Are you attending Akademy 2013 in Bilbao? Do you want to get something special out of your Akademy experience?

Be a volunteer. The Akademy Team needs motivated people who are passionate about Free and Open Software, especially KDE, one of the foremost communities of any kind in the world. There is a variety of tasks to fit with diverse interests and skills.

The announcement of the students accepted for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Outreach Program for Women (OPW) 2013 opens a new chapter in KDE contribution. KDE has participated in GSoC since its first season in 2005. Every year is special and exciting for both the students and the KDE Community.

For the first time this year, attendees can pre-order an official Akademy 2013 shirt (with picture), pick it up at Akademy 2013 in Bilbao and pay a reduced price. This year's distinctive design is based on the Lauburu, an ancient Basque symbol.

The Akademy 2013 Program Committee is proud to present the Akademy 2013 Presentation Schedule. Reflecting the scope of KDE, the schedule includes a wealth of interesting, timely and valuable topics. From the proposals submitted, 32 were selected to address currently relevant topics of most interest to the KDE Community.

During the week of 8 April 2013, developers from the KDE, GNOME, Unity and Razor-qt projects met at the SUSE offices in Nürnberg to improve collaboration between the projects by discussing specifications. A wide range of topics was covered.

We are pleased to announce that KDE will take part in the Outreach Program for Women (OPW) this year. OPW started in 2006 with an intention to reach talented women who are passionate about technology, but who may be uncertain about how to start contributing to free and open software projects. Since its beginning, OPW has included commercial and non-profit organizations that are leaders in free and open software.

The Pimsters (names here)

A few weeks ago, the KDE PIM team had a sprint in Berlin, and this is the report of it.

Once most people had arrived at the KDAB offices in Berlin, the KDE PIM sprint started around 4 in the afternoon with an introduction by Till Adam. He welcomed everyone and issued a warning: there were only one-and-a-half crates of beer and all KDAB attempts at ordering more had failed. The participants would have to take care of this! Read on to find out how it all turned out.

Digia, the largest Qt contributor, is the 2013 Platinum Sponsor for the co-hosted Akademy and Qt Contributor Summit in Bilbao. Digia is responsible for all Qt activities including product development and commercial licensing and, together with the Qt Project, open source licensing under the open governance model.

On the 23rd of February, a crowd of about 330 enthusiastic people gathered to be a part of the first major open source event in the State of Gujarat, India. Some people traveled hundreds of kilometers to attend, coming from places such as Delhi, Durgapur (more than 1800 km), Nainital, Bardoli and Mumbai. Students from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) in Gandhinagar organized the event—KDE Meetup 2013.

In July 2013, Akademy — the KDE community summit — will host the Qt Contributors Summit (QtCS) in Bilbao, Spain. QtCS is THE gathering of the Qt Project contributor community. It will take place July 15th and 16th in the middle of the KDE Akademy week (13-19 July). By co-hosting, KDE and the Qt Project will increase their existing collaboration even further. Holding their annual conferences at the same time and the same place will foster interaction, knowledge transfer and technical progress.