Akademy CfP: Deadline Approaches

Another year, another opportunity to annoy Nuno Pinheiro with some terrible "engineer art" that I produced many moons ago (see header image). This, my friends in KDE, is why you should be going to Akademy and why you should talk there.

Akademy: The Social Heartbeat of KDE

Akademy, in short, is the annual conference of the KDE community. If you are interested in KDE, you should go. If you contribute to KDE, you should definitely go. Why? Because Akademy is the event where we have the opportunity to evaluate our position and to look forward, in a face-to-face manner. It does not matter if you work on libs, or Plasma or that game. What is important is that this is the location for getting your voice heard.

Three major ways of doing this:

• Take part in the eV AGM which is always co-located with Akademy. I will spare you another lecture on what the eV is and why it is important. If you understand why the eV is important, you will understand why it is important to be at that meeting and to contribute your voice to the effort of supporting the wider KDE community.
• The hallway track! Do not underestimate the power of the hallway track at Akademy. Between talks, over lunch, at the end of the day before you grab a beer... Whenever. The hallways of Akademy are always filled with the noises of people discussing KDE and where they want to see it go.
• And, finally, give a talk! It is this final point I am writing abut today...

Happy Talk, Keep Talking Happy Talk

So there is a shiny shiny Call for Papers. On there you will see my name; I'm part of the committee evaluating talks. There are some specific topics we mention in that CfP that we would love to see people talk about. However, it is worth remembering, I'm a simple dude. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what people want to talk about. So submit your talk on anything, so long as it is relevant and interesting to the KDE community.

Akademy is very good at producing navel-gazing content. And I have no problem with that at all. This event is our one opportunity each year to evaluate where we are at. But it is always great to get more visionary content, too.

Where is Plasma going?

The Strategy

We have three (actually it is four) different types of content planned for this year's Akademy. Here is how I would think they are best used:

• Workshop: 30 to 120 minutes. This is for the hands-on stuff. Want people to make better use of your library? Perhaps you want to run a tutorial on the basics of creating a plugin for Akonadi. Or whatever... This is what you should be submitting if  you people to have a hands-on experience.
• Talk: These will mostly be 30 minutes, but might be longer in certain cases. These are the perfect avenue for forward-looking content, in my opinion. Want to start a discussion around where your part of KDE is going? Then submit one of these.
• Fast Track: These are great for the "here is where I'm at" content and are 10-minute presentations; a report on the status quo. Perhaps you want to give a brief update of something you announced in a previous year, for example.
• Lightning Talk: Often overlooked, Lightning Talks are hugely important. For me, they are all about ideas. You have got 5 minutes to make people interested in your idea. They are, in essence, food for thought and inspiration for the hallway track.

Time Is Running Out...

The deadline in March 31st. So get those talks in. And soon.

So, if there is something you want to talk about at Akademy, submit a talk. Submit many talks! This is your primary opportunity for the year to get your message across and make a difference to the future of our community!

In Conclusion

Last year we had an entire track dedicated to oxidised brass instruments. Important stuff.