GNOME Annual Report 2007 - User Groups

Author: LucasRocha, SayaminduDasgupta

GNOME is an international project and has active local communities distributed throughout the globe in all continents. Let's see what some of those local groups have made to promote GNOME in their countries.

Brazil

In 2007, the Brazilian GNOME community worked on the consolidation of their community through meetings, a unified website and presence at large FLOSS conferences in Brazil.

After a series of successful editions, the 4th Fórum GNOME, the yearly event of the Brazilian GNOME users and developers community, took place together with the second Northeastern Free Software Conference, the biggest FLOSS event in northeastern Brazil. The conference was held at Aracaju/SE from September 28th to 30th and was a great success in helping GNOME Brazil to bring in new contributors, especially translators, to GNOME.

Additionally, a second GNOME community event was organized at the 9th Fórum Internacional Software Livre (FISL), the largest FLOSS conference in Brazil. There were talks about GNOME and how to contribute to the Brazilian translation team. There was also a public meeting during FISL with the aim to set goals for 2007. GNOME Brazil also participated with talks on Latinoware, another important international FLOSS conference in the country.

Through a collaborative effort, all Brazilian GNOME websites were unified in to one brand new website. The new website is based on a wiki which will make it easier to keep it updated and attract new contributors to the local community. The Brazilian translation team, which received many new contributors this year, translated 100% of the GNOME 2.18 and 2.20 desktop releases.

Future plans in 2008 for the the Brazilian GNOME community include an improved Fórum GNOME and stronger participation in the various FLOSS conferences through Brazil. For the 5th edition of the Fórum, they're planning to invite foreign speakers and to host workshops focusing on contributing bug fixes and coding to bring more Brazilian contributors to GNOME.

Chile

In 2007, GNOME Chile grew as a community. They covered more Chilean territory by giving many talks throughout the country. Most of, if not all, FLOSS conferences in the country had representation from GNOME Chile.

In April, GNOME Chile participated in the Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (Santiago) with talks about GNOME and how to get involved in the project. Also, they held a stand with GNOME Desktop demonstrations allowing attendees to get closer view of GNOME. In June, a talk about GNOME development with Python was given at Universidad San Martin de Porres (Lima/Peru).

Later in August, a workshop about graphic application development with PyGTK was given at the Universidad Santo Tomás (Talca). In September, the Tercero Encuentro de Software Libre took place at Universidad Autónoma de Chile (Temuco) where GNOME Chile members gave talks for potential GNOME contributors and workshops about GNOME development with Python and Mono.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of GNOME, the Chilean community organized activities about GNOME for the Día del Software Libre (Curicó) that was held at Universidad de Talca. At the GNOME stand, the desktop environment was showcased and stickers were given to visitors.

The 8th Encuentro Linux, one of the largest FLOSS conferences in Chile, took place at Universidad de Tarapaca de Arica on October 12-14. The GNOME Chile contributors gave a talk about the 10 year history of GNOME and organized a workshop about GNOME development with Mono.

November was a busy month for GNOME Chile with GNOME promotional activities at the Congreso Austral de Ciencia de la Computación (Puerto Montt), 2nd Encuentro de Linux Universidad Autónoma de Chile (Talca), and Encuentro Open Source INACAP (Valparaiso). In December, the Chileans participated in three conferences: Segundo encuentro de Software y Tecnologías Libres (Concepción), Encuentro de Linux (Curicó), and Encuentro SW Libre "Pingüinos en la costa" (Lota).

For 2008, GNOME Chile plans to have a very strong presence at the 9th Encuentro de Linux, which is the largest FLOSS conference in Chile. Plans also include the development of a program to attract new hackers and to collaborate with GNOME Hispano to bring "Libro de GNOME" with the goal to generate one information source for Spanish speakers.

French Speaking Community

The GNOME French speaking community (GNOME-FR) had a busy year with strong participation in important events in France and the traditional organization of the GNOME room at FOSDEM, one of the most relevant FLOSS conferences in Europe.

In June, Vincent Untz contributed to a round table about Free Software communities during the Paris Capitale du Libre conference. This round table also featured Tristan Nitot (Mozilla Europe), Sophie Gautier (OpenOffice.org), and David Larlet (Ubuntu). In July, volunteers from GNOME-FR organized a GNOME stand at the Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (RMLL). Vincent Untz gave a talk about the GNOME community at this same conference.

Later in the year in October, another GNOME stand was held by volunteers during the Journées du Logiciel Libre (JDLL). Once more, Untz had a talk about GNOME project. In the same month, Guillaume Desmottes talked about Telepathy/OLPC/Tubes at a Brussels LUG event. In November, the Gutsy Party in Paris had talks about GNOME project, its overall philosophy, and the 2.20 release. In November, a talk about GNOME was given at the Journée Méditerranéenne du Logiciel Libre (JM2L). Finally in December, Xavier Claessens, Guillaume Desmottes and Frédéric Péters organized a small event to introduce people to GNOME development in Brussels.

Following a very positive experience in 2006, GNOME-FR again organized the GNOME presence at FOSDEM, which was considered a success. Christophe Fergeau organized the GNOME devroom, with many great talks, thanks to speakers coming from several countries. GNOME-FR offered free t-shirts, designed by Andreas Nilsson, to Foundation members who had registered beforehand. The “GNOME Love/Hate Wall” attracted many comments and you could see people walking by stop and read the wall. Vincent Untz also took many photos of people with a small "I ♥ GNOME" sheet.

GNOME-FR plans for 2008 involve the production of a new t-shirt, something that was not possible this year, and an even stronger presence at the largest FLOSS events in the French speaking countries.

India

The GNOME community in India has been existence for over three years, consisting of users and a small group of developers. The glue that keeps this community is communication through social networks. Until this past year there was not a large push to transform the social/personal network into an achievable set of tasks.

The GNOME India community conceived the GNOME Project Day at FOSS.IN 2007, one of the largest FOSS related events in India with the objective of coaching and mentoring newer contributors by showing how to participate and what tools can be used to contribute. To appeal to a larger base of users the sessions at the Project Day covered a broad segment of the GNOME project, including topics related to GNOME Art, the Translation Project, and Bug Triaging. New and upcoming technologies such as Clutter were also discussed at the Project Day.

The challenge for the GNOME India community now is to follow-up on the ideas discussed during the Project Day and make them actually happen. In order to achieve that goal the group plans to organize on a consistent basis in 2008 and focus on a greater GNOME presence through talks and workshops at events, coordination with companies who are part of GNOME community and have Indian operations, communication with academics and institutions to grow the GNOME presence in education, and organization of local GNOME merchandise. They also plan to investigate the possibility of creating a registered entity that would allow an easier transaction of funds.

Turkey

The GNOME Turkey community launched a new design for their website in 2007 (http://www.gnome.org.tr). The redesign involved help from other user groups, especially for the graphics, resulting in improved relationships between the groups. The new web site has a improved translation management system, and uses Joomla for content management.

The group also started 'GNOME Sohbetleri' talks at Universities this year, with the first talk being held at METU. The next talk is scheduled to happen at Cankaya University. Discussions are ongoing with four more Universities, and efforts are in place to make the University student clubs aware of the activities of GNOME Turkey.

The GNOME Turkey community is also extremely pleased to help host the next GUADEC, due to take place in Istanbul during July 2008.

For 2008, the GNOME community in Turkey plans to improve the translation management system, spread 'GNOME Sohbetleri' to different cities, especially the smaller ones, and of course, host a great GUADEC 2008.

Australia, China, Spain, and US

Australia’s GNOME conference, GNOME.conf.au, was hosted in Sydney at linux.conf.au in 2007. The conference was spread across 2 days, with a variety of topics being discussed, both technical and non technical. Both new and upcoming technologies and applications for GNOME were explained and demonstrated, as well as topics such as the re-branding of GNOME.

In China, the local GNOME community is working hard on the organization of the GNOME Asia Summit which will take place in Beijing in 2008, with the date still to be defined. The GNOME Asia Summit will play an important role in building a sustainable community in China and potentially in other Asian countries.

The Spanish GUADEC, GUADEC-ES was held in Granada (Andalusia, Spain) during July. A large number of topics were presented, ranging from discussions about GNOME technologies in mobile devices to presentations on Free/Open Source software for graphics artists. Before GUADEC-ES, in March, Spain also hosted the first ever GUADEMY, a conference attended by both GNOME and KDE developers. The conference saw a number of discussions on how GNOME and KDE fit together, and how each can benefit from the work done by each other. The end of the conference was marked by a football match between the GNOME and KDE developers, with the GNOME team winning in the end.

In June, the first US GNOME user group was created in Chicago at BARcamp Chicago. Its members hope to inspire other users to band together and create groups in cities all around the US. In 2008, the Chicago GNOME User Group has plans to host a GNOME booth at the Flourish Conference April 4-5th. They also will be hosting a GNOME 2.22 Release Party to show off the new features of GNOME 2.22.

Design notes

See sketch here. This one will most likely take two pages. Not sure if we divide into sections per country of just write a straight text.