Franz Keferböck

Been a while (again) i’ve been seen here, obviousely i’m leading a rather boring life where most things that happen to me are either uninteresting – or … hm … probably just not of “public interest”. Funny enough, now that i look at these few entries in the past i’d mostly blogged cause i needed something. Guess what: same now… but for some reason this has yet always worked way better than asking in mailing lists where people’d already done the step of registering…

The next couple of months are packed with events around Free and Open Source Software, each important for us to be there and show off the latest and greatest (and hell, we do have something to show off!) to the people visiting. Booth work is very important for the project – and it’s great fun too! And most important: YOU can do it! Yes, YOU, reading the KDE planet (reading just my blog being an obviousely bored geek might even over-qualify you…) on a regular basis, following KDE development, maybe fiddling with packages of pre-release KDE versions or even compiling trunk every now and then. YOU who you are using this great software for a while now, YOU who you always wanted to do something for KDE, or meet the makers.Contributing to KDE is more than writing code; We’ve seen the importance of the Oxygen team for the KDE 4 release cycle, we never credit the translators enough for their important work. Usability experts (and hell, they are!) help making the KDE experience slick and neat and easy to use. And not the least there’s all those people giving their time to the project and present it at Fairs and Shows, may this be at the booth or by giving talks.

Now what I got back through that? Recognition by people I admire, now friends of mine! Fun at and after the shows, at parties or relaxed evenings in a Cocktail bar. The chance to give back to KDE (and in fact getting even more out of it, it’s not for others or even to “show off”, it’s for myself that i am proud to be here).

Now’s the time to jump the boat and help contributing to your favourite FOSS project. There is several events coming up that will need your help:

• CeBIT / Hannover (March 4th – 9th) – Heck, that’s soon! We need people especially during the week days, but also for the weekend more staff is well appreciated.
• Grazer Linuxtage (April 19th) – This is part of the Austrian Linuxwochen, where i am just about to figure more details, but the folks from Graz asked us to have a booth and a talk on KDE, which i am happy to do. Yet some people for a booth is missing, another chance for you (show me that there’s a healthy Austrian community!)
• LinuxTag / Berlin (May 28th – 31st) – Yet far off we can’t start on that too soon. It’s great fun – and hey, you’re in Berlin Baby, you’ll have a hard time choosing what to do as there’s so much the city offers!

Hope to see plenty response, you won’t regret, believe me! Send your eMails to kde-events@kde.org