Yesterday, the first participants arrived at Nové Hrady. There was a shuttle service from Prague sponsored by SuSE and another bus running from Frankfurt sponsored by a Fortune 500 company. A small number of participants arrived on their own at various hours of the day while the shuttles only arrived late evening. The process of checking in large numbers of developers and assigning accomodations in the castle, in the monastery (and even some pensions due to space reasons) took a while but late snacks provided a distraction.

While the official language at Kastle is English, many German and Dutch sounds are filling the air. Among the countries outside Europe from where developers have joined us are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel and the USA.

After moving their luggage to the rooms, many developers moved out to explore the nearer environment sunken in darkness and visited a local pub with cheap and good beer, getting to know each other until long after midnight. Internet access was not available until Friday afternoon, so don't worry if you hear nothing from a significant share of KDE developers for a while.

It was a warm and sunny day today, the day of the KDE e.V membership meeting. The most important result of that meeting is that the long discussed changes of the bylaws were approved by the required majority. A full report of the meeting and a new translation of the new bylaws will be made available later on the KDE e.V. website.

Lunch consisted of 3 courses and supper of 2 courses. In late evening, a second shuttle from Prague is expected to arrive bringing the total number of participants for the conference tomorrow up to about 100. Preparations to set up a third computer lab for the hackfest are still ongoing.

Links to more photo albums are starting to appear on the photo page of the conference wiki. Another good place to look for comments of attending developers are their personal diaries on KDE Developer Journals.

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