also have experience as project/program manager and business developer.
4. Most of the people out of Spain know me because I'm involved in KDE, but my experience in FLOSS goes beyond desktops.
5. I've assumed a lot of responsibilities my entire professional career (since 1998), leading small companies, projects and business associations. I'm used to dealing with conflicts and tough situations that need to take risks and decisions.
6. The above do not mean I'm not a team player. I am. I've been part of high skilled teams in very technical projects up to political initiatives.

Like many others with experience in Free/Open Source Software business, I'm used to fighting against giants. Smart people, passion, innovation, cooperation and hard work can take any organization where once seemed impossible. I would like to have the chance to prove it once again in my following job.

To get further details about my experience and skills, please contact me. I will send you my resume:

• identi.ca / Twitter: @toscalix
• IRC: toscalix (freenode.net)
• mail: toscalix (/at/) gmail (/dot/) com

You can also check my Linkedin profile.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (III): participants

This is the third post of this serie. Please read the first two (I and II) before reading this one.

A.- Participants

As mentioned in the previous post, the participants in a project like the one we are describing can be organized in three different groups:

1.- Source

There are the organizations which represent the innovation source, that is, Local Free Software Communities (LFSC from now on).

Mature Global Free Software Communities (GFSC) are organizing more and more local groups, specially in non-English speaking countries since people in general like to related to each other in their native language. But in most cases those local groups are not configured as legal entities. When they are, most of the times there is no legal relation with the matrix, at least, so they can operate as legal representatives of the GFSC in its country.

Due to law differences, in each country that relation implies different rights and duties, so there no single and simple way of building that relation. But is an achievable problem in most cases. In KDE we created a precedent with the agreement with KDE Spain (link). we are using this initiative as experiment in order to replicate it with more LFSC.

This project should have, as one of its major goals, to help local groups:

• To become legal entities, so they can grow and mature, by being able to relate to other organizations, not just its matrix.
• To develop activities that allow them to increase the number of local contributors and the software use by local players.

2.- Catalyst

The Catalyst is the organization that will put the initial effort to attract local communities to the project. Ideally, it'll will have the initial resources and the localization needed to launch the project. Its major initial goals will be:

• To coordinate the initial steps and prepare everything for the LFSCs to take command of the project when the Assembly is formed.
• To promote interactions and networking among LFSCs and between those and local agents.
• To do marketing with impact beyond Free Software media.

3.- Local agents

The initially act as receptors of the knowledge transfer generate in Free Software Communities. In a second step, little by little, will generate its own experience and knowledge to LFSC to end up providing them developers, experiences and (hopefully) code. Beside interacting with LFSC, Catalyst will promote interactions among them, so they can learn from each other's experience.

B.- An example: Spain

Local Free Software Communities

Mi idea is giving this project a try in a certain country. Let's say Spain. It would kick off in a certain big city and could be replicated to smaller ones. The initial LFSC candidates are:

• Debian-es
• KDE España
• GNOME Hispano
• OpenStreetMap España
• Joomla Spanish
• Drupal Hispano
• gvSIG

All of them are legal entities in Spain, regularly organize community events and have ten or more members. They are the perfect starters.

Some other local groups must be also involved in the early steps. They are LFSC groups that are not legal yet, but organize events and are active groups. The project should focus on helping them to become members of the project. By the end of the first year, the goal must be to add another 5-6 local groups to the project with the same rights and duties than founders. Distribution LoCo teams (Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Gentoo, Guadalinex, Linex, CentOS, etc.), computer language related groups (Java Hispano, Rails-es, etc.), product oriented communities (Zentyal, LibreOffice-es, Plone-es, LibrePlan, etc.) and other ones like OSGEO-es, FSFe, Mozilla-es, etc. are perfect candidates for these second group.

Catalyst
 

In my mind, the perfect catalyst is a non-profit with many local contacts and visibility or a Public Administration (City Council or Municipality). Last November, I presented this idea to one City Council from a big Spanish City. Other options are being under study.

Local players/agents

The best players to involved at early stages of the project are those that have demonstrated in the past some relation and support to Free Software. The plan is to reduce the culture gap initially. My first candidates would be:

• Regional/national Association/Federation of Free Software SME.
• Local college (through its Free Software Office).
• R&D Institutes with Free Software related experience.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (II)

Please read the previous post about this topic to have a better idea of what I'm trying to explain here.

When thinking about how to create a local node in a certain area where all the knowledge from GFSC can be used to improve local economy and social rights I came to the conclusion that we need to define a model based on the following six general ideas:

1. Principles: some basic principles shared by all participants must be defined.
2. Participants: electing who is going to participate in the initiative and which role will have each one of them is another simple but relevant idea to determine.
3. Localization/facilities: the initiative needs a specific place, adapted to the kind of activities needed to achieved the goals.
4. Services and resources: participants will need to define services and look for the resources needed to launch and sustain the project.
5. Organization: governance model and structure are also key point to define. They must be adapted to promote an innovation environment.
6. Actions: activities that will be the core of the project.

1.- Principles

The actions that need to be taken must follow some principles shared by every GFSC, adding some important ones for local agents involved. These two groups of principles can be summarized in the following:

• Freedom, which includes economic and administrative freedom.
• Self management.
• Openness
• Integration.
• Free licenses.

2.-Participants

In order to be successful, I think the project must count on three major participants:

• Source: local Free Software Communities.
• Catalyst: organization that will promote interaction among players involved.
• Receptors: local organizations and individuals.

3.-Localization/facilities

Localization must be carefully chosen. I think that the perfect place must be located in a mid-size city, well communicated with bigger cities and an international airport. The facilities chosen must allow to celebrate talks, meetings and workshop, with a networking area. Accommodation and restaurants/cafeterias must be easily reachable.

To be successful, the place must have a comfortable atmosphere, quiet but informal, with areas that promote interaction and others intimacy. 

4.-Services and resources

In order to define a project to achieve our goals, some services will be needed. The basic ones are:

The project will need support in the following areas:

• Administrative
• Legal
• Financial and accounting.
• Marketing and communication.
• Business development.
• Facilities maintenance and management.

The resources needed to launch a project like this one, must come from:

• Sponsorship.
• Local public administrations and innovation agents.
• Local companies.
• Participants.
• Activities organized by participants.

5.- Organization

Innovation and complex organization structures are incompatible. The structure to manage the project must be simple and compatible with the culture from the communities involved. I think the perfect organization and structure comes from a mix of three different kind of well known organizations:

• Labs. There are many of them around the globe. In Spain we have two well known, one in Madrid and other one in Barcelona.
• Self-managed cultural centers. They are multidisciplinary legal entities, self-organized, usually linked to a certain building or infrastructure where many different kind of activities are promoted and organized.
• Business incubators.

The global idea is reducing administrative and legal work to the minimum, promoting meritocracy and electing the people that manage the project, creating forums where local agents directly interact with those organizers from the communities that participate in the initiative.

6.- Activities

The communities involved in the project will determine the type of activities to be organized. Obviously, in order to generate a local pole, an intense agenda a a key point. It should be full of community events, but also other kind of activities that promote interactions with local agents, like training sessions, workshops, etc.

Communities usually organize itinerant events. A project like his do not mean that local communities has to change this mechanism of "spreading the message". It is just a matter of creating several minor activities per year at this place.

In following posts I will explain a little how do I believe the above six point should be done/organized to be able to create a local pole of innovation through Free Software Communities.

Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities

Global Free Software Communities (GFSC from now on) are a proof that Silicon Valley model is an industrial innovation and business model from past century. GFSC are building, not just great products, but creating new engineering procedures and tools, new ways of governance models, supporting and promoting new legal improvements in some areas, creating its own identity, its own culture and becoming politically active promoting freedom in the digital world.

Communities attract many young talents and professional by allowing them to grow personally, technically and professionally while developing software anyone can use. GFSC represent a mirror to some new movements and a relevant help to others.

Traditionally key stakeholders has seen GFSC as a R&D ecosystem and a hiring environments. Lately, we are facing a significant change. Smaller companies are getting more and more involved with a new purpose, to share the development of a technology or product to base their business upon. This is specially true in vertical (product oriented) communities, like Drupal or Joomla, for example.

We are also seeing some companies succeeding in building communities around their products, creating a new type of communities driven, but not owned, by them.

All this innovation is taking place through internet, starring geographically distributed teams who usually know each other if they collaborate in the same community but do not if they are members of different ones.

I believe that we have a good opportunity in the following years of creating impact in many places with what we do if we are able to create nodes where all that we do in communities can be translate it to local agents/actors so they can adapt our procedures, use our software, create their own, build a local business sector around the software, help other sectors grow, etc. and, at the same time, attract more contributors to our communities, give us very useful feedback and give us resources to increase our activity.

Different communities have done different actions in order to accomplish these goals. We have experiences from all over the world where Libre Software has been used/deployed/develop with a concrete purpose and certain measurable results. Big companies and Public Administrations has also develop many experiences. 

But overall, it seems to me that we haven't yet get the solution to spread our "innovation and culture" in a structured manner, so every community can repeat some basic processes to grow locally and get feedback from these initiatives. For several reasons, many people out there are using our software, but GFSC and the local agents are not properly connected so any of them are taking all the possible advantage. It is hard for us get benefit out of it to let our communities grow. Most of the time it is just a one way street...

GFSC want new contributors that allow us to build new code (and related activities) along with new power users to test and notify bugs and possible improvements. We use internet as the main communication channel and organize events all over the world to accomplish that goal. It takes an affordable amount of resources to execute those action and support the needed infrastructure that allow us to grow every year. But that growth is linear and have little impact in a localized area most of the time. I guess the strategy must be different if we want to create well established local nodes to generate a big impact. And spread them.

How can we move that distributed innovation done by GFSC to a certain geographic area? How an innovation node that helps local economy giving engineers, companies, etc. new chances can be created ? How can we do it in a way that GFSC get feedback? How do we replicated and spread them? Is it possible to do it by ourselves, with our own culture?

I'll write a couple of posts during the following days with some ideas I have related with this topic. These ideas are the fundamentals of a proposal sent to a City Council from Spain to try to create a local node of innovation related through Free Software Communities.

If you know an example of local groups of people that have done sustainable actions in a certain area resulting in increasing the number of contributors in a specific GFSC along with improving the local economy, promoting the creation of local companies, deploying new tools, bringing users to Free Software, etc. please add a link or write s brieft summary. I would like to know about it.

There are several more recent posts about this topic. Please chack them if you are interested: 

• Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (II) 

• Building innovation nodes through Free Software Communities (III): participants

KDE 4.8 release party in Malaga

If everything goes as expected, KDE will publish a major release on January 25th. Our KDE 4 series keep improving with the 4.8 version shipped with many new features.

After releasing two beta versions and another two candidate releases (check the announcements for further information), the moment to feel a new freedom experience with KDE 4.8 Platform, Workspaces and Applications has come and we want to celebrate it all over the world.

If you are around Malaga, Spain, on Friday Jan 27th, come to our release party and bring your family and friends with you. We will have a great time. Please add yourself to the list (if you are a KDE member) or send me an e-mail, so we can make an accurate reservation in La Garrafa restaurant.