DíaGNOME 2009 Report

Yearly GNOME communities around the world meet to share ideas, plan new projects and have a great time together. In the case of GNOME Chile its annual gathering is held at Encuentro Linux (the main Chilean conference related to Linux and Free/Libre/Open Source Software) as a full day of activities known as Día GNOME (GNOME Day). Día GNOME is always described as top quality whose talks are rated among the best in the whole conference, surely a reason for the Chilean community to be proud.

In 2009, Encuentro Linux was held at Valparaíso at Universidad Federico Santa María, it was also the tenth anniversary of the event a worth to note age. Viña and Valparaíso are nowadays almost the same city due to their growth, sunny days and clear and fresh nights welcomed all the attendants.

But Encuentro's tenth anniversary was not the only remarkable happening for this year's Chilean Free Software users and developers meeting. It was also a special ocassion for the GNOME Chile commmunity, it was the 3rd ever Día GNOME and it had a special ingredient because the Chilean community was receiving an overload of non Chilean hackers: 1 from Finland and 3 from Perú. Iván Frade from Helsinki -of Tracker fame- was chased down by GNOME fans wanting to see his N900, hear about his work and share some laughs with him thanks to his friendly and open nature. The 3 Peruvian GNOME contributors were: Sergio Infante (from GNOME Hispano IRC talks fame), Juan Rojas (patcher and mad promoter of GNOME as a developer platform) and Diego Escalante (from Board and Epiphany).

During the event a great team of volunteers helped welcome attendants, sort out the schedule, introduce speakers, etc. Special thanks should go to Encuentro Linux organizers for securing a venue and resources for Día GNOME. One item of special interest for the attendants was the availability of GNOME branded hats and t-shirts, almost all of the stock was wiped in a matter of 3 hours, surely a popular set of products!

The GNOME Love & Hate Wall was present as usual and people took the time to file some ad-hoc bugs and wishlist items but also to file a couple of jokes, it quickly became a stopping point for everyone in its way to the conference hall.

To round up a wonderful day for attendants the GNOME team handed out sandwiches and juice boxes for all the registered attendants, an unique feature everyone appreciated and a great way to motivate hall talks while having the lunch break.

At the end of the day the community was really happy to have hosted such an amazing event where people left with a lot of new ideas and knowledge about GNOME and a big smile in their faces. A separate ending note is worth for the Peruvian contributors that attended: thanks to all the good energy and enthusiasm after sharing some days with their peers from Chile they decided to bootstrap a GNOME Perú community! Kudos and welcome!

Looking forward to 2010

Día GNOME closed a great year for GNOME Chile, but what did future hold for 2010? The answer dates back to July 2009, while at Las Palmas GUADEC Hispana the GNOME Hispano meeting was held and one of its more important resolutions was to foster the integration between all the hispanic contributors, users and fans. However there is a historical problem with such integration named Atlantic Ocean. Joining GUADEC Hispana is expensive for contributors from South or Central América. The solution? If they don't come to us, we will go to them. GUADEC Hispana 2010 is expected to be held in <universidad donde estan buscando dinero> and organized by <grupo de esa univ> and GNOME Chile. Even better than an idea, this is an ongoing plan. <nombre> reminded everyone at DíaGNOME that negotiations for a series of funding sources were already in the works.

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