👋 Hello reader! Welcome to my blog — this looks to be my first publication. I never had a blog, I’m not sure about what or how to write, so please forgive me if this reading isn’t exciting. 🥲
§ 01GUADEC 2023 @ Riga
Many of you already know that GUADEC is the acronym for GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, but since 2022 was held in Guadalajara (Mexico) and 2024 will be in Denver (CO, USA), people started using Everywhere instead of European as a joke.
The conference is a place to meet people who share an interest in Linux and technology in general, with a particular focus on GNOME (of course!). It’s a place to share ideas and opinions, talk about many topics — not only tech — and have fun. This year it was at the University of Riga: the talks in the new building, the BoFs in the old one. A place full of history that removes any thought about its age.
§ 02Volunteering
Not only my first GUADEC, but my first volunteering experience too! I was initially assigned by Deepesha B. to the registration desk — a great chance to meet all the participants and welcome them. Once most people had arrived I jumped into the conference rooms and helped with moderation, both in person and on the online chats. Seeing the smile on the people I helped during those days felt very good. A meaningful experience!
§ 03Old friends + new friends = many friends!
I knew I was going to meet some folks from a previous event, LAS 2022 in Rovereto, where I presented Bottles — but, as I said, these conferences are a place to meet new people too.
The first person I met was Mauro, an Italian who had just moved to Switzerland after 17 years in Taiwan (a great country to visit). He was very kind and immediately invited me to lunch with a bunch of people. I felt at home. 😃 It was at lunch that I met Jesús, a Mexican guy who likes to lose battles with food because his stomach is too small. 😂
Then it was time to run into someone I already knew: Javier! One of the people behind the freedesktop SDK, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. This time he went home a bit sad: turns out I’m one of the very few people who managed to beat him at go-karts. You’ll be luckier next time. Maybe… 😁
The most meaningful meeting of the event: Cassidy James Blaede. You may already know him — if you don’t, visit his blog, it’s worth it. Cassidy is a very kind person who takes the time to listen and give genuinely meaningful feedback. I had the chance to talk with him about the state of ODRS, the thing behind the reviews in platforms like GNOME Software. That discussion led to this blog post by Cassidy and this proposal by me. Feel free to jump into the discussion — we’re still figuring out how to proceed, and any help matters.
It was also a chance to meet again folks like Tobias and Sonny, along with a lot of smart and friendly people from all over the world — all with plenty to share from their tech experience and culture. That’s probably the best kind of sharing you get by taking part.
§ 04Exciting talks
Two talks caught me in particular:
The first, by Cassidy, is about how developers list their apps in the app stores and how that listing could be done better by following guidelines and official schemas. A really interesting talk: in just 20 minutes it was clear every developer should look into the topic. Here you can find the slides along with Cassidy’s notes.
The second, by Aryan Kaushik and Pooja Patel, is about the lack of accessibility in digital products and services: a journey through the many small but important things we leave behind when building software. There are lots of people out there with different kinds of disabilities, from color blindness to deafness. It’s important to always keep this in mind, and as a developer to know the tools that help you test whether your software is accessible.
§ 05My own talk
I had given talks before, but never to a crowd that size. Bottles’ presentation had been the biggest I’d done, but GUADEC is another story: bigger room, more in-person and remote participants, more time to fill… it was scary. 😬 But, hey, I did it — and it was awesome! It was exciting to see people smiling and interested, asking questions at the end and later in the hallway once my slot was up. It’s the kind of experience I recommend to anyone with a project to share with a community: an honest, direct and immediate way to get feedback, and it can teach you a lot.
If you missed the live talk, or would like to watch it again, it’s on GNOME’s YouTube channel. And if you’d like to learn more about Vanilla OS, visit vanillaos.org and join our community!
§ 06Final considerations
Riga is really nice. Thanks to the university you can safely walk the streets of the city center and find plenty of places full of people ready to talk and suggest how to enjoy the city. Almost everyone speaks English! The organization was superb — if you missed a talk, have a look at the YouTube playlist.
A big thank you goes to the GNOME Foundation, which partially sponsored my travel and stay in Riga as a GNOME Foundation Member, and to my company, fabricators. ❤️
— Pietro · 2023 / 08 / 20