GUADEC
Posted by George Wright Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:12:00 GMT
So, this year I decided to go to GUADEC. This is mainly because Collabora were willing to send me and cover things like hotel fees and travel.
It’s certainly a bit different to aKademy. For a start, it seems to be a lot less aimed at uniting free software developers (which is the impression I’ve found at aKademy) and more geared towards corporate awareness. I think this reflects in the fact that everyone has to pay a conference fee (unlike aKademy) and there are far more corporate delegates.
There’s also no concept of a ‘hacking room’ like at aKademy and the internet connection is much worse (two 8Mbit ADSL lines bonded together shared between 400-500 delegates), but it’s not too bad.
The talks here last all week instead of just on the weekend, which I think is probably better in this case as the delegates are normally sent here as part of their job, whereas aKademy is normally a personal commitment for the attendees, and so the different timings reflect those differences. There are lots of interesting talks lined up for the ”Core” schedule, which I will certainly try to get to.
Unfortunately, I’m only here until Wednesday as I’ve got The Imperial meeting starting on Thursday which I need to get to, but there are at least a lot of interesting talks on Tuesday and Wednesday which I’ll be able to attend.
And finally, I’ve managed to blag 7 free t-shirts so far this week, which is a definite win in my book!
Well, focussing their yearly meeting on the corporate world did pay off - they have much more corporate backing than KDE. We focussed on hackers, and that’s what we got - a lot more hackers.
Mind you, Guadec also will work uniting - the feeling that you have the support of all those companies, this big money - that’s good.
Anyway, can you keep us posted for the big Gnome plans? I wonder if they have any new stuff.
Assembly vs. E3 yet again?
To be fair, several GUADECs had had great connectivity and a larger hacking room, in particular I’m thinking the Dublin GUADEC which was in Dublin uni campus. Two bonded ADSL lines was the best we could do in Birmingham, and we had to pay to get that installed.
Also non-professional attendees pay a vastly reduced fee, and can always apply for sponsorship. I think something like £30K was spent by the Foundation on sponsoring people to get to GUADEC.