About

The first Desktop Summit took place in 2009 in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, Spain. For the first time, the KDE and GNOME communities held their yearly meetings in the same location. The goal of this event was to share ideas and further collaboration between the two communities. This year, the conference hopes to go even further in that regard, offering many joint talks and workshops, in an event larger than ever before. Aiming for well over a thousand visitors Desktop Summit 2011 promises to be a great place to meet the best and brightest of the Free Desktop, learn about the latest cutting-edge technologies and help shape the future of Free Software!

Learn more about the previous Desktop Summit.

About Akademy
The KDE community held its first conference in Arnsberg, Germany in 1997 to discuss the first KDE release. Initially, each conference was numbered after the release which was discussed. Beginning in 2004 the conferences were named Akademy, with the first one once more in Germany. Now, another 6 years later, KDE returns again to Germany, but not alone!

Learn more about previous Akademy events.

About GUADEC
The story of GUADEC begins in Paris in 1998 where a number of GNOME developers who had worked together via the internet thought it might be nice to finally meet in real life. They have met at GUADEC every year since then. Like Akademy, GUADEC offers a wide array of excellent speakers from different sectors such as government and education, as well as community leaders. In particular, the technical talks given by the community are exceptional.

Learn more about previous GUADEC events.

Conference attendee policy
We want to make the Desktop Summit an enjoyable event for all attendees. To facilitate this a conference attendee policy has been written. Please follow it and make this a wonderful event.

Goals for this year
Share and discuss the latest developments in GNOME and KDE technologies
Bring people together, build community, initiate new contributors
Discuss what is going on in the communities of GNOME and KDE
Collaborate on desktop software projects
Provide an opportunity to learn about and get involved with GNOME and KDE communities to users, corporate and governmental visitors
Draft up plans for the future of the Free Desktop
Previous keynote speakers

Below a sample of previous keynote speakers for Akademy, GUADEC and the Desktop Summit:

Walter Bender
Glyn Moody
Kathy Sierra
Richard Stallmann
Jim Zemlin