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.