The main part of GUADEC 2014, the premier annual GNOME conference, has just ended in Strasbourg, France. The core days are made up of talks, keynote presentations, as well as the GNOME Foundation Annual General Meeting.
The GUADEC core days have been packed with exciting, interesting talks. There were presentations on important initiatives in GNOME, such as Wayland and continuous performance testing. GTK+ had a strong presence, with talks on GTK+ dialogs, CSS, and the GTK+ Scene Graph Toolkit. There was also a whole day of talks on GTK+ applications.
The final core day ended with an enthusiastic lightning talk session (these are short, five minute talks on a subject of the presenter’s choosing), followed by a conference closing which included a standing ovation for the local organising team. The final day also included the third GUADEC keynote, delivered by Matthew Garrett, on the future of the desktop.
GUADEC would not be complete without social events, of course, and this year’s event was no exception. Highlights included a a snooker and pool evening and the regular GUADEC football match, which was followed by a picnic.
Another regular feature of GUADEC is the annual pants award, where one individual is picked out for their special efforts over the year. This year, that award went to Alexandre Franke, who was the brains behind this year’s GUADEC, and who also works to coordinate GNOME’s presence at FOSDEM.
GUADEC has been fantastic, as usual. There have been a lot of important, exciting discussions and talks, and the conference has been an opportunity to make important plans for the future. Though the core days are now over, the GNOME community will be busy in Strasbourg for three more days, as the schedule switches to working sessions (known as BoFs, or Birds of a Feather sessions).
Many thanks to the sponsors of this year’s GUADEC: Google, Red Hat, Igalia, SUSE, Ubuntu, Seafile, code.csdn.net, and GitCafe. This wonderful event would not have been possible without your help.