I had the pleasure of helping out with the KDE 4.0 Release Event this past weekend. With attendees of all ages and backgrounds from around the world, the event was a huge success. In addition to a great coming out party for KDE 4.0, it was also the venue in which Trolltech announced it would adopt GPL 3 for Qt.
Thursday was 'un-conference' style with attendees organizing impromptu BOFs and breakout sessions. However, a lot of people spent a good portion of the day discovering who else was there, as many of the KDE developers and community members were meeting each other for the first time.
Friday was the big day with around 150 people and 2 dragons in attendance. Aaron Seigo's keynote was well received by KDE release parties going on simultaneously around the world, thanks to the video streaming magic of Franz Keferböck. Many other speakers graced the podium after Aaron, including the two Release Event Contest winners, Kyle Cunningham and Aron Stansvik. The day finished with cocktails and a special vintage provided by Celeste.
Things wrapped up on Saturday with a few more BOFs. Since we had all that A/V goodness going unused, many attendees took it upon themselves to give a presentation or two. The most popular one was the Amarok 2 talk given by Jeff Mitchell and Leo Franchi (both worked on Amarok as Google Summer of Code students).
All in all, everyone seemed to have a great time. Many thanks go to my co-conspirators Tiffany and Cat from the Open Source Team, and to Wade, Franz, Sebas, Troy and Jeff of KDE for their efforts in putting the event together. I hear that a similar event is in the works for next year. Here's hoping Aaron Seigo does karaoke at that one too.
