KDE at FISL 13

Some KDE Brazil people at FISL 13

The 13th International Free Software Forum (FISL 13) – in portuguese, Fórum Internacional de Software Livre – happened almost a month ago, but only now I found the time to report the KDE community participation at the event.

FISL 13 is the biggest event related to free software and free culture in Brazil. Certainly, it is one of the biggest events of its kind in the world. Thousands of participants (7709!), hundreds of lectures (584!), community events, workshops, community booths, speeches, and in the corridors have several developers, designers, hackers, and digital culture activists.

The KDE community was present with an interesting programming. We set up a booth that drew much attention and stood out in the area targeting users/developers groups. I am preparing a special blogpost just on our stand. 😉

We had KDE souvenirs like T-shirts, stickers, and pins at our table, with special emphasis on brooches with Brazilian regional representations of Konqi. A banner commemorating the KDE 15th anniversary identified among the other groups. We also had some notebooks with KDE to people observe and experience our software.

But what really drew attention was the Konqi fantasy commissioned by Tomaz. It is huge, and Konqi was very funny, with a charismatic and good-natured face. Wear it is extreme very hard, two people are required to assist the “pilot” to put the armor. Inside is very hot, almost impossible to see, and the moves are complicated to implement. But it is fun to see a huge green dragon dancing and walking the halls.

I could not resist =D

The main Konqi pilot was Tomaz, but many people took turns on the task of giving life to our mascot, like Wagner, me and another couple of people who out of nothing appeared asking if they could be for some time a big, charismatic, and bighead green dragon. = D

@tatianepires is happy because Konqi is at FISL

When he was not walking and dancing around, Konqi was assembled in our booth, sitting in two chairs. Several people took pictures with him, keeping a reminder of KDE. Our stand also became a focal point of children that were looking admired for our dragon. They came out of there with chocolate and blue and white balloons.

We were on the event schedule with an extensive program of lectures and courses, plus “special guests” especially in activities of free software and education groups.

Some of our highlights this area were the lecture and workshop of Sebastian Kügler, or Sebas for friends 😉 We are very happy that he has accepted the invitation to come to Brazil to attend the event, and we hope he has enjoyed their stay here. 😉

Sebas, together with Daker, held a workshop on developing applications to multidevice using Plasma KD technology. Two days later, it was time to present the Plasma Active, KDE for tablets, and talk about the platform, such as KDE is considering the future of free software in the mobile computing scenario, and what the future of KDE on these devices.

Sebas’s course. Image by Olga Produções

We had a relax moment where we organized a pre-KDE 4.9 Release Party in a bar at the city (the Penguin’s Bar = D) where we could drink some and relax a bit.

Izabel cracked our photo with OpenSUSE banner!

One last word about the FISL, a girl who had never used Krita was our stand and simply made wonderful drawings with the software. It seemed that she had complete familiarity with the tool! A KDE guy recorded a screencast of her preparing a “D&D version” of Konqi adult. By the way, where is the video? Well, the final design is below:

Well, I can only say that this FISL 13 was very good for KDE Brazil. We give more visibility to the project, we set up a booth really cool, presents an excellent programming to the event and we rely on the presence of our friend Sebas. Again, I would like to thank Sebastian for having accepted our invitation to visit the Brazilian lands. Also thanks to ASL, Paulo Meirelles, and Rodrigo Troian, who did everything necessary to make possible the coming of Sebas. Thanks guys!

We’re trying to create a new kind of relationship with the FISL, and the goal is to have, in all editions of the event, an international speaker invited to present news about KDE project.

We’re awaiting the FISL 14, and hope to see you all there!