The schedule for Akademy Workshops and Birds of a Feather sessions (BoFs) is available for registration. Organized in the Unconference style, people attending Akademy can select the preferred times and locations for topics they will lead.

Are you attending Akademy 2012 in Tallinn? Are you interested in making the conference rock for attendees? Helping the Akademy Team organize everything? Do you want an exclusive free Akademy 2012 Team t-shirt?

This year we have Blue Systems as a Platinum sponsor of Akademy 2012 Tallinn. Recently, they made news by offering continous support for Jonathan Riddell, lead developer of Kubuntu, the KDE distribution that they would like to become one of the best on DistroWatch.

LaKademy is over. April 27th to May 1st were days of hard work, meeting old and new friends, having much fun while realizing how far crazy guy imaginations can go. It was a great summit and sprint. Compared to the first (and only one so far) Akademy-BR in 2010, there is clear evidence that we are making progress building a strong and mature KDE community in Latin America. We met in a lovely hostel in Porto Alegre, Brazil and were well taken care of during the event.

The Akademy 2012 Program Committee is proud to present the Akademy 2012 Sessions. Given the broad nature of KDE, the proposals submitted contained a wealth of interesting and valuable topics. From those, 28 proposals were selected that we felt would address the most relevant topics and be deep enough in the areas of most interest to the KDE Community.

Google has published the list of 60 student proposals that have been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012 for KDE. It means that 60 students will be able to work full-time on changing the world this summer! A big thank you to Google for making this possible.

Latin America is a big place with many opportunities for KDE; major deployments of KDE software are proof. Over the years, groups of KDE developers have emerged in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and probably other places. These groups work together to make a better KDE. As we know, meeting and talking in person is important to strengthen the bonds in a community. So we decided to organize a Latin American meeting of KDE contributors following the lead of the first Akademy-br in 2009. Like Akademy-br, the first LaKademy will be similar to a sprint for developers and one for people interested in promoting KDE in this part of the world.

The first LaKademy is taking place in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil from April 27th to May 1st, 2012. People were invited from Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Colombia. 12 known KDE contributors have confirmed their presence, along with 6 newcomers. Current KDE contributors recommended newcomers based on their abilities and their potential to become long-time KDE contributors.

KDE China User meeting

On March 30th, a grand meeting called KDE China User was held in Beijing. This meeting provided KDE users, community members and technophiles with a nice "face-to-face" opportunity to discuss KDE's latest and cutting edge technology trends. Read on to find out what transpired at the meeting and what the future might hold for KDE in China.

Aaron in action at COSCUP 2011

COSCUP is the largest FLOSS conference organized by local communities in Taiwan. The conference has sessions for new users, enthusiastic promoters, coders or anyone who is interested in cutting-edge FLOSS technologies. This year, KDE and openSUSE will be jointly organizing one of the three dedicated tracks and we're happy to announce the CfP is open!

KDE Cascadia will be held in partnership with LinuxFest Northwest (LFNW) in Bellingham, Washington on April 28 and 29, 2012. This is a pilot of regional KDE gatherings in conjunction with established grassroots FOSS conferences. The goals are to reduce the effort and expense associated with a single annual stand-alone meeting, and to increase user and developer involvement in KDE. The LFNW Organizers warmly welcome the KDE Community.