Today is the first day of Latinoware, at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. The website lists this as the biggest edition so far, around 4,000 people already registered. And if you go to the site you will see that KDE is listed as one of the supporters, as well as iNdT (Nokia's research institute in Recife, Brazil).
The event schedule shows 5 KDE presentations in the first day, including Anne-Marie Mahfouf, Artur, Hélio, Caio, Eduardo and James. For tomorrow Adrian de Groot is listed. And, to top it all, there will be no less than 3(!) courses on KDE/Qt programming. Sandro and Tomaz will first teach the basics of Qt programming, and then will do another round as a crash course specific to KDE 4 application programming, and geared towards getting even more contributors to the project here. Then Jesus will do yet another course, this time focusing on what is new in Qt4.6: State Machine Framework, Animation Framework, new features of QtWebKit, QGraphicsAnchorLayout and QGraphicsEffect. Each of these courses is a full 6h session, btw. I liked how these were layered, so people of all skill levels could find something appropriate.
KDE will also have a booth there, and the nice people from the LiveBlue and KDE-MG user/developers groups are making sure the community aspect is not overshadowed by our technical presence at the event. In fact, they are organizing a bunch of activities that aim to increase the interaction with would-be contributors and basically everyone at the conference. One example mentioned by Amanda is a "suggestion whiteboard" and contest for new KDE features and ideas, which will be always opened. And it is rumored that there will be t-shirts and other cool stuff as well, all made by local user groups. Fred from SLEducacional (brazilian largest group of educators and free software enthusiasts) will also be there, hopefully wearing his KDE hat in-between GCompris demonstrations. Well... I am eager to read the reports from Foz over the next few days.
Hum... and what does this have to do with the blog title, one might ask? Well, this is the sixth edition of Latinoware. And we had no KDE presence in the first three. Then, three years ago, on the fourth edition, I sent a submission to talk about KDE Games there, and started building bridges, together with Helio. Last year we had a substantially larger presence and this was important to begin forming several groups of people hacking KDE on different areas of the country, and this has exploded into a much larger presence today. And I realize this is yet another strength of open source and open source communities: the ability to layer your work on top of what was done before, incrementally. It does not depend on one or two people doing all the work: you can make your contribution and let it run wild, and see what comes out of it. Just like building KDE4, where you start with the pillars and a few years later there is a explosion of creativity on top of them, the community building appears to work in much like the same way, growing quickly and surprisingly positive directions. I can only imagine what we will be able to achieve by next year, in both fisl and latinoware.
Special thanks to Adrian and Anne-Marie for coming all the way down here, and help making KDE even better in South America!

My first Qt-based project was a commercial database front-end, the Arca Database Browser, released in 2003. At the same time we decided to release an open-source version of it on SF.net. This was before Qt had SQLite support, btw... well, It turned out to be very popular, and despite my lack of updates for the past 3 years there are a lot of people using it, at least according to the feedback I get occasionally and the SF.net statistics.

I was thinking about revisiting the project for a facelift, Qt4 update, bug fixing. And then it happened: I got a message from SF.net saying that someone made the first donation to the project. Ever. So I am getting USD 3.60 (after the fees), apparently. I will use it to buy a glass of wine, but not a very expensive one :)

The first one is the most important :) My son Theo was born last Monday, July 27th, 5:34AM, at home, after a rainy night, and just before the sunrise. He arrived 2 weeks before the predicted date, sparing us from the worries of the last days.


The second one will arrive tomorrow, one week after the predicted date... KDE 4.3 contains a lot of work from a group of developers I admire a lot. I could not contribute much during this cycle (see gift #1), so good job, people. And it will (I hope) be followed by more gifts, as my 40th birthday is also tomorrow (August 4th).
A lucky week, will be hard to top.

Last week we had a great time at fisl, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The event was huge, more than 8,000 people, including the president of the country, Lula. Politics aside, it is nice to see official support for FLOSS events, and this surely gives credibility to the work we are all doing.
KDE was present with several talks. Adenilson presented his work in kde-pim. Alexis Menard talked about Qt everywhere. Tomaz Canabrava gave a beginner's introduction to KDE 4, and Leonardo Cunha showed Qt Kinetic. Sandro Andrade detailed his work in visualization for KDevelop as part of the GSoC, and we had two one-hour panels on Saturday as well: the first was the KDE Brazil Users and Developers Meeting, and the second was a space to plan KDE Brazil's actions for 2009-2010.
I also gave a lecture about open source game development processes, focused on desktop games, with an analysis of kde-games and gnome-games. The room was full (about 200 people I guess), and the talk was also relayed to another location via video, so I was a bit nervous at first, specially because none of my two computers worked at first with the projector (cable problems...) And Stallman (the previous presenter in the auditory) took his time to disconnect :) But thankfully everything worked (thanks to Alessandro Silva for the help), and the presentation was great: we could engage in a very interesting discussion about tools for game creation and the relative advantages of using 2D and 3D techniques. I am swamped right now trying to catch up with the work that has piled up during last week, but I promise to elaborate on it in the near future. If you were on the lecture, we will soon have a list to discuss those ideas, and maybe they will end up in some KDE project one day.
On another note, it was nice to meet Leslie Hawthorn. I had a chance to coordinate her presentation about Community Management, and it was very interesting. She seemed to be enjoying the event a lot.
PS: Speaking of Stallman, there is a great video showing his "dance with the GNU" here (middle of page). It kind of shows the relaxed atmosphere of fisl, a great event where people congregate to celebrate not only free software, but also free culture in general.




[pt_BR]

Semana passada nos divertimos bastante no fisl, em Porto Alegre, Brasil. É um evento gigante, com mais de 8.000 pessoas, e desta vez incluindo o Lula. Deixando a política partidária de lado, é legal ver suporte oficial para eventos de software livre. Isso com certeza dá mais credibilidade ao trabalho que estamos fazendo.
O KDE estava presente em diversas palestras. Adenilson mostrou seu trabalho no kde-pim. Alexis Menard falou sobre Qt em várias plataformas. Tomaz Canabrava deu uma palestra introdutória sobre KDE 4, e Leonardo Cunha mostrou o Qt Kinetic. Sandro Andrade detalhou o seu trabalho em visualização para o KDevelop como parte do GSoC, and tivemos ainda dois painéis de uma hora cada no sábado: o primeiro foi o Encontro de Usuários e Desenvolvedores KDE Brasil, e o segundo um espaço para planejar nossas açoes em 2009-2010.
Eu também dei uma palestra sobre desenvolvimento de jogos livres, focada em uma análise do kde-games e gnome-games, além de outros. A sala estava lotada (umas 200 pessoas acho), e a palestra estava sendo transmitida para outro local via vídeo, e devo confessar que no começo fiquei um pouco nervoso, especialmente porque nenhum dos meus dois computadores funcionou a principio com o projetor (era o cabo, ufff.) E o Stallman tinha falado antes no mesmo local, e demorou um pouquinho para se desconectar também :) Mas tudo funcionou finalmente (obrigado ao Alessandro Silva pela ajuda), e a apresentação foi boa: pudemos iniciar uma discussão interessante a respeito de ferramentas para criação de jogos e as vantagens relativas de se usar técnicas 2D e 3D. Eu estou atolado de trabalho acumulado para fazer esta semana, mas prometo aprofundar esta discussão em um futuro próximo. Se você estava na palestra, logo teremos uma lista para discutir essas e outras idéias, e talvez algumas delas acabem em algum projeto do KDE logo logo.
Mudando de assunto, foi legal conhecer a Leslie Hawthorn. Tive a chance de coordenar a apresentação dela sobre Gerenciamento de Comunidades, e foi bem interessante. Ela parecia estar gostando do evento bastante.

PS: Falando no Stallman, tem um vídeo genial mostrando sua "dança com o GNU" aqui (meio da página). Mostra bem a atmosfera relaxada do fisl, um evento fantástico onde as pessoas se reúnem para celebrar não apenas software livre, mas a cultura livre em geral.

Confirmed! This year we will again have a community gathering at fisl. It will be the second "Forum KDE Brazil for users and developers". If you are going to Poerto Alegre please use this opportunity to make our community stronger.
We will also have several talks covering KDE technologies and the project. I will let each author post about his/her own, though :)
I had a lecture proposal accepted as well. I intend to cover not only KDE, but also other open source game projects, including gnome-games. The title is: "Beyond Tetris and Minesweeper: is a revolution possible in FLOSS game projects?". From the abstract: "We can verify that, unlike what is happening on the desktop arena, FLOSS games are still distant from their proprietary counterparts, and this gap seems to be increasing quickly. Is there a way to revert this trend, using the strength of the community?"
What is your opinion on this subject? Please use the comments or email-me, I want to bring these issues to the event and elaborate on them.


[pt_BR]
Confirmado! Teremos novamente neste ano um evento comunitário no fisl. Será o segundo Encontro Brasileiro de Usuários e Desenvolvedores KDE. Para quem estiver em Porto Alegre é uma boa oportunidade de fortalecer a comunidade brasileira no projeto.
Teremos também outras palestras sobre o KDE: vou deixar que cada autor poste a respeito da sua :)
Uma palestra minha foi aprovada também. Pretendo cobrir não apenas o KDE, mas também outros projetos de games open source, includindo o gnome-games. O título é "Além do Tetris e do Campo Minado: é possível uma revolução nos projetos de jogos em software livre?". Uma parte do resumo: "Podemos constatar que, ao contrário do que acontece no desktop, os jogos em software livre estão cada vez mais distantes dos seus equivalentes no mundo proprietário, e essa diferença está aumentando de maneira rápida. Será que existe uma maneira de se reverter este quadro, utilizando a força da comunidade?"
Qual a sua opinião sobre este assunto? Use os comentários e email, pretendo abrir uma discussão sobre isso e levar as opiniões coletadas para o evento.

The ProInfo project has just released version 3 of Linux Educacional, their Linux-based distribution bundled with computer labs for public schools in Brazil. This version has several new items, including a new EduBar (Java-based) and lots of content, 20GB of videos, text and animations. It is also built on top of Kubuntu 8.4, where previous versions used Debian. It is too early to tell how this will impact the project, but I find it positive that the team is evaluating different technologies, at least. Desktop is of course our beloved KDE 3.5, as development of this version started 8 months ago. I look forward for the day where we will have a KDE 4.2 or 4.3-based Linux Educational, and the team starts experimentation with plasmoids and other technologies introduced in our project, but I am happy they are apparently delivering on what was promised last year.

Before commenting about the technical choices, I would ask people to download the ISO, and give it a spin. It can be found here. Notice that burning instructions are given for K3B, nice :)

I blogged about this project before here. One characteristic of the project I find interesting is their use of hardware and software to drive up to 10 different desktops from a single CPU. And no, this is not virtualization, and not a thin-client based solution as well. You can get more information about it from here . From my tests it seems to work nicely, and the station just "feels" like a normal terminal. So they are multiplying users (30,000 labs have already been delivered according to the latest info) , but not multiplying the emissions at the same rate, thankfully. According to  this blogger the technology saves up to 80% of emissions, which is backed by numbers at the Userful site. Still according to him, and considering the project's goal of 356.800 stations, this saving is equal to 170,000 tons/year in carbon emissions, or the same as 28,000 cars.

This of course is super cool! I mentioned in my talk at Akademy 2008 that sharing a single CPU was the only way to provide labs to rural schools, as the electrical wiring was simply not capable of supporting 10 full machines turned on at the same time on remote locations. But I had not considered the emissions problem. So kudos to the team, as they are apparently on track in their "multiply users without multiplying energy consumption" goal.

[pt_BR}
O projeto ProInfo acabou de lançar a versão 3 do Linux Educacional, a distribuição deles baseada em Linux e instalada nos laboratórios de informática das escolas públicas brasileiras. Esta versão tem diversos itens novos, incluindo uma nova EduBar feita em Java e muito conteúdo (20GB de vídeos, textos e animações). Esta versão usa como base o Kubuntu 8.4, enquanto as versões anteriores usavam o Debian. É muito cedo para dizer como isto vai afetar o projeto, mas eu acho positivo que o time de desenvolvimento esteja olhando para diferentes tecnologias, é um bom sinal. O desktop é claro o nosso amado KDE 3.5, já que o desenvolvimento começou oito meses atrás, no mínimo. Eu aguardo com ansiedade o dia em que eles vão disponibilizar um Linux Educacional baseado no KDE 4.2 ou 4.3, quem sabe com o time experimentando com plasmoids e outras tecnologias novas no nosso projeto, mas por enquanto estou feliz com o fato de eles estarem aparentemente entregando o que foi prometido no ano passado.

Antes de comentar as escolhas técnicas, eu pediria para as pessoas baixarem a ISO, e usarem um pouco. Pode ser baixada aqui. Notem que as instruções para queimar o CD são para o K3B, legal :)

Eu falei sobre este projeto antes, aqui. Uma característica interessante é o uso de hardware e software para suportar até 10 desktops diferentes com uma única CPU. E não, isto não é virtualização, e também não é uma solução baseada em thin-clients. Mais informações estão disponíveis aqui  Nos meus testes parece funcionar muito bem, e a estação se comporta como um terminal comum. Então, eles estão multiplicando usuários (30.000 laboratórios já entregues), mas não estão multiplicando as emissões de carbono no mesmo ritmo, felizmente. Leiam mais  neste blog : a tecnologia pode economizar até 80% das emissões, compatível com o que está no site da Userful. Ainda de acordo com o autor do blog, e considerando o objetivo de 356,800 estações do projeto, essa economia equivale a 170.000 tons/ano em emissões de carbono, o equivalente a 28.000 carros.

Isso é bem legal. Eu mencionei na minha palestra na Akademy 2008 que compartilhar uma CPU única era a única maneira de se colocar laboratórios em algumas escolas rurais, já que a fiação elétrica não suportava 10 máquinas ligadas ao mesmo tempo. Mas eu não tinha pensado sobre a economia de energia. Parabéns à equipe do CETE, já que eles aparentemente estão conseguindo manter o objetivo de multiplicar os usuários, sem multiplicar os gastos de energia.

We are organizing release parties for KDE 4.2 at different locations in Brazil: São Paulo, Salvador and Aracaju are confirmed, with more to come. If you want to organize one, add it here, and announce it at the kde-br mailing list.

[pt_BR]
Estamos organizando festas de lançamento do KDE 4.2 em diferentes lugares no Brasil: São Paulo, Salvador e Aracaju já estão confirmadas, e tem mais vindo por aí. Se você quiser organizar uma, adicione aqui, e anuncie na lista kde-br.

[en]

I am back in Brazil, after 5 wonderful days at Negril. CampKDE surpassed every expectation I had, and it was probably the best conference (KDE or not) I ever attended. There was something really special about the location, the relative small number of people and the timing that made it very easy to connect with others. Even with the ones that stayed for fewer days, like Guillermo (respect man!) Maybe it was something they put in the food :) The e.V. was present and QtSoftware/Nokia as well: I look forward for more opportunities to work with Adriaan, Sebas, Thomas and Alexandra, among others. And the organizers did a wonderful job: thanks to Jeff, Wade, Roger, Dmitry... I am not going to talk about everyone, but this was a conference where we could get to know and interact with people in meaningful ways, and the effects of this will be felt on KDE for years to come, as the projects and ideas nurtured there mature into reality. Not to mention the babies, right Marcus and Louise?
I want to highlight that KDAB's training was unexpected, and really, really good. If we had something like this at the next Akademy I am sure the quality of code in the project will instantly reach a new level. So, Akademy organizers, please consider it!
I can see this conference's effects already rippling through our region: people are talking about official representations organized as KDE Mexico, and KDE Jamaica, inspired in part by the great job done by KDE India and Pradeepto. I am sure us brazilians will not stay behind: I can see two 4.2 release parties already at the wiki, and I know a few more are going to be announced soon. Our local community has grown increasingly during 2008 , and I am motivated to help it continue this trend in 2009. Hope to see lots of KDE people during this year, at OpenBossa, FISL and LatinoWare.

[pt_BR]
Estou de volta ao Brasil, depois de 5 dias maravilhosos em Negril. O CampKDE ultrapassou todas as minhas expectativas, e foi provavelmente a melhor conferência entre todas as que participei, KDE ou não. Havia algo realmente especial no lugar, o número relativamente pequeno de pessoas e o momento atual the fizeram com que fosse muito fácil se conectar com os outros, mesmo com os que ficaram por menos dias, como Guillermo (respect, man!). Talvez tenha sido algo que eles colocaram na comida :) O pessoal da e.V. estava presente, bem como a QtSoftware/Nokia: espero ter mais oportunidades de trabalhar com Adriaan, Sebas, Thomas e Alexandra, entre outros. E os organizadores fizeram tudo certinho: valeu Jeff, Wade, Rogger, Dmitry... Eu não vou falar sobre todo mundo, mas esta foi uma conferência onde a gente pode conhecer e interagir com as pessoas de maneira bem significativo, e os efeitos disso vão ser sentidos com certeza no KDE nos próximos anos, à mediada que os projetos e as idéias gerados e nutridos ali maturem. Isso sem mencionar os bebês, certo Marcus e Louise?
Quero também destacar que o treinamento ministrado pela KDAB foi inesperado, e muito, muito bom. Se tivéssemos algo como isso na Akademy tenho certeza que a qualidade do código no projeto vai instantaneamente melhorar. Então fica aqui a sugestão para os organizadores!
Eu já posso ver os efeitos da conferência se espalhando pela região: o pessoal está falanda a respeito de organizar a representação no KDE México e KDE Jamaica, inspirados em parte pelo trabalho feito na KDE India, e por Pradeepto. Eu estou certo que nós brasileiros não vamos ficar para trás: já posso ver duas festas de lançamento do KDE 4.2 no Brasil no wiki, e sei que algumas mais vão ser anunciadas. Nossa comunidade local cresceu bastante durante o ano de 2008, e eu estou motivado para ajudar este crescimento a continuar em 2009. Espero ver todo mundo durante os eventos do ano: OpenBossa, FISL e LatinoWare.

Note to the organizers: thank you for providing lunch, this helps us keep focused on the event and not having to roam around to get something to it. And a special thanks to the cookers: we are getting home-cooked Jamaican stuff, which is great and very similar to Brazilian (rice and beans, and a lot of fruit.)


Till's second part of training is starting right now, and he will cover QConcurrent. At the end of the room, Jos seems to be practicing some sort of writer's yoga, from what I can tell:

Camp KDE is going well, and Jamaica is amazing. Lots of action yesterday, and today I am going to share a presentation slot with Marcus to talk about KDE Edu and KDE Games. Everything is prepared, hope it goes out well. Videos will be available later at the web, according to the organizers.
I did not have time yet to go to the beach, but today I woke up before the sunrise, and took some photos there, including a failed attempt to do a Camp KDE logo at the sand :)



Anyway, it will be interesting to share ideas about KDE Edu and Games with people that know much more than I do about the project! I am hoping to get a lot of feedback that we can use in 4.3 and for the future, and maybe do a BoF tomorrow to learn a bit more.

While reviewing my involvement with KDE in 2008 I realized that 2009 is starting in a similar way: I spent the last week or so making sure we had kdegames translated 100% to pt_BR, much like in the first days of 2008. Of course, not all things are equal. We now have several new games, and the pt_BR translation team is stronger than ever, with huge efforts driven by Boaglio mostly, and epic commit logs by Luiz Fernando Ranghetti. So we are still maintaining 100% for releases, even with several new games available, among them Kapman, bomber, Kblocks and some big ones, like KsirK!
Speaking of KBlocks, this is the first application I wrote from scratch for KDE. It is a nice exercise in using the newer kdegames API and QGV as well, and it is shaping up nicely. It still does not replace everything ksirtet had, but it is more customizable, and hopefully ready for additional expansion. It made its debut in 4.1.
At the beginning of the year I was also contacted by the guys at LTIA, at the state university (UNESP) headquartered at Bauru. They did a wonderful job in KBruch, remodeling the application almost entirely, after attending Akademy. Results are now part of the kdeedu package in KDE 4.2, and I hope this will mark only the beginning of this collaboration.
In Akademy it was great to finally meet Niels Slot, which is keeping the KTurtle app afloat while I am very busy and Cies is doing his world tour. Still we all managed to collaborate a bit and incrementally improve the application: I think the version shipped in 4.2 is better than the one in 4.1, which was better than the one in 4.0, and so on. I think this is the beauty of having a team that can take turns developing the same code, and sharing ideas.
Speaking of Akademy, in 2008 I traveled a lot representing KDE, kdegames and kdeedu. In February I had a presentation at Campus Party Brazil, which ended up putting me in contact with Fausto from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. This contact was reinforced during the first Brazilian KDE Meeting at FISL, which generated several initiatives. I also got interested in the ProInfo effort by MEC, and ended up visiting their team in Brasilia in May. Recently I have not heard much from them directly in the last couple of months, but apparently they have a new release and the project is on track. I will keep you guys posted.
Continuing the trip summary, I went to Akademy to talk about ProInfo, and then also did a talk at Bauru concerning KDE graphics and designers. To close the year we had our first Latin American KDE Forum, at LatinoWare. KDE had a huge presence there, with Helio Castro, Boaglio, Frederico, Tomaz, Sandro, Cristiano, Roberto and Alvaro. We are looking forward for the second edition! Huge thanks to the organizers for sponsoring the travel and accommodations for all involved.
Speaking of sponsorship, I also want to thank the KDE e.V., which sponsored partially my Akademy air ticket. For the oher trips I took during 2008 I was able to fund my expenses, but without their help I would not be able to be there. They will also help me go to Camp KDE, where I will co-host a talk slot with Marcus Hanwell. We will try to step in Eugene's shoes and cover KDE Games and Edu, mixing Avogadro, graphics, community and development in a 1 hour slot. Let us see
Development-wise I did not do so much this year, other than KBlocks. I helped polishing a lot of games and kturtle for 4.1 and now in the final 4.2 sprint, and even managed to do some simple artwork for kapman at the end. I hope I will have more time in 2009 to continue working on the project. The 4.2 release is really inspiring, I am using it as my main desktop for a while now and all of the rough edges have been trimmed significantly.
So, to finish this long post, I hope to see some of you guys and girls tomorrow in Negril. After all...

KDE will have a strong presence next week, at LatinoWare 2008, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. We will have 7 presentation slots, as part the First Latin American KDE Forum. We will also have space to do meetings and interact with the Fedora and Gnome Forum events, taking place at the same location, but at different days.

Big thanks to the organizers, not only for giving us this space, but also for sponsoring travel and lodging for several of our speakers. I do not have words to tell you how much this is appreciated.

Preliminary schedule of talks can be found at

http://lapsi.latinoware.org/index.php?page=grade.GradeEvento&id=1

There will also be an Introductory course on Qt and KDE4 development, teached by Sandro Andrade and Tomaz Canabrava. The information is reproduced below: the course will be in Portuguese, and the slots are limited, so hurry up if you want to take advantage of this opportunity to join our development community!

[pt_BR]
O KDE vai estar presente com força total semana que vem na LatinoWare 2008 em Foz do Iguaçu. Teremos 7 palestras, formando o corpo do Primeiro Encontro Latino Americano do Projeto KDE. Vamos ter também espaço para reuniões e interação com os eventos Forum Gnome e Forum Fedora, que vão ocorrer no mesmo local em dias alternados.

Quero agradecer aos organizadores, não apenas por nos fornecer este espaço, mas também pelo apoio de transporte e estadia para muitos dos palestrantes. Não tenho palavras para dizer o quanto ficamos agradecidos por isso, que está sendo fundamental para a viabilização do evento.

Seguem dados do mini-curso de Desenvolvimento com Qt e KDE 4 que será ministrado pelo Sandro e pelo Tomaz na LatinoWare, semana que vem. Os mini-cursos são gratuitos, mas as vagas são limitadíssimas: corra para o site da LatinoWare e se inscreva neste e em outros mini-cursos que vão acontecer durante os três dias do evente.

Título do mini-curso: Introdução ao Desenvolvimento com Qt4 e KDE4
Instrutores: Sandro Santos Andrade (UFBa/Faculdade Ruy Barbosa) e Tomaz Martins dos Santos Canabrava (Faculdade Ruy Barbosa)
Duracão: 2 slots de 3h cada
Pré-requisitos: fundamentos de orientação a objetos (necessário) e noções de C++ (desejável)

Resumo:
Neste mini-curso serão apresentados os fundamentos do Qt4 e KDE4 (kdelibs), abordando aspectos tais como: facilidades para GUI, meta-objetos, arquitetura model-view, plugins, padrões de projeto e arquiteturais utilizados, idiomas Qt, dentre outros. Uma visão geral
sobre os principais serviços disponibilizados pela kdelibs será também apresentada. O objetivo é apresentar as facilidades e benefícios do uso de tais ferramentas e motivar a formação de novos colaboradores para projetos do KDE4.

Mini-curriculos:

Sandro Andrade (http://sandroandrade.wordpress.com) é doutorando em Ciência da Computação no DMCC (http://dmcc.dcc.ufba.br), Mestre em Mecatrônica e Bacharel em Ciência da Computação, pela Universidade Federal da Bahia. Atua na área de desenvolvimento de sistemas há 10 anos, com foco em tópicos tais como: projeto e desenvolvimento OO, objetos e componentes distribuídos, middleware e frameworks para sistemas de tempo-real, arquiteturas auto-gerenciáveis de software e sistemas autonômicos. É professor do Bacharelado em Ciência da Computação (http://www.dcc.ufba.br), da Especialização Avançada em Sistemas Distribuídos (http://www.lasid.ufba.br/easd) e da Faculdade Ruy Barbosa (http://www.frb.br).
Contribui em projetos de software livre, em particular sistemas desenvolvidos para a plataforma KDE4/Qt4 e no middleware CIAO. Nas (poucas) horas vagas, é pianista em um grupo musical alternativo de Salvador.

Tomaz Canabrava trabalhou na Sxip Identity (uma das empresas criadoras do OpenID) em Vancouver desenvolvendo um plugin de segurança para Firefox chamado Sxipper. Faz parte do Conselho Estudantil da Faculdade Ruy Barbosa e há três anos faz parte do grupo de estudos de Software Livre GNU-Ruy. É Coordenador do projeto Rocs, uma ferramenta de programação visual de grafospara KDE4. Sapateador nas horas vagas, apresentou dois espetáculos musicais no ano de 2008.

[en]

Forum KDE at LatinoWare 2008 is taking shape. We will have a full day of KDE talks and hacking during the event. Details are being finished, but we will talk about everything KDE, from games to Plasma, from coding in PyQt to managing your finances with KMyMoney, from KDE in Fedora to KDE Edu and the work of the pt_BR team. The initial lineup of speakers includes Helio Castro, Roberto Alsina, Alvaro Soliverez, Frederico Gonçalves Guimarães and Cristiano Furtado, with more to come. We will also have a 6 hour workshop that will teach the basics of coding with Qt, C++ and KDE Libs, thanks to our friends Sandro Andrade and Tomaz Canabrava from Faculdade Ruy Barbosa  (http://www.frb.br), Bahia.
Final schedule has not been posted yet, but you can start planning your trip to Foz do Iguaçu. Be there from Oct 30 to Nov 1, and help us strenghten the KDE community in Latin America.

[pt_BR]

O Fórum KDE dentro da LatinoWare 2008 está tomando forma. Teremos um dia inteiro de palestras e hacking sobre o KDE! Estamos finalizando os detalhes, mas falaremos de tudo sobre o KDE, dos jogos até o Plasma, de programação em PyQt ao gerenciamento de suas finaças com o KMyMoney, do KDE no Fedora até o KDE Edu e o trabalho do time de localização para pt_BR. A escalação inicial de palestrantes inclui Helio Castro, Roberto Alsina, Alvaro Soliverez, Frederico Gonçalves Guimarães e Cristiano Furtado, e mais alguns ainda serão confirmados. Nós também vamos ter um workshop de 6 horas ensinando o be-a-bá da programação com Qt, C++ e KDE Libs, graças aos nossos amigos Sandro Andrade e Tomaz Canabrava da Faculdade  Ruy  Barbosa  (http://www.frb.br), Bahia.
A programação final não foi ainda divulgada, mas você já pode começar a planejar a sua viagem para Foz do Iguaçu. Esteja lá de 30 de outubro até 1 de Novembro, e nos ajude a fortalecer a comunidade KDE community na América Latina.

UPDATE: The Festival was cancelled, unfortunately. LatinoWare is coming up in October 30th, though.

[en]
I will be in Brasilia for a free software event, the "Festival de Software Livre". We are planning to have a games arena with KDE Games in all computers, and I will talk about the techniques we use to create games in KDE, and how to participate in the project. It will also be a good chance to meet other KDE contributors in Brazil, including Fernando Boaglio, who is one of the leaders of the pt_BR localization team and will also host a talk at the festival.
More information about the event (in Portuguese) at http://www.festivalsoftwarelivre.org/


[pt_BR]
Nos dias 3 e 4 de outubro eu vou a Brasília participar do Festival de Software Livre, e falar sobre a criação de jogos livres usando o KDE, e como participar do projeto. Vai ser uma boa oportunidade pare reencontrar os amigos que colaboram com o KDE no Brasil, incluindo o Fernando Boaglio, um dos líderes no nosso time de tradução, que também vai palestrar. Seguem informações sobre como participar do evento:

"Abertas as inscrições para o evento Internacional de Software Livre na Capital Federal

Á partir do dia 26/08 estão abertas as inscrições da 3ª Edição do Festival software Livre – DF. Os candidados poderão inscrever-se e participar da realização do evento, nos dias 3 e 4 de outubro, reunindo profissionais e adeptos do Software Livre (SL) com interesse no aprendizado e disseminação da cultura SL. Este será realizado pela Associação de Tecnologias Abertas – ATA, UCB e SERPRO, e organizado pela Training Tecnologia.

Com a expectativa de mais de 2000 participantes, o evento ocorrerá na Universidade Católica de Brasília. Estarão presentes lideranças de Software Livre do Governo Federal, comunidades, professores, pesquisadores e estudantes de diversas áreas; empresários, profissionais e técnicos do setor. O evento contará com a apresentação de palestras , tutoriais, cases de sucesso, oficinas práticas, maratona de Java e brinquedoteca, jogos em software livre, etc. Aproveite esta oportunidade com os melhores e interaja com a comunidade de Software Livre em esfera nacional interessada em seu desenvolvimento e de código aberto, para o compartilhamento de experiências e conhecimento.

Maiores informações em http://www.festivalsoftwarelivre.org "

Last year I blogged about LatinoWare and the possibility of organizing a KDE Latino meeting in 2008, with the help of the organizers. You can find more about this at:

http://piacentini.livejournal.com/4777.html

LatinoWare's website for this year's conference is still in constructions, at

http://www.latinoware.org

It will be a big event, from Oct 30th to November 1st, 5000 people are expected. The geographical location is perfect for the intended audience, in the middle of the triple frontier between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

We (Helio Castro and me) are going ahead with the plan for a KDE event there to promote the KDE community in Latin America. There is a possibility that we can get a 250 person auditory for a full day of KDE talks, and also a computer lab for one full day as well for tutorials and workshops. Some help for transportation and accommodation can probably also be arranged for speakers that live in the Latin American region.

The idea we discussed last year was to also have a Gnome Latino event going on in parallel, same infrastructure, and at the end of the day we could do one shared panel. I still do not know if the Gnomes are going ahead with their side of the plan, but if it happens it can be a small preview of next year's co-hosted Akademy/GUADEC event, and will help forge stronger ties between our communities.

So, this is a call for action. We need volunteers for the talks and tutorials, and there is not much time left if we want to make it happen. Please send me a proposal for a talk or workshop if you are interested in coming until August 27th, to piacentini (at) kde.org

The KDE Games team is looking for help with the games.kde.org site. This is your chance to use those PHP/AJAX and CMS skills to help our community! Eugene and Emil are the ones you want to look for, and the best contact points are the kde-games-devel mailing list or the #kdegames IRC channel at Freenode (say hi to it-s)

I want to talk a little bit about the ongoing collaboration between KDE and Ltia, the  Applied Information Technology Lab - Laboratório de Tecnologia da Informação Aplicada  (http://www.ltia.fc.unesp.br). Ltia is connected to UNESP - a state university in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Currently there are about 30 people working at several projects in the lab, in different areas like User Experience, Embedded Development, Software Development and Information Technology.
Ltia has just started a 6-month project with several stages involving five people: Paulo Cattai and Roberto Cunha will work with usability, user experience and pedagogical evaluation of applications, while Danilo Balzaque, Tadeu Araújo and Tiago Porangaba will do the actual coding implementation. For this project they have selected four applications: Kbruch, Kpercentage, Kalzium and Ksudoku. They will work on usability enhancements and some new features related to the usage of these programs in the educational environment, of course always in close cooperation with the existing maintainers and the KDE Edu and KDE Games community. Work has already started on Kbruch, and we can expect the initial results in a few weeks. Of course, the goals of this project are to improve the educational applications and foster collaboration between our community and other institutions, so we can learn from each other. Ltia uses a more formal development structure for their internal projects, and it should be interesting to see how well this can work in association with KDE's more informal development processes.
Things seem to have started well: Paulo and Tiago are here in Belgium for Akademy. Celeste Paul and Ellen Reitmayr have already exchanged usability advice and some guidelines with them, and the guys seem right at home in the hacking labs and sessions. According to Paulo, "this is an opportunity to push ourselves and learn more about user experience in a large scale project, and share this experience with the lab team and with the academic community."
I hope collaborations like this one can become more common in the future, and I would like to help it happen. In other words, this is a call for other universities in Brazil with computer science and design labs to contact me and see how we (you and KDE) can work together on building better open source educational software and games in the future.

BTW, I am taking a Nokia 810 tablet with me back to Sao Paulo. These nice little gadgets were distributed at Akademy to encourage development for smaller form factors, and I think they can help us learn how to test and adapt our interfaces to this new class of devices. This is something that will be useful for delivery to netbooks and other small screen laptops (OLPC, Classmate) as well. As I know it is very difficult to get one in Brazil, I am going to make this one available for people who want to play with it, so if you are involved in an educational or game project and need to lend it for some time, please let me know, ok?

Still preparing my presentation, but I hope to meet all of my KDE friends over there for a nice week of planning, drawing, coding and eating Belgian chocolate. hummmm....

Hi, people. We did not have a meeting last month, for a change. And people seemed to miss it, gladly :)

So, if you are contributing to KDE Games, or willing to contribute, our monthly meeting is back! Please add to your bookmarks:

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Games/IRC_Meeting

Information about time and location can be found in the URL above. Hope to read you there.

Hi. You might remember the Fluffy Bunny Plasma theme. Wouldn't it be nice if some of our games could be configured to match it? I know my nieces would love it :)
Wait... Eugene Trounev from the kdegames team comes to the rescue! And at the same time, we have a preview of KNewStuff2 support in KBlocks, which will be part of KDE 4.1 Huge thanks to Josef and Jeremy for their work on the server.
So, if you are building kdegames from source, or when you get the first KDE 4.1 alphas and betas, chose Configure KBlocks, and click the GET NEW THEMES button. You will then be able to install the Pink Bunny one:



And also some other cool ones, like Aztec and Retro Classics, all by Eugene:





Isn't this great? My ambitious goal is to have at least 10 themes ready for the 4.1 release. Artists, are you ready?

Oh, and these are works in progress, a little disclaimer needed otherwise Eugene will kill me :) Version 0.1 for all of them, improvements coming, ymmv, etc, etc.