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General description

The 2009 Gran Canaria Desktop Summit is the first event of its kind, co-locating the KDE community conference Akademy, and the GNOME Users and Developers' Conference (GUADEC) from July 3rd to July 11th 2009 in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain. This year's conference marks the first time that Akademy and GUADEC will be co-located.

Akademy 2009 also represents a community landmark; it will be the first major KDE community conference since the release of KDE 4.2 -- the first KDE 4 release intended for universal adoption. As such, having released a stable and mature platform, the KDE community is now in a strong position to continue innovating.

The aim of this year's Akademy is to help KDE community refocus on the key aspects of KDE 4 development. In particular this we are asking for presentations with a particular focus on:

• Beauty: One of the fundamental inherent attributes of a desktop environment is its aesthetics, in appearance, interaction design, and technology. We are seeking presentations about beauty in user Interface design, particularly organic concepts realized in applications or in Plasma applets, showcases of desktop artwork and sounds, and other examples of appealing interfaces.
• Portability: Today "portability" is just as much about hardware as it is operating systems. Modern software may need to be run on anything from a mobile phone to a server. We are seeking presentations on KDE and operating systems, distributions, mobile KDE and KDE on netbooks.
• Functionality: The aesthetics and portability of KDE are nothing without underlying functionality. Therefore, we are also seeking presentations on KDE applications, frameworks and services.
• We also welcome presentations which don't fit into one of the key areas, but illustrate interesting developments in technology or community, or give insight into innovative ideas which have the potential to shape the future.

Submission Details

The Akademy program committee invites presentation submissions from all KDE contributors -- translators, artists, coders, writers, researchers and organizers. We also welcome presentations by people from projects around KDE, from industry or research partners, or from KDE-related efforts about Free Software, Free Culture and Free
Content.

We are asking for four types of submissions:

• 30 minute presentations about a KDE topic
• Technical paper and a 30 minutes presentation about a KDE topic
• 30 minute presentations about a cross-desktop topic
• 5 minute lightning talks 

New this year, in addition to 30 minute presentations on a KDE topic, presenters will have the option of submitting a technical paper of 4 to 6 pages to be included in a digital proceedings. Evaluation and acceptance of the technical paper will be independent to the evaluation and acceptance of the related presentation.

In addition to these 30 minute presentations, the GCDS we will also be hosting shared lightning talks, 5 minute presentations (with or without slides) in a contiguous time block, and we will be accepting proposals for BOFs and workgroups which will be held from Tuesday July 7th until Saturday July 11th. 

Please submit abstracts of under 500 words for 30 minute presentations to akademy-talks@kde.org. Include your name, title of your presentation, a short abstract of your presentation, intent to submit a technical paper, a short bio, and a photo suitable for the web.

We also welcome informal proposals for 5 minute lightning talks. Please send your name, topic, and a short description to akademy-talks@kde.org, if you are willing to hold a lightning talk in the shared program or at Akademy. All topics around the Free Software Desktop are welcome.

The deadline for 30 minute presentations, BOFs, and lightning talks is Friday April 10th, 2009; speakers will be notified about acceptance or rejection of the proposal on April 24th. The deadline for sumbission of a full-text technical paper is June 8th. The deadline for the corresponding presentation is the same as for deadlines without a full-text paper submission.

The program committee for Akademy 2009 is:

• Paul Adams
• Pradeepto Bhattacharya
• Bertjan Broeksema
• Marijn Kruisselbrink
• Celeste Lyn Paul
• Cornelius Schumacher

If you have questions or comments about the call for participation, the program of the conference or anything else related to the conference, you can reach the program committee at akademy-talks@kde.org.