Welcome to GUADEC 2006!
If you are reading these lines in Vilanova i la Geltrú, you are surely contributing to the success of the biggest GNOME Conference ever. Size is not all that matters, but seven days full of scheduled and free-form activities speak almost for themselves. We are expecting around 500 participants, half of them staying in the GNOME Village overnight and making the most of this precious meeting time. And we are facing this event with solid corporate and institutional support brought by a colourful collection of sponsors, partners and co-organisers.
Well, we just wanted to have a conference as good as GNOME, the free software project that motivates us to share so much time, ideas and energy together. A conference exciting, interesting and useful not only to the GNOME core developers, but also to the community at its widest scope. A week to cook actions and projects to excite, interest and serve our societies, the final target of our work. A target we are already hitting in many aspects, even when most of our neighbours are still not aware. We wanted to have a big conference to work better, but also to help get more noticed in our surroundings.
We are experimenting a lot in GUADEC's 7th edition and we hope you bring your best inspiration to be creative as well. The staff and the dozens of volunteers involved in the organisation are doing their best to provide all the elements needed to have a good conference. But it is you who can turn the plans and processes into Community Magic. It is you who can make of this week a before and an after in the brief but intense history of GNOME and Free Software. It is you who can extend this magic to your everyday life back at home.
GUADEC 2006 will close at some point in the eve of July 1st, but in fact it will last longer thanks to 500 trails departing from Vilanova to the five continents. Bring GUADEC with you, tell your friends, share your pictures, write your story, mail the press, wear the t-shirt, use the bag, invite new people, meet locally, seed a new conference to generate more actions and trails...
Enjoy GUADEC and help make this World a better place. GNOME helps.