BOSTON, Mass—February 28, 2008—GUADEC, the annual GNOME conference will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from the 7th to the 12th of July 2008. The conference will bring together the GNOME development and user community and key personalities from businesses and governments, to discuss the future direction of the GNOME project.
Now in its 9th year, the conference has grown every year from its humble beginnings to become a fixture in the calendar of the leading lights of the Free Software desktop development community, and an important meeting place between industry and community. This year, over 500 people are expected to gather in Turkey for the conference, whose theme will be Designing the User Interface for Freedom.
“The GNOME Project does not stand on its feet by only its technical merits but also with its communal entity. Thousands of people from different cultures improve it every day.” said Barış Çiçek, the lead organizer of GUADEC this year, “Nowhere in the world would be able summarize this but Istanbul, which has been the melting pot of cultures for centuries.”
Among the keynote speakers who will be present at the conference are Matt Webb, co-author of Mind Hacks and a leading user experience designer, Eric Sink, a renowned blogger and software development business entrepreneur, and Leisa Reichelt, a London-based expert in interaction design and user experience research.
The call for participation in the conference is now open, and will close on March 30th. A variety of presentations and sessions can be proposed. “Emerging GNOME trends set the dialog at GUADEC. It was Online Desktop last year, and GNOME Mobile the year before that.” said the program chair, Behdad Esfahbod, “We are excited to see what the community brings to GUADEC this year.”
As with last year, the conference will have three tracks:
- Catwalk: Showcasing the best and most exciting applications that the GNOME community has to offer
- Topaz: Identifying the diamonds in the rough that will form the basis for the next generation of the free software desktop
- Tangle: Community and governance issues, and tough technical issues, will be considered, attacked and resolved
See the GUADEC website for more more information about the conference, to register, and to submit proposals.
GUADEC website: http://www.guadec.org/
Call for presentations: http://guadec.org/guadec08/public/cfp/1
Keynote speakers: http://guadec.org/public/content/keynotes