GUADEC 2010
In 2010 GUADEC (Gnome Users and Developers European Conference) was held in The Hague, Netherlands, July 24-30th. The first two days were a combination of various hackfests and meetings, while the following two days were full of keynotes, 30-50 minute sessions & lightning talks. Two keynotes, one by Danny O'Brien on how free speech can be both helped & hindered by free and open source software, and another on the current state of GNOME by Fernando Herrera and Xan López were highlights. Other points of interest were the previewing of GNOME-Shell, and the announcement that GNOME 3 was being delayed till March 2011.
GNOME.Asia 2010 & COSCUP
The annual GNOME.Asia Summit for 2010 was held in conjunction with the Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters (COSCUP), in Taipei, Taiwan from August 14-15th. COSCUP is the largest free and open source software convention in Taiwan where developers, users and promoters gather from around the world to share experience and knowledge with each other. As such, holding the GNOME.Asia Summit made sense as it allowed even more people to interact and participate with each other than would have normally been the case. More than 1000 people participated in COSCUP/GNOME.Asia 2010 in person, including over 60 speakers, with another 700+ participating online through video & text broadcasts. More than 25 sponsors, 10 news outlets, 10 exhibitors, and 100 volunteers helped to make it one of the best conferences of the year. Main themes for the conference included HTML 5, Open Web, Mobile, GNOME, and FOSS licensing.
Brian Cameron, a director of the GNOME Foundation, gave a talk on the Road to GNOME 3 which looked at the history of the GNOME project, from its start in 1997 to the release of GNOME 2.3 and the (then) upcoming release of GNOME 3.0. He also discussed the work done on GNOME 2.x which led to GNOME 3.0 and the many new technologies being included for the first time such as GNOME-Shell, Clutter and Dconf/GSettings. More than a dozen other sessions were also focused on GNOME ranging from GStreamer to Bugzilla, the Bug Squad, and WebKitGTK+. Several hours were also spent focused on accessibility in GNOME.
Boston Summit 2010
The Boston Summit is an annual 3 day long hackfest held in North America. It is a chance for GNOME developers & contributors to get together in person and work on all aspects of GNOME, from the shell to documentation, marketing, community engagement and more.
In 2010, the Boston Summit was held November 6-8th at MIT's Tang Center. Most of the work focused on the upcoming release of GNOME 3, including new themes, fonts, guidelines for applications & compatibility. Talks included where GNOME is/was headed, future goals, module sets, Gtk+/WebKit, Clutter 2.0, and Gestures among others.
GNOME.Asia 2011
In 2011 the annual GNOME.Asia summit was held in Bangalore, India, at Dayananda Sagar Institutions April 2-3rd. Dozens of talks focusing on GNOME 3 were given, including ones on the future of GNOME by Brian Cameron and the design of the desktop by Allan Day. Over 1000 people attended, hearing talks which were almost entirely focused on GNOME-related topics. Topics included the importance of free software, becoming a contributor, the GNOME user experience, GNOME-Shell, Evolution Gstreamer, packaging GNOME in Debian and many others.
The 2011 Desktop Summit
2011 saw the return of the Desktop Summit, where GNOME & KDE combined their respective conferences in Berlin, Germany, August 6-12th. Held at Humboldt University, more than one thousand people attended over the course of the conference. Multiple keynote addresses, panels, lightening talks, workshops and training sessions were held, on topics ranging from copyright assignment, GNOME-SHELL Iterations, GStreamer, integration, collaboration, complexity of technology, open standards and much, much more. Other highlights included the Traveling Pants, Akademy Awards, and an award session for 'Berlin's future is open”.
Montréal Summit 2011
In 2011 the annual 'Boston' Summit was moved to Montréal, Canada. Held at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in the Pavillons Lassonde, October 8-10th. Since the summit occurred just after the release of GNOME 3.2, talks focused on upcoming features in GNOME 3.3/3.4, dovetailing with discussions on the mailing lists. Presentations included those on Baserock by Lars Wirzenius & jhbuild by Colin Walters, as well as others on strategy, the application menu, Google Summer of Code & how to maximize GNOME's participation in it.