For an overview of what happened in the BoFs, meetings and hacking sessions during the second half of the week, you can watch the wrap-up session video
Many of you already know that FISL (The International Free Software Forum) is one of the biggest FLOSS conferences in the world. From 8 to 11 July 2015, 5281 free software passionate people met in Porto Alegre (South Brazil) for the 16th FISL edition, enjoying activities such as talks, panels, hackathons, workshops, and community meetings. All kinds of FLOSS-related topics were in place: development, translation, artwork, education, robotics, entrepreneurship, audio-visual, women and gender, politics, academia and research ... Phew!
Today continued the BoFs, meetings and hacking sessions. For an overview of what happened today, you can watch the wrap-up session video
Video recordings of the Akademy talks are now available in a low quality version to enable them to be released quickly. Higher quality version will be available later.
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.
