gnome.conf.au article

[Davyd Madeley <davyd madeley id au>]

Apologies, I said I'd write this and then wrote half of it and left it
sat on my desktop for a month before finishing it. This is why it's such
poor quality stuff. It's probably not really worth publishing (at least
not in its current state), but I said I'd write it, so I did.

--d

Checked for Virus & Spam by West Australian Networks Internet Service Providers see www.westnet.net.au

GNOME.conf.au 2007 Wrapup
=========================

For the fourth year running, linux.conf.au in Sydney played host to
Australia's GNOME conference: GNOME.conf.au. Started as a single day event in
2004, GNOME.conf.au in 2007 ran over two huge days with 12 speakers presenting
on a range of topics both technical and non-technical topics.

On day one, Nigel Tao told us about Superswitcher
(http://code.google.com/p/superswitcher/), a rethinking of the traditional
desktop application switcher. He shared with us some ideas about how a
GNOME desktop might work in the future and also showed us something other
neat tricks that you can do with the window management library libwnck.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1100_GNOME.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=53>

Avahi developers, Trent Lloyd and Lennart Poeterring then discussed Avahi
(http://avahi.org/), the Rendezvous/Bonjour/Multicast DNS framework for Linux,
its features and how you use it to develop an application.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1150_GNOME.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=58>

After lunch, former release manager, Jeff Waugh introduced a change of pace
and plugged in a Nintendo Wii to
connect the dots between fun, easy to use devices and GNOME.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1400_gnome.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=83>

Conduit (http://www.conduit-project.org/) is software to synchronise
applications, services and devices in GNOME. John Stowers demonstrated
Conduit and how it can be used to synchronise all types of data, including
files and Tomboy notes.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1450_gnome.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=87>

Finally, Monday ended with a GNOME Love Session, which took the form of a
BoF session. Following suggestions on topics, attendees finally settled down
on the topic of discussing usability in GNOME. This gave a chance for many
people who considered themselves to be "just a user" to speak, rather than
just listening to the GNOME-usuals.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1650_GNOME.ogg>

Tuesday was action packed. Chris Blizzard of Mozilla and OLPC fame gave a
keynote for the conference proper, then after morning tea, Jono Bacon took
the stand. Jono, who you'll know from LugRadio, spoke about Jokosher the
usability focused, non-linear audio editor. An updated version of the
presentation Jono gave at GUADEC last year, he also took the time to
demonstrate the latest Jokosher.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/tuesday/tuesday_1100_GNOME.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=126>

After Jono followed David Zeuthen, HAL-hacker extraordinaire. David spoke
about fast user switching, multiseat and allowing his girlfriend to use his
laptop.

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2007/video/tuesday/tuesday_1150_GNOME.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=134>

After lunch, artist and tango dancer, Andy Fitzsimon held a freeform session
on GNOME rebranding, discussing if it was a good thing and should it be
allowed?

<http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2007/video/tuesday/tuesday_1400_GNOME.ogg>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=147>

James Andrewartha gave a quick presentation on weather.gnome.org and then how
to get started with jhautobuild. Ryan Lortie then followed this up with a
quick, 5 minute overview of the new GNOME Applets API.

<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=153>
<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=159>

Java-GNOME's Andrew Cowie came on after the break to show off Java-GNOME
4.0, the rearchitecting of GNOME's Java bindings that he is leading. As well
as discussing the design of Java-GNOME 4.0, he also demonstrated adding new
API coverage live on stage.

<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=164>

Finally, to wrap it all up, Pete Ryland presented something he has been
calling <a href="http://pdr.cx/~pdr/blog/geekstuff/egg20061011.html";>EGG</a>,
a framework layer on top of PyGTK to allow rapid development of
applications.

<http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/photos/index.php?galerie=lca07&snimek=165>
<http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2007/video/tuesday/tuesday_1650_GNOME.ogg>

About the Author
----------------
Davyd Madeley is less cool than Kjartan Maraas, this is because he does not
run his entire desktop session under valgrind. He is also less cool than
Emmanuel Bassi, but at least he still has his SSH key. He wrote this
biography while very tired, which is why it doesn't actually tell you
anything.