Following the weekend of talks inspiring and informing the community, the focus shifted today to working on details.

The day today started out with showers of water drops as the late comers to Akademy waded their way amidst raincoated cyclists and residents of A Coruna sheltering themselves underneath coloured umbrellas.

The KDE community has spent the day in western Spain giving and watching talks showing new developments in the community and where we are likely to be going in the next year.

The city of A Coruña is warm and welcoming, and almost reminiscent of Akademy 2013 in Bilbao, with the hilly backdrops and the oceanic linings as you see dark blue and black coloured t-shirted KDE community people trampling their way and wheezing throughout the trek up and downhill the steep tracks from the residences to the University Area where the Akademy Attendees have found their cosy haven.

KDE is de-camping to the far west of Europe today to A Coruña in Galicia. In this north west corner of the Iberian Peninsula the sun is warm and the air is fresh. KDE contributors of all varieties will be spending a week in talks, discussions, hacking, renewing old friendships and getting to know people new to our KDE Community.

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.