I attended my first GUADEC this year, held in beautiful city of Manchester. I am in general not very enthusiastic about social meetings but GUADEC was something I always wished to attend and I am glad I did.
The Conference Days:
The first day started with talks about GNOME and different applications and ended with lightning talks from interns and newcomers. I was a bit nervous about presenting in front of so many people, mainly because I am not very good with presentations but everyone was extremely nice and encouraged me before the talk and this made it much more easier task. I am glad I had this opportunity and I hope that I improve with my presentations from here on.
I liked hearing people talk about GNOME softwares and being a newcomer it was nice way to get to know more about the projects. I attended most of the talks and liked all of them but I would like to specially mention some of them:
- Status of Builder – I use builder for all my development work hence I really appreciate the work of Christian and I loved the demonstration.
- The History of GNOME – I got to know so many knew things and how GNOME progressed as a project.
- How to get better milage out of Glade – I am glad that there is work going on to improve Glade, since this is one application I would love to use more.
The rest of conference was meeting new people and talking about things related to my project or GNOME and even Non GNOME stuffs in general. I also had chance to meet my mentor feaneron and personally thank him for all the things he has helped me with and helping me become a contributor from a complete newbie.
Unconference Days:
So Unconference Days was scheduled with workshops at the start of day and ended with social event. I tried to utilize the time to work on my GSoC project and get some reviews and help from my mentor. I also attended the later half of the Builder workshop and liked it. Ah! I should have attended more Workshops/BOFs.
Trek and City Tour:
City Tour was cancelled on Friday due to rain but thankfully that didn’t happen on Sunday. Pic from the tour. More can be found here .
I went on a trek for the first time in my life and it was a really nice experience. I would like to thank the team for planning the Trek and also our Group Leader Allan Day.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank GNOME Foundation for sponsoring me. I also thank the team for planning everything and working so hard to make the conference a success and memorable 🙂 Thank You GNOME!
