At Akademy 2015, one of the most awaited keynotes this year shall be that by Matthias Kirschner and here we have a conversation with his charming self in person. For all those who need a reason to change their mind to attend Akademy, Matthias gives many more.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Hey there, I am Matthias from Berlin, I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe, and I love it. Describing oneself is one of those really difficult tasks, you will hopefully know a little more about me after this interview. Or better still, why don't you just find out for yourself at this year's Akademy!

Building local FLOSS communities isn't that easy! It requires first communicating in a very clear and sincere way our motivations, the nature of possible contributions, their global impacts, and the technical and social benefits we potentially get back. Then, we need systematic and effective means to generate culture, support newcomers, identify their strengths, and help them to overcome the many barriers they usually face. Ultimately, we must keep such a social-technical organism alive, establishing mid- and long-term goals, learning from the ups and downs, and handling the challenges of building thriving communities in places with continental dimension such as Brazil and Latin America.

Repeating what became a constant on last years, KDE project is bringing an eventful series of presentations and activities on community driven software to the FISL, the Fórum Internacional de Software LIvre, which will be realized at Porto Alegre, south of Brazil, starting July 7.

The talks program for Akademy 2015 is now available. Details for organizing BoFs will be announced later.

Registration is still open for Akademy

Anyone can attend Akademy for free. But registration is required in order to attend the event. Please register soon so that we can plan accordingly.

Lydia Pintscher, our very own KDE e.V. Board President and a gem of a person; will be giving the Community Keynote Talk at Akademy 2015, in A Coruña, Spain. This is just a tiny peak into her brain for all that is in store for you in her talk.

Today we celebrate 20 years since the first release of Qt was uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu and announced, six days later, at comp.os.linux.announce. Over these years, Qt evolved from a two person Norwegian project to a full-fledged, social-technical world-wide organism that underpins free software projects, profitable companies, universities, government-related organizations, and more. It's been an exciting journey.

The work on unified graphics for GCompris was completed in the time allocated by the fundraiser. Here is a video to show the result.

15% of the goal was funded, so not all of the work could be completed in the time proposed. But there are updates to all the core components, the main menu with all the activities icons and a good bunch of activities.

The KDE Community in Brazil will host LaKademy 2015 June 3rd through 6th. The conference is an opportunity for KDE users and contributors to meet in person to make plans, work on software and other aspects of KDE technology. There will also be outreach to potential new contributors. The group is raising money for conference expenses and to offset travel costs for attendees.

Building on the success of conf.kde.in 2014 at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Community Technology (DA-IICT) in the land of Gujarat, the horizon of the KDE Community is broadening and shifting south. conf.kde.in 2015 takes place on the 17th and 18th of April at Amritapuri in Kerala, India. As in previous years of the conference, conf.kde.in 2015 will promote the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) and offer ideas to build awareness about FOSS culture at the collegiate level, the time when most technology students have their first interactions with Open Source. There will be particular emphasis on KDE technology, and on Qt, the popular cross-platform application framework.

Akademy is the KDE Community conference. If you are working on topics relevant to KDE or Qt, this is your chance to present your work and ideas at the Conference from 25th-31st July in A Coruña, Spain. The days for talks are Saturday and Sunday, 25th and 26th July. The rest of the week will be BoFs, unconference sessions and workshops.