so there was a bunch of blognoise over the last couple of days regarding the recent desktop linux conference (dlc) in ottawa and kde's appearance there, or relative lack thereof. i don't care to comment on the dlc as i wasn't there so have no first hand knowledge.
that's right: i live in the country and i wasn't there. granted, i'm a four hour airplane ride away, but still: why wasn't i there? because up until this month i have been your typical north american kde developer.
that is to say, i've been working my ass off at a day job, juggling family and a social life and then hacking on kde in all that time i somehow managed to squeeze out of the day (often the squeezing what done to my sleep and weekends). when one then realizes that there aren't all that many of us in north america (just take a look at the map at worldwide.kde.org) it becomes pretty obvious that there probably isn't a lot of kde specific promo time available on this continent.
making matters worse, when kde hackers have been picked up to work on kde related tech, they usually move to europe to do so. we have a number of american kde hackers over in europe, including scott wheeler, zack rusin and charles samuels who spends much of the year attending university in england. this hasn't helped our relative man power in north america. and we don't even have a "kde canada" or "kde usa"; and it's not for wont of desire but for wont of time available to those of us here working on kde.
contrast this situation with that in europe with the scads of kde developers, multiple regional kde groups and it becomes fairly apparent why the conference coverage and involvement is so much better there than it is here.
but lo! this may be coming to an end! for instance, with my new found kde hacking day life i'll be able to attend probably all the major north american conferences and i'll have a lot more time and energy to devote to increasing the public awareness of kde both here and elsewhere.
additionally, the Open Source Desktop Workshops will be starting up in october with the idea of marching this show all around north america training up new developers who can spread the kde goodness around the continent. you can see the OSDW draft website here, but please don't submit it slashdot quite yet. it'll be moving to a faster server and needs copy adjustments before we do that ;) the pr engine around OSDW is about start this coming week, so we'll have lots of time to spread the word about it!
and finally: who knows. maybe some energetic and enterprising kde fan, or better yet a gaggle of energetic and enterprising kde fans, will set up a kde north america regional kde group and, to quote emeril, kick it up a notch.
peace, luv, happiness and kisses all around.
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Well, with any luck Jes Hall should have kde-nz setup soon and we can follow with kde-au.
Kde oceania here we come!
Any chance of it showing up near Seattle? I'm a highschool student and lack funds to travel anywhere, but am majorly interested in becoming a bonafide KDE dev.
@Seb
awesome news! it will be great to see a solid, visible presence in australia and new zealand ...
once such a presence is seen then people tend to pour out of the wood work to join in. it just needs someone(s) to get the ball rolling to inspire others to confidence that it's Real.
@aaron
hm. i don't know how i feel about another aaron in the project ;) but seriously... i'm thinking: new england, texas, toronto, pacific north west ...
so seattle is a good possibility. it's actually a decent location due to it's centrality in the region; we could get people from vancouver (canada, not the fake version in washington state ;) to portland ...
we could get people from vancouver (canada, not the fake version in washington state ;) to portland ..
Hey, i resent that. :)
- Location: Vancouver, Wa.
But, Portland or Seattle would be very nice.
@casey
lol ... well, see, i spent a number of years around vancouver, b.c. ;)
but yes, if we can get enough interest in the area, that would be great. in fact, if we can get enough interest in the pac-nor-west i'll bump it up the schedule accordingly.
we basically aim for ~100 attendees, to give you an idea of the targets. and i had actually considered doing new england and texas first, but i'm a believer in going where the demand is =)
The problem with N. America KDE is that we're just too big. I guess as an organization for media contacts and such its a good idea, but we can't have BBQs like NL does.
@Ian: you can, if you can get the same "developer density" europe has...
There'll be one more KDE developer in Calgary from this fall. Me! Well, sort of developer. Occasional hacker would be more accurate.
It's sad that the brightest devs get called away to Europe. Of course, I really don't begrudge them, but it does hinder the North American promo effort. I think a major problem we have is that there is no strong KDE industry going on. This could be due to lack of developers, though, since it seems KDE devs are more likely to start such companies. I keep thinking more and more about a commercial KDE support company, and wonder when such companies will start springing up in North America.
@james
woah! be sure to look me up when you are in town!
@jkeel
it's a chicken and egg problem in many ways. companies don't want to use a technology they can't get support for, and it's hard to build a support company around a product that isn't in enough use.
this leaves us with bootstrapping the demand (creating a market) and enabling IT companies with other means of income to be able to start offering KDE services without it becoming a liability to them.
not the easiest of tasks, but i believe we can do it. the SMB market is key to this IMHO.
Well, Ian, I don't think US / Canada will be catching up in terms of developer density anytime soon. Project distribution aside, the population density of the EU is seven times that of US / Europe. That's why despite being being from the US and having been involved in KDE whilst there, I'd never been to an OSS event prior to moving to Europe several years ago.
There was also Ellis (we both moved from Michigan to the same region of southern Germany in the same month), Ken and recently Ben who headed to Europe.
But it does go both ways -- Maks, Dre, Annma and Chris are from Europe, but in North America, Mirko was there for several years until a couple weeks back, also Nadeem and Ravi from India and soon Taj.
One of my anthropologists friends that's currently studying various issues around software development and OSS said that out of the folks that he's surveyed something like 2-3% of OSS developers are living outside of the country that they're originally from, which is freakishly high, with a much higher percentage having lived outside of their home country. OSS developers are just very mobile people; I don't think there's so much of an outflux from the US as a continual flux of OSS developers jumping countries.
Two corrections: comment should have been directed to superstoned rather than Ian and "US / Europe" should have been "US / Canada".
@scott
yes, there's a fairly stead moving about. however it's much harder for those who aren't native to the area to do the promo type stuff. i mean, think of yourself heading up promo in Germany =)
there are far more native europeans in their respective countries for kde than there are americans/canadians in our countries. esp canada.
There are absolute TONS of LUGs around here that I'm sure would be interested in having their members attend. I can compile a list and send out emails asking how many would be interested in attending, if you would like.
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