ljarchive

Hey folks, just a little heads up about what's happening internally within the KDE marketing juggernaut. (Seriously, I've seen comments referring to us in such a fashion... do they know we're about 15 volunteers?)

Anyway, since we need to compete with Microsoft's marketing budget, which is on the order of 3 billion USD, we've done really well without spending much money at all. I mean, we have estimates of around 50-100 million KDE software users worldwide, which is quite substantial.

Well, I don't have a copy of my presentation video yet to share with people, it is coming. This weekend, KDE was quite busy, with presences in at least three places: Toronto, Phoenix, and somewhere in Brazil. I had my hands full in Toronto for the one day Ontario Linux Fest. For the most part, the attendees were users or project reps from a number of open source endeavours, and at least some local hardware integrators.

Hi guys,

Just a reminder, if you live in the Toronto area, I'm speaking at onlinux.ca this Saturday about KDE 4. If you're in town, this is the largest open source event in the immediate region, so come on down.

A video will likely be posted afterward as Charles from archive.org is filming.

Cheers

Now with name change to the Ontario GNU Linux Fest (RMS wins this round of childish naming nonsense).

Anyway, the event is on Saturday, October 24th at the Days Hotel near the craziness that is the highway 400 and 401 intersection. See the website for maps. There are a few KDE hackers and related personalities in the area, and we'll likely try to arrange some beers (for lack of Irn-Bru). If you're a KDE user or contributor in the Toronto, Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, Montreal [...] area, let's meet in person!

Who invented the phrase 'eat your own dogfood' - it's so much fun to say! Although the idea of taking it literally is gross for some reason...

Overnight, Ars published a review of mine that corresponds roughly to Beta 2 (I checked out the sources about 24 hours after beta 2 was tagged). Ever since I built that specific version last week, I've been living in KDE 4 full time. And you know, it hasn't even been that bad.

One of the problems with an ever growing, ever evolving project like KDE is that we leave a lot of crumbs all over the internet from started and aborted projects. These take the form of websites, mailing lists, svn subdirectories, wiki entries, etc. which may have little or no relevance to the current project. Some of these are indeed, very old, but still provide misdirection to users (and developers) who are looking for more relevant information.

One of the common things that happens in the open source world are things that do not work. I've been using Linux/FreeBSD for ages, and KDE for just as long, and my general expectations for things working are still pretty low for a lot of things. I guess being dumped at a console the first time installing Linux will give you that perspective.

Yeah, I know, not a KDE related blog. Not really anyway. I got bored monitoring Google Blogsearch for "KDE" for long enough to distract myself with another project. I think I've gone and gotten myself mixed up with politics again. While KDE has, in itself, nothing to do with politics, I've discovered that many of the skills that I've picked up while doing marketing and related activities for KDE can transfer into that realm relatively easily. For example, conference planning, public speaking, writing, promoting, etc.

Hey, so I've elected myself to give a speech (if approved) and help guard a KDE table (approved) at the Ontario Linux Fest, Oct. 24th (2009). One of the post-docs that works in my lab has kindly offered a ride into Toronto on a Thursday night, returning Sunday. If I take him up on this offer, I'd need to find a place to stay in Toronto for three nights. Being a student, I try to avoid shelling out hotel money when I know peeps in the area, so I'm wondering if there's anyone in TO that'd be willing to lend a couch to a gearhead for a few nights :)

I'm looking for a book to read but along a certain line of reading. Think Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers or Ayn Rand's Atlus Shrugged. Books that strongly expose a philosophy through narrative. I don't particularly care what philosophy, but I enjoy reading these sorts of things in this fashion. Any suggestions?

[Edit: as this is part of an archive now, I figured I'd note down some of the better comments that come in on livejournal, where the above was originally posted.]