Back from GUADEC 2013

It has been a very intense week at GUADEC and not just because of the heat of course! I managed to attend several interesting talks, got to know lots of new people and managed to answer some questions that have been in my head for months now.

Regarding to the talks, I speacially enjoyed Juan Pablo Ugarte's one, "Rich custom user interfaces with Glade and CSS" where he showed us, how to creat an awesome presentation using Glade & CSS. What a work! I also enjoyed Lennart Poettering's talk about "Sandboxing applications for GNOME". I could even understand what he was talking about this time! "GNOME and ownCloud" by Jan-Christoph Borchardt was another favourite one.

Appart from these talks, I also got inspired by Fabiana Simões with her fullstory on how to report a UX bug properly and by Ekaterina Gerasimova and Shindu Sundar with their "done is better than perfect" statement.

I also attended the "Women in Tech" and "Web Development" hackfests, both super interesting. I missed more men in the "Women in Tech" hackfest though, but the good thing, is that we talked about how to solve this "issue". We also did some brainstorming and had some good ideas on how to make it easier for newcomers, and other communities to get involved.

The good, and maybe the best thing for me at GUADEC, is what you learn out of the talks. This time I went to GUADEC with the intention of finding myself a new project to work on, to find my place in the GNOME project. In this search, I had the chance to talk to a bunch of people who were very interested on helping me out, even if they did not really know that they were doing it. For this reason, I want to thank Joanmarie Diggs, for paying me attention without even knowing me and trying to really help me to find the place. Also to Fabiana Simões and Andreas Nilsson, who showed themselfes very welcoming when I joined the Web Developer hackfest, and in the last place but not less important, to Marina Zhurakhinskaya for a great long "therapeutic" walk from Česka to the dormitory. Thank you all for making me feel very welcome!

Also, congratulations to all of the volunteers and organizers, who made this event possible, and once again, thank you very much to the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring my trip. Looking forward to Strasbourg 2014!

Another round!

I am packing my stuff right now. In a couple of hours, I will be on my way to Brno for another GUADEC round!!! I'm so excited!

This could not be possible without the help of the GNOME Foundation. Thank you very much and hope to see you all there!

A suitcase full of good memories: GUADEC 2012

A Coruña old town.Thanks to Daniel Siegel for this pic!

It has been a week since I came back from GUADEC and hispanic-GUADEC 2012 in A Coruña. Thanks to the GNOME Foundation, I had the chance to attend both events this year!

"Sharing smiles with Chees" talk. Thanks to Julita Inca for this pic!

"GOPW and GSoC Programs" talk. Thanks to Ana Rey for this pic!

This was definitely, the best GUADEC so far for me. I started attending this event 3 years ago at The Hague. I did not know many people by then, was inexperienced and not very involved as a developer in the community yet. With my second GUADEC (Berlin Desktop Summit 2012) I took part of the local team in the organisation, which gave me the chance to enjoy it "from the other side", but did not let me attend the conference. This year was completely different though. I already knew lots of people, was part of the community in a much more active way (developing, organising, spreading the word, participating in the GOPW...), and was not just an attendant but also a speaker ("Sharing smiles with Cheese" lightning talk and "GOPW & GSoC programs" talk). Now I can say, that I have seen and enjoyed the conference, from every perspective.

It was also really interesting and great for me, to see how the number of participating women in the conference, attending and giving talks, has increased so much since the first time I attended. I feel proud and happy when I think about it. This is an evidence that the programs and effort invested on them are really working!

And the GOscar goes to... 

• The organisers and volunteers, who made a great job all the time, and made everything happen in an uncomplicated and smooth way.
• The great selection of tracks.
• My Outreach Game team (Stefano Candori, Marta Maria Casetti, Richard Schwarting and Rüdolfs Mazurs) and all the "hunted people", that made us win the GUADEC 2012 Outreach Games!!

• Marina Zhurakhinskaya, who helped me collecting information for my "GOPW & GSoC programs" talk.
• The "Queimada Ceremony".
• The fair trade products for the conference breaks.
• The GNOME Outreach Program Year Book 2012 and all the people who made it possible! It has the information of the interns that participated or are still participating in this last year GOPW and GSoC rounds!

GNOME Outreach Year Book 2012.

GOPW & GSoC students and mentors. Thanks to Ana Rey for this pic!

• All those cafeteria nights at the Rialta residence.
• The sport's day!!! Yayyy, we had volleyball this time!!
• All of you, who make GUADEC happen every year!

Guess what!

I will need...

• Willingness to earn and share knowledge and experience - checked.
• Willingness to have fun - checked.
• Willingness to know new people and meet all of those I haven't seen in the last year - checked.
• Willingness to sleep less and talk more - checked.
• Plane tickets - checked.
• My laptop - checked.

Where am I going?
You are right!!

This could not be possible without the help of the GNOME Foundation. Thank you very much and hope to see you all there!