Everything has a story.

Eco vehicle...

2009-09-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

These days it is absolutely obligatory for manufacturers to have eco-friendly products in their product range. If not? Well, you are doomed to disappear into oblivion...

But nowadays this rage is getting so extreme, that you can't tell anymore which ones really are eco friendly and which ones aren't. Everyone just seems to cling to this word "ECO" to attract the consumer.

It's like the last pair of shoes in a shop and 1000 greedy women that desperately make a run for it.

But is this really necessary? And is the word "ECO" in every case rightly deserved?

On the first question, I am pretty sure the answer should be YES! Any company that still neglects to go Eco-friendly these days, should get a slap on the butt! We can't neglect the fact that our ancestors did a good job in creating environmental-unfriendly industries. The media buzzes all around: we need to change our habbits, we need to search for our harmony in nature again.

And the brand "ECO" was born.

Sadly not all products with "ECO" in the name are ecologically friendly. A lot of car companies now have an eco-modell. Sadly this eco-modell still has quit a high level of exhaust fumes. But with some good branding and marketing of the word "ECO" and with the help of the media they make the consumers believe that you're buying a better world.

So in my opinion, in the most cases the label "ECO" is not rightly deserved.

But don't panic. There really are some musketeers around that offer the hard-ECO stuff.

If you are looking for a zero emission vehicle, you'll find that there are already some nice scooters and heavy bikes on the market.

A very nice example is the Vectrix. A light heavy bike (or how do you call a 125CC?) that runs completely on electricity. It literally is plug and play!
So zero emission, almost no maintenance... this must be the ultimate dream of anyone!

Despite this fact the technology still needs to outgrow it's puberty.
At a speed of 40 km/h you have a driving range of 100 km. Not bad, since 40 km/h is the general speed these days and most daily use isn't more than a 50 km range.

So, ideal for work-home travel and if your boss agrees, you can plug it in at work to have a worry-free drive home.

But what if I'd like to drive a bit further than 100 km? What if I'd love to cruise around in neighbouring countries? What if I'd want to make a city-trip or drive to my holiday location?

Would I be able to refuel on time? And where do I get to recharge my bike? And what will they charge me, since electricity has different rates in different countries... ?

To these questions I don't know the answer, but I'd love to know if Europe is working on this.

Preferably I'd love to see the same range with these electric machines as in an old fashion car -> 800 km... which is 8 times more. This would mean I could just drive to anywhere I like without the concern of a forthcoming necessity of recharging the battery.

I do hope that the industries keep investing in this technology, because I believe this just might be our future.

Time out...

2009-08-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is a blogpost to inform you all of my upcomming dissapearance for the next months.

The next comming months I will appear to be "dead" or vannished. But fear not my fellow friends, because I'll be back ;-)

The reason for this is very simple. In my daytime job I work as Production Planner for Vivaboxes. (www.vivaboxes.com) During the next coming months we are preparing (already) for the upcoming parties at the end of the year. As everyone might know, during December there are some people who like to buy presents for one another. Well the company I work for happens to be specialized in gifts...

This means that I won't have time to read my private e-mail or answer your calls during this period. So If you want to get in touch with me, you'll have to be patient untill januari :-D

For those who know my, they can try to reach me through my private mail-adress or through Bart.

See you all again soon in January!

Making people to work with you...

2009-07-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Some of you might and some of you might not read my last blogpost "Making money".

I had some really nice comments and support on this. This makes me conclude that we should give it a try.

Since I am not a superwoman that can do anything herselve, I'd love your help (the community).

So here's what I am looking for:

a developer to write me a desktop program/widget -> kde-shop
an artist that creates the coolest artwork
and as I am already a creative mind that can come up with great idea's (wink), It'll be still great to have some extra creativity brainies to help me out with this

What needs to be done as well:
creating following documents:
- deliverie conditions
- terms & conditions
- privacy policy

Since I already work for a commercial company that has a webshop, I could take there documents as example.

Making money

2009-07-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

After one week of thinking an listening to presentations, I (again) got the "a-little-lamp-blinking on-my-head"-syndrome.

One of the presentations I went to was about making money out of open source.

Since open source is free most of the time, this might proof to be quit of a challenge.

Or not?

As I already stated some years ago, there is a very powerful media called merchandising.
Not only do you get your name out on the streets, you can also create buzz around wanna-have-goodies and make fame with it. The fun part of this: you get paid to advertise.

The money that comes in can be used to subsidize developers, organize events, create promotional stuff, ... etc.

Okay so we have the coolest merchandise, good quality, very trendy and fashionable.

Now let's think a bit further. How to sell it?

Most of you will probably spontaneously think: Oh Oh I know it, at our events, or on the kde.org website!
Well yes, that's a possibility, but it doesn't really reach everyone.

Are there better ways? Yes!
I give an example with Amarok:
You have a musicplayer, which already has music shops/services integrated. Aha shops, so it's already possible to buy stuff with a program!
Now let's ad an extra service: "FanShop"
What doe we sell: everything that can be linked to a music player and has the Amarok logo on it:
mp3 players, speakers, t-shirts, remote control for laptop, headset, fluffy stuff, ... etc.

Oh but my program can't! Yes you can.
Some examples:
Social Desktop: Pokens with logo on it, cool t-shirts, fluffy stuff
Dolphin: dolhpins of course, usb-sticks, again t-shirts,...
and I could go on for a while.

it's just a thing of stimulating the creative part in you.

One tip: get a really good Artist to work on the artwork for great succes and be creative!

KDE connecting people

2009-07-08T04:34:00.001-07:00

(hope I don't get in trouble with some kind of mobile operator now...)

I finally managed to get my laptop, connect to the internet and find some time to blog.

I did not attend a lot of talks, since there's also a beach that's very appealing to me. (Not to mention the shopping centers!)
But the talks I did went to really brought me some new stuff to think about.

A lot of the talks were focussing on socializing KDE, bringing the Community closer together and closer to the public users.

Frank Karlitcheck's talk about the Social Desktop was one of them. The Social Desktop could well become one of the most important new features for our community to push KDE to the wider public.
As you might know, a lot of people are afraid of new stuff, like switching from Mac/Windows to KDE (Linux). I believe that the social desktop will make it easer to convince those people who are suffering from these uncertainties.

After attending another talk about Zanshin (Getting Things done - talk). This brought me to an idea.

Why not connect everything with eachother. Why not BRING the COMMUNITY to our DESKTOP.

I see a lot of "hey, I got a really cool new thingy that I am coding on right now", but not enough "hey, I have a really cool new thingy that I am coding on right now and it would be even better if we could implement it with the cool thingy that you are working on right now." (which kind of refers a little to the talk of Alexandra Leisse -> we need to get more interested in each other, not only in the code. Btw great talk Alexandra!).

So here's my idea: Let's think beyond, let's think out of the box!

Zanshin is a task manager, with just that little bit more than the general task managers out there. I'd like to see it even more advanced.
Social Desktop is a great medium to get in contact with other people from the KDE community or users, local or international.

What if we could link these two together? What is we, from the community, could create a community-task-list (like the mailinglist)?

This would mean that new entering members of a project would instantly could tune-in into the mailing-list AND task-list and would have an instant view on what needs to be done, what's already running, who to contact, ...

This would especially be a great tool for the promotion and events teams. And if you'd think further: companies would be able to use this to assign tasks to certain departments within the company!

More advanced: I would be able to: have my personal tasks, see the running tasks of the community, ad f.i. remember the milk tasks (?), ... IN the Social Desktop AND in Kmail (because I would like to link everything with eachother).

This also makes it easier to invite new people to the community, because it makes things more open and accessible to newbies. Because we need to remember that there are also those people who are introvert and do not spontaneously start asking around if they can be of any assistance in your project. By creating an even easier way to get into contact with the community, I am confident that we will attract more enthusiastic talents!

Please, feel free to use the comments to discuss about how this project could work out for KDE.

KDE hotel for FOSDEM!

2009-01-06T00:27:00.000-08:00

Hi KDE people that are coming to FOSDEM,

Here are some small adaptations to the hotel reservation.

In the meanwhile I managed to get an option untill 19 januari for Hotel Albert.

For those still in search of a nice hotel, I managed to get a reduction on rooms in a very nice hotel in the center of Brussels. Very positive: the hotel has free wi-fi!

If you make your reservations at this hotel, please do not forget to mention "KDE voor Emile" to obtain these special prices.

Prices for KDE are:
single room 45 EUR
double/twin room 50 EUR
Tripple room 60 EUR
Quadouble room 70 EUR

Breakfast is included in these price.

You can make your reservations by calling the hotel, by e-mail or by means of the reservation form online.

It is a very nice hotel with 2 up to 3 stars.

Since I do not have an option on these rooms, it will be first reservation = first gets. Rooms are limited, there this hotel is situated very central and very popular with tourists.

Hotel information:
Albert

Koninklijke Sint Mariastraat,27
+32.2.217 93 91
info@hotelalbert.be
www.hotelalbert.be

Situated:
Hotel Albert is situated very near Brussels "Kruidentuin or Botanique" (Herb Garden). Acros the streat you'll find a concerts hall "Hallen van Schaarbeek", where in the weekends concerts and cultural events are kept. The hotel is almost next to Nord Station, very near the shopping area, the central station and the Royal Palace. Every room has a shower, toilet, flat screen television, hair dryer, FREE WIFI.
Bus 272 stops in front of the hotel and goes directly to Brussels airport. For other transportation, Brussels Nord station is almost next door.

An other option:
It is also possible to book in the hotel where KDE stayed last year. It is situated a little less central, but still has a good connection to public transport.
Prices are more or less in the same rate. http://www.hotelsabina.be/
Also here make sure to use "KDE" in your reservation!

My first program!

2008-12-24T07:54:00.000-08:00

About 1 year ago I bought myself a book called "Learn to program". Since I really do not know anything about programming, I wasn't really expecting much of it.

But some month ago I came to the idea to write a program that creates unique strings, consisting out of letters and numbers.

So I started with the basics I already learned from the book (btw wonderfull book for those who know nothing about programming...). Next I did some research on the internet and before I knew I had made my first program in Ruby!

Okay, it is far from perfect yet, BUT while working on it I will evolve into a uber-geeky-girl :-)

Is it something KDE could use? I don't know, if KDE needs a program that creates random passwords, maybe...

Anyway I am very happy to have succeeded in this! Next steps now is to make an interface (frames and buttons) so that is is more accessible to the "normal" user. And of course make is usable on Linux, Windows and Mac.

(me = happy)

Volunteers for Akademy

2008-07-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Even less than a month to go and it's Akademy 2008 at last!

This years event holds several nice surprises! We got Belgian Waffles, if you go into the city you'll find very good Belgian frites (I suggest you should try "Fritkot Fritz" at the Korenmarkt which had in my opinion the best frites of Mechelen).

We got a very cool design and yes, yes, finaly girly t-shirts!

All these surprises are nice and fun, but the event itself should also be nice and fun. That's why we still need lots of volunteers to help us at the event. The vacancies: selling food, infodesk, support for the hacking labs, session chairs, koffie/drinks (preparing during talks, because the machine itself is too slow...), concierge Roosendael, rental bikes, ...

The more people volunteer, the less you need to do ;-)

So come on let us, Akademy- people see how a nice tidy and community KDE has and volunteer for a job!

More information on how to apply is to be found at: akademy.kde.org

Extra accomodations on Akademy 2008 available!

2008-06-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't did their registration yet, who haven't payed their accomodation yet or haven't made up their minds yet on Akademy accomodation, we have some splendid news.

Today Youth Hostel Zandpoortvest confirmed us the availability of an extra 24 beds.
8 beds will be on double rooms (private 2 persons rooms).

Our registration system is being updated as we speak (will be updated due 19 o'clock).

Since the beds are very limited and especially the private double rooms, we recommend not to wait to long to register and pay for accomodation.

Since both of the hostels don't have towels, I would like to stress not to forget your towels to put in your luggage!!! And at Zandpoortvest every room will have a private safe to its disposal if you bring your own security lock.

Hope too see you all very soon at Akademy2008 in Belgium!

Baby Konqi

2008-05-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

This is what you might find at Akademy 2008...

More info on Akademy 2008 on http://akademy2008.kde.org

Strawberry Beer

2008-02-23T02:59:00.000-08:00

The opening theme for Fosdem has to be related to beer, since it is in Belgium that the annual Free and Open Source Converence is organised.

Is Belgium the better beer country? Some say yes and some say no, so lets just say that also Belgium has some very nice beers to offer.

This years opening event was at the Delirium cafe (and I had to write it wrong because Steccino's computer doesn't has the e-accent installed yet...). Near Brussels Famous Rue de Bouchers, this beer cafe serve not less than 3000 different beers! For those who wish to try all of them in 2 days, I would strongly suggest to try the strawberry beer. If you do not like sweet and fruity a normal pint tasts good too or some white beer like Hoegaarden.

The strange thing about this opening event is that you know you know atleast 10 people in the cafe, but you just have some difficulty in finding them (maybe also due by the beer? Beceause even if they counted 4000 visitors, it seemed like 8000...).

If you haven't went to visit the Delirium cafe, it is absolutely something to try. But make sure to call a taxi and give him a desciption of how you look BEFORE entering...

What Women want part 1.1 - Comment

2008-02-18T00:47:00.000-08:00

I am really excited that I got that much comment on my first blog. Some where rather negative about it, which I understand. I would just like to point out that I am just analysing the book and then trying to reflect it onto KDE. Which is not an easy job to do, since there is yet so much to discover about us, human being.

One thing however is true. There are some differences in the way of thinking and the reason why and how people react in some situations of men and women.

To give an example of my private life: My boyfriends works in the community, he loves coding, for him it's absolutely interesting how he can create things by coding. Me on the other hand I joined the community because I was interested in what my boyfriend was doing and I would love to get to know the people behind it. I am learing some simple coding to understand more about the conversations, to be able to know and to understand the community better. Does this mean that my boyfriend doesn't have interest in the people of the community? Absolutely not. Does this mean he is an evil beast? Yeah well sometimes he is ;-)
But his motives to join the community where different than mine. Yes, it is possible that I am a cliché women, but this also means that there is some truth in the scientific discoveries of our extremely complex brain. But on the other hand there's yet so much to discover...

What women want part 1.1

2008-02-16T03:30:00.000-08:00

First of all: I AM BACK! After some seriously busy months at work, I finally found back some spare time to work on Akademy2008 and invest some time in KDE.

Honestly who wouldn't want to know the answer to this question. Even women tent to succeed in "not knowing what they actually want".

In this series of short blogs I am gonna talk about the differences between men and women, about how to reach women, how women think... All according to my latest source and great book "Inside her pretty little head."

As in the book, I will start with our brain. Our brains aren't very different if you have a quick look at them. They almost work in the same way. Almost, indeed. Men and Women do not think in different ways, but their brains exchange information in other ways. The organ that makes this link with our left and right part is much larger in woman brains. And this makes it possible for us, woman, to think, act, react with our whole brain. That is why women brains exchange more information and why women see or remember more information than men. One of this "more information" is emotions.

For this reason women tent to have more interest in people, where men have more interest in things. So if we would like to reach the women behind KDE of attract new women to use or to contribute to KDE, we should think "women".

An example: Women would not be so interested in the code behind the software, but rather the people who wrote it, the community behind the code. And if you wish to attract them by using the software it might be better to focuss on things like: works fast so more time to socialize with friends, includes chatting programs to talk with friends, it perfectly works for family use, ...

In other words in every promotion focuss on people and feelings not on the software and the code.

Should we than exclude every speach about the code and software? Absolutely not! Women and men can perfectly live toghetter in harmony. We just need to find the harmony in our KDE promotion and with a team as big and motivated as ours, I think it is an challenge worth to take.

See you soon in part 1.2!

Introduction to Female Marketing

2007-07-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

As some of you already read in one of my previous blogs, I bought a book about female marketing in Glasgow.

As Promo is also a very important part of KDE, I'll blog about the impressions I got out of the book.

Just finnished the introduction and what stroke me the most is that already on the first 5 pages the thruth was overwelming.
What-about-then?
Male don't understand a thing about woman and vice-versa. Women realise this and therefore do not try to mess around with Male marketing, unless they did some serious studies about it.
Well... as usuall... Men do NOT realise this (I'm speaking from out of the book now...) and therefore if they try to do female marketing... they really suck (sorry guys)

The book is written by 2 women who were working in the technology-sector and recognised that they didn't reached women. So they needed new communication-tools.

And as you know KDE also isn't very sexy for most women. But guys and girls, we can do this!

As the book says, and this is a fact, women are 80% in charge of buying decisions. So we need to make it all a little more sexy.

Most men that want to do female marketing almost immediately think: Oh we should do a pink theme or make some cool pink gadgets!
Sorry guys, doesn't work this way. I don't even like pink and I'm sure lots of girls follow my opinion. Pink is a colour and has not much to do with female marketing but rather with tasts in colour.

Also the typically cliché commercials about washing powder and great food, just don't do it anymore for the modern women.

What do we like than? Well that's where I'm gonna blog about, togheter with some nice marketing ideas of mine.

100 Ways to be a good girl

2007-07-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

First of all to Aaron Seigo: You Won, I just cannot win from a BloggingHero like you ;-)

Now, do I have something to blog about or what!

First some last words on Glasgow. Here's the top 10 rules of what not to do or to try in Scotland:
1) Never go outside without an umbrella
2) Always bring to pair of shoes or you risk to have to walk barefoot
3) Never search for a dinner after 10 pm and Never go to dinner with more than 2 people without makint a reservation
4) Always run fast over the street whem the lights turn green; preferably cross over diagonal
5) Never go for fastfood when you're in a hurry
6) Always take a translator with you, who actually understands the language
7) Do not search for normal Scottish people
8) Be aware of strange, drunken, Scottish girls
9) Never search for 'Doctor Who', you'll only find a blue public telephone cell (Tardis)
10) Never ask directions to Scottish people.

We had a very nice flight back to Amsterdam. Getting onto the train to Mechelen was somehow a bit more difficult. Could our suitcase that weighted 10 kg more after our trip to Glasgow, due to the 17 books we bought in Borders, be the cause it this? Nei I don't thinks so...

Which books I bought? Public Speaking en Presentations for Dummies. I might be needing it if I really want to do a presentation about presentations next year on aKademy.
Inside her Pretty little head - is also a book a bought. It's all about how to do marketing towards Woman. I'm seariously gonna start to devellop some Girly/woman-merchandising. Not only for KDE, but also for Amarok.

I already had a nice idea for Amarok. And you may be assured, if you buy this for your girl, she will never complain again that you (the guy) is working AGAIN to much on that devellopping thingy.

Of course I had some other great ideas, but these are the best in my opinion. To all the girls in the community ;-)

Oh and thank you for all the folks who gave those great comments on my blog-ideas. And also thank you for sending me the links to the pictures from aKademy. I really had a GREAT time. Untill next year my friends! (Don't worry I'll still blogg about promo and other stuff...)

I excuse

2007-07-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

It seems that some people where somehow shocked from my blog about presentations.

Just to let you know, I never ment to personally accuse someone for being a bad presentator.

That's why I'm planning to give a tutorial on it on next years aKademy. And it's not about becoming perfect, because believe me, also I am not that great at doing presentations. But there are some tricks ans tips that are very usefull.

So everyone who's interested, everyone's welcome.

And if someone cannot wait untill next year. I'm always available for questions.

And again my excuses.

Konqi Tonky dragon

2007-07-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

I just read the terrible news about the merch! And keep asking myself. How the h##ck is that possible????? I really hope they can track the stuff, because I wanted to stock loats of things...

Speaking of Konqi, I had some great ideas to do with Konqi. But since I don't really know if it's an educational issue or a game issue. But for those who are interested and are able to code, I would LOVE to how my ideas would turn out ;-)

Here's one
A KDE-tutorial for kids: You start up KDE-tutorial and a real-life Konqi pops on the screen and starts to introduce itself and... KDE. Konqi shows you around in KDE and shows the apps, how they work...

Second
Konqi-pet: kind of a game to learn children how to nurse pets. Konqi starts as an egg, and you will have to make sure the egg is comfy, warm, safe. After a little while baby Konqi would be born out of the egg. And than you will have to take care of it like a pet. Feed it, play with it, learn discipline....

It would be ever cooler if you could integrate this into other programs. I don't know how. But that's where we have the creative developpers for, don't we?

Well folks, that's it for today. CY

You take the slow train and I'll take the fast plane

2007-07-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

And I'll be in Scotland befoooooore you!...

After discovering Glasgow on my bare feet for a day, due to my painfull blisters and almost getting kicked out of the hostel where I am staying because they thought I was a bum, I became the notekicker of the EduDay yesterday.

About my barefeet-experience on monday, I suggest to everyone to try it sometime. It actually felt kind off sexy. Different sensations like soft concreet, rough concreet that gave a massage to my feet and rain that washed my feet where all worth the try. So you see wellness doesn't have to be expensive if you're just creative enough.

Anyway enough of that.

Annma had asked me for help on Monday, because they were lacking a notekicker for the EduDay. And since I didn't had anything better to do accept writing seriously riddiculous blogs, I was happy to help.

So there I was yesterday. Taking notes, notes, notes... and... notes...
It was a very interesting and learnful day for me yesterday. And there were some very interesting projects presented. I hope they all evolve, because they're all worth it. Education should be free, and this is absolutely one of the best contributions to make to the Educational system.

And today I typed all the notes over and handed them over to Annma and Danny, so they can do some great writing stuff with it.

further news follows...

blisters and bare feet

2007-07-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Monday 2 july 2007
This moring Bart and I said goodbye to the Mickael and Olivier, who were leaving alrady back to France today.
After that Bart and I went shopping first. Since my shoes were still pretty wet, I considered buying new shoes.
Not a good idea I discovered after a while. After about a 10 minute walk in my new shoes, my feet felt like one big blister. And since wearing shoes is not an option at the moment, I'm reluctant to walk on bare feet. Luckily Dan is loving it too and is already quarreling around Glasgow on bare feet the whole weekend.
I think I'm going for some beach-slippers later today...
Bart and I also discovered the bookstore Borders. A real Geek-Whalhalla if you ask me. Sci-fi Books, Fantasy books, computers books, ... thay just have that many that we almost bought the whole shop. Well at least 4 bags of books...

More on today, later in the evening.

Marginalen Schotten

2007-07-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Marginalen, shags, ...
It is said in Scotland that when you meet a Scottish marginale, you will immediately know.

Very funny. yesterday when leaving to hostel to go grap something to eat we were actually attacted by a girl wo had some obsession with “W”questions. She just walked straight on to Markus and ... and started firing questions like: Wodkjoa? Wlkjeou? Wlekoueloja?
I thought in Scotland they spoke English, but I guess I was wrong all the time. The language they are speaking? Scottish I suppose...
Even if the questions in that strange language she was asking us didn't made sense and we couldn't even understand a single word of it it seemed even more difficult to explain that we didn't spoke her language and just wanted to go to eat something.
After a while we just turned our backs and went on to the Chinese Self Service Restaurant. Like a dog she was following our trail and kept screaming something to us in that strange language.
When we got to the restaurant we finally lost her. And had a great 'a volonte' dinner.

bombings

2007-07-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday I heard somebody wispering during one of the talks that an accident happenend on Glasgow airport.
Since the geek-town didn't evolved yet to the level of internet-access, we totaly didn't had a clue what was happening in the outside world.
After a while the bad news came in, that in fact it was a suaside bomber that attempted to drive a car-bomb into the airport exit.
At first nobody didn't realised the severety of the incident. Untill we got the news that they arrested some guys in Liverpool too and that even in Ibiza there was an incident. I think almost everyone phoned home to ensure we were ok. Actually if nobody had reported it, we wouldn't have noticed a thing.
At the moment things are going better at the airport, but the autorities are still calling the people to vigilence. I just hope our flight home doesn't take to much damage of the delaying and cancellings of the week.

How to do a presentation

2007-07-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Better presentations needed:
Doing presentations isn't difficult. In fact it's rather easy. Actually it's just the same as acting, telling a story, doing a theater play.
Unfortunately not everyone has understood this yet. I went to really great presentations, with the big G, this weekend. The perfect example of it is Mark Shutteworth. Though is slides were very simple and plain his way of bringing them was pure entertainment. And that's something KDE really misses.
There were some presentations which felt like a real pain is the ass. Bad english, talking like you're not really interested in what you're saying or jumping around on the stage like you're about to pi in your pants. And just not to think about the ones who were just reading what's on the slides.

My personnal opinion is that the developpers should leave the presentations up to people who know how to do presentations. But I totaly understand that they love to show off themselves with their creations and its difficult to let their babies go. But hey, sometime parents need to understand, that when the child has become an adult it's old enough to discover the world.
So I have two propositions. Or either on next aKademy I'm willing to give a tutorial in how to do presentations or the developpers should let some promotors do the presentations. And this is perfectly duable. Developpers would just have to brief the talkers in advance. And offcourse the developper should also be present during the talk to anwer some questions.
The tutorial would be a better, but less easy, solution. This could take part in a seperate room with access for the presentators only. Also we could use this room as a testing room for the logistics (beamer, presentation...) and for a final exercise befor the presentation itself.
I don't want this blog to be seen as negatif critisism, but rather as a positive influence of a new creative community member who's willing to help bringing KDE to the next level.

I need a laptop...

2007-07-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

I need a laptop...
Being a female geek is not always easy. You're not supposed to know anything about computers being female and especially not about coding. And even though I'm mostly helping with the promotion team its just obvious that the male geeks just feel a little bit strange around female geeks. And you can assume that female geeks have the attention of the male species, since the geek is a very curious animal. One thing that stroke me the most is that almost all the males have a laptop and that it was kind of a very imported piece of clothing. Without it would be the same as walking naked on the streets.

... I don't have a laptop... so I was really wondering first why all the males of the species wanted to hug me and looked at me like I was something they've never seen before... but in fact I interpreted it wrong... I'm naked... no wonder I got their attention...

and again talks...

2007-07-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

Sunday 1 june 2007
The first talk of the day I attended was about the Semantic K Desktop Environment or better about Nepomuk. I already came in contact with Nepomuk at Fosdem 2007, but didn't really got the idea of it. After this presentation I got it and by implementing this into KDE, I surely believe KDE will evolve to an even higher level.
At noon I went with the Amarok people to search something to eat. This time we had more luck and found a really nice pizza-place near the conference. Although “Mister Murphy” still was looking behind the corner. After we ordered our dishes suddenly the waitress came to ask us if we could move to the baisement (childrens department of the restaurant, so very noisy). Apparently soneone had booked the table we were sitting on and she was yelling at the waittress that she didn't wanted any other table than ours and especially NOT in the childrens department. So we showed our best side and moved. After all it wasn't that bad at all, exept than off the children banging with their spoons on the table and crying and yelling... no... it wasn't bad at all...
The good thing of it was that we got some very nice tapas on the house in return. Yummie!
After lunch break I assisted 4 other talks. All about KDE on another system. Windows was not my cup off tea, Mac OS X almost went up in smoke and so we missed our CoffeeBreak ans Solaris was not at all something I would consider.
Finaly I attended a talk about Fedora and Kubuntu, two KDE distributions.
Going back to the hostel we got to know Scotland a little better and got soaked by the rain. Actually I kind of liked it and I considered it to be a perfect opportunity to test how waterproof my mascare in fact is. And it is quite waterproof. Better than my shoes anyway... and my skirt, which kind off liked the water a little to much and was sucking the water up from the the bottom, untill just below my ...
When we got back to the hostel we changed clothes first and than went to a really nice Chinese Buffet-restaurant where you could eat as much as you like thesame price. One of the Amarok guys, Dan apparently really understood where it was about. First I thought I was one off the suicide bombers, since he didn't seemed to stop eating. But after 3 plates of chinese and 2 plates of desert he finally stopped. ;-)
After dinner we went back to the hostel and settled ourselves next to one another in the coaches of the television-room. aah... ZEN...

talks talks and talks

2007-07-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday 30 juni 2007
This morning we missed the opening talk, but we were on time for the Keynote of Trolltech and KDE by Lars Knoll. Again I learned something more about the working of KDE. And I learned what Qt is about.
A small part of me was afraid that I wouldn't understand a thing or anyway not a lot about the talks, but actually the talks are great. They are easy to understand, even for a newbie like me.
Next talk was about Python. And this seems a nice language to learn. At the moment I'm learning Ruby, but some of the KDE collegues told me it would be better to learn Python. And after this talk I think it's worth to try.
For lunchbreak we didn't went looking for a small bistro or pub, but just went to a sandwich bar and took our lunch on the market place near the university.
The Keynote of Mark Shuttleworth was in my opinion the most interesting of the day. And he really knows how to entertain the audience or how to hold the attention. He's like the Steve Jobs of the open source world. Mark Shuttleworth had some very nice ideas on how KDE should progress in the future and in my opinion he was right. KDE should step up the effords even a little more to attract more users. And we do have some very strong marketing-terms we could use. We have Freedom and Konqi.
Konqi would be the perfect tool to attract the younger users, children. If someone could devellop a Konqi that walks around on the desktop and shows how KDE works to kids in an amusing way, I think kids, and not only kids, would love it. If I could code, I would already wrote something like it, but fortunately I cannot... So if someone likes my idea or likes too try it?
Because this could be one off the nice goodies that KDE has and the others don't.
Other talks I attended were about Okular, Quasar, Decibel. Webkit, Beautiful Features in KDE and the talk about Free Software in government.
They all made me think about what KDE is all about and how we could make it even better. I'm kind off a creative thinker, so on this part I'm willing to contribute.
After the talks we were supposed to go to a bar called “Flying Duck” were we could find free food and drinks. I went with the Amarok-guys, but for the first hour we didn't had much luck in finding the pub. And it seemed like no one knew it. Exept some of the lokals who would just send us around Glasgow for fun.
Anyway after a LONG search around the cinema complex we finally found it. And lucky for us the food wasn't finished yet. And it was delicious.
In the Duck-bar I got to talk with someone who has done translations for KDE. Since I'm not doing a lot yet for KDE, I think I will ask around a bit if there's use of dutch translators.
At about 11o'clock I already was starting to feel tired, so Bart, me and some others decided to return to the hostel. Bart, me and Martin were staying in the same hostel, so we parted from the other group. On the citymap we saw that we should always go straight trough to the hostel, but what we couln't see on the map is that we had to pass some cabarett-bars or better stripbars... Nice for the guys yes, but I rather like naked guy than girls.
It wasn't really an area to cross over when you had to walk home alone. There were even heavy armed police guys hanging around in the small, short street.

Anyway we got save and well back in the hostel and went to sleep. No actually first we discovered that we were locked out of our room due to a key that ignored working. When Bart went down again for a working key, our neighbour, Aaron J. Seigo proposed too sleep over in his room (and actually was a bit amused that Bart and I were locked out). Anyway when I asked him if his card worked when he called the elevator, he just told me that he jumped in it when someone else had activated it. And you may guess what he discovered after saying this... Indeed his card didn't worked, locked out. The only one who succeede immediately in entering his room was Markus.

But finally we managed to get in too. And part of the snorring and talking of Bart in his sleep, we had a good sleep.

Scotland is GREJAT!

2007-07-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Date Friday 29 juni 2007
My first actual contribution to KDE was on Fosdem 2007, where I helped with the merchandising Booth. After that I really got interested in the community and started to search my way into the community. Finally I ended up in the Promo community, which is logical since I already have some experience in promo-working and haven't got any in coding yet.
Well actually I do have SOME experience in coding... I'm starting to learn Ruby and I know a little Applescript. But for now it's better not to talk about it, since I didn't get further yet than... well... not very far yet...

So that's how I got here, to aKademy 2007. For now helping with promo and maybe in the future helping with programming.

Bart and I got up at 7 o'Clock this morning. Drunk our mug of Coffee, did some groceries first and then left for aKademy.
I was rather curious how people would react to a female newcomer, since there aren't alot women in the KDE community yet.

Bart and I live in Mechelen, thats about 15 minuts of the airport of Brussels. But getting there is another story. In order to get to BA we needed to take 2 different trains, then take a flight to London and then take another flight from London to Glasgow.
And now, to proove how great public transport in Belgium is I'll tell you how we really got in Glasgow:
We took a direct train from Mechelen to Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol), and there we took a direct flight to Glasgow. Not only cheaper and easier, but also faster.

One week before the conference I learned that there still had to be a Pressdocument to make. An American guy, Vlad Blanton, signed in to do it, but asked some help. Since I know some DTP I signed in too. Vlad was working very hard on discover.kde, so we agreed I would do the layout and some of the writings. This was a great opportunity to learn more about KDE and the community so I jumped on it immediately.
Our deadline supposed to be last Friday, but when I put the final pdf document on the community under the moto “finally done” suddenly the critics came! This a's due to some problems in Scribus. When I sended the scribus file and scabbook to Vlad, the program hadn't ad the pictures with it.
Vlad decided to finish it up and finally at about yesterday midnight the doc came online. So, thank you Vlad for the hard work to get the doc online.

And I'm very content because it looks rather nice. :-)

Anyway on Schiphol airport we met some other laptop wearing guys who where preparing to go to the akademy conference. We practically all where seated in the back of the plane, thanx to Anne-Marie her blog entree. Normally she and 4 other guys from Toulouse would join us at the airport, but they missed their connection with our flight and had to take a detour via Edinburough on a later flight.

When we arrived at Glasgow, we joined with some other KDE'ers in the airport and than parted to the Eurohostel.

My first impression of the hostel: primitive! But since I'm used to going on vacation in hotels I needed some adaptation-time first.
The youth hostel, Eurohostel, actually is all you need. It is clean, we have a room with a small private shower and it's situated in the most interested part of the city. Most of you won't know me yet, but sometimes I like to go out to GothicParties. Well it seems that some 100 metres away from the hostel there are 2! Gothic Disco's!!! The Cathouse and The Catwalk. In Belgium this would be unthinkable. I love Scotland!
Next to this they seem to have great Karaokebars too. Oh yes I do love Scotland!

After our check-in we went to look for the aKademy-subsciption and Campus-bar where the community supposed to meet one-another and ofcourse party.

At about 8 o'Clock PM our stomachs were getting grumpy so we wanted to go and grap something too eat. Some guys Bart and I got to know, Mickael, Olivier and Mario joined us. I warned them about me being very critical in food, but they joined anyway.

After going in-and out almost EVERY bar Glasgow owns we started to get a litlle hopeless to find something to eat. Parently if you want to eat something in Glasgow you really need to make a reservation or else just forget is. Eventually Bart and Mario grabbed a sandwich in a Subway-fastfood bar. The rest of us didn't because in my opinion it wasn't an hygienic bar. I saw (schimmel) on some food! And I really don't wanna get food poisoning on my first day.

Olivier and Mickael went to the PizzaHut near our hostel. I loved to eat a pizza, but I have a cronical disease in my stomach and just cannot eat everyting I want. And I hate it to always have to act like a critical food-fobie-girl...
I went to eat a sandwich with mozarella and tomato's on the other side of the street. Also a very nice pizza-resto I think.

At home I already did some research on Glasgow. We are near 3 of the best shopping area's of Glasgow. So I alreay made clear to Bart that I would need 2 half days for shopping.

My first Gothic Party!

2007-05-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my boyfriend and me went to our first Gothic Party. And it was great!

I'm already quite a long time a Gothic-fan. Even sung in some Gothic bands, but that didn't really work. Don't understand me wrong, I do can sing and most people define me as a very good singer ( Coloratura Sopran). It's just that the other members of the band where all male and they couldn't agree with one-another whether to make death metal music or Symphonic Gothic.

After a while a quited searching for a band, but maybe I'll start again in a few... who knows...

The first time I came into contact with Gothic-music was, when I was about 17 years old. I alreasy saw myself a few years as a Wicca-believer (not practisizer). One day a friend of mine made me listen to some numbers of Within Temptation. And I was sold to it immediately!

I started to search for more music and soon got to know Epica, Nightwish, Lacuna Coil, Poison Black, ...

Since Gothic is a very niche music genre, it isn't easy to find music records of the bands, let alone find places where they are having Gothic-Parties.

I went to some concerts ans got to know the nice way of dressing yourself up ans feeling like a princess on the dancefloor.

A while ago I spotted Bunkerleute. An organisation who organises Gothic parties and cafés in Leuven. I would love to go to their parties, but my boyfriends doesn't like parties alot (too much smoke and noice...)

Anyway since recently their parties became partially smoke-free and the music volume was also ear-friendly as I heard.

So yesterday I convinced my boyfriend to go! First I went shopping for a new outfit. In Leuven there'es a nice alternative shop called Goddess clothing. I bought a corsage-top ans a long black skirt.

And then we went...

At my surprise Bart met an old class-mate, who also seems to be a real Gothic-fan. And even a few minuts later also I learned to know new people. The ladies I met where all supscriped to Gothweb, so as soon as I got home I also supscribed.

All ladies had dazzling dresscodes! Their dresses where to good to be true in my eyes. So I asked where they got them, to my astonishment they made them theirselves or created them themselves by mixing up several simple clothes.
Since I am rather small of lenght, I find it very difficult to find skirts and dresses that aren't too long. One of the ladies (sorry, forgot her name) told me she learned herself to stitch and does it as a side-job next to her studies.
She also would pin-point me into the direction of some nice online Goth-stores to buy corsets and accessoires. And maybe she can make a nice skirt for me too.

I was pleased to hear that they are all crafty people, since I am also crafty. Stitching, crochetting,... none of them seems weird to them.

I really had a great evening/night and this won't be my last one.

In fact I am hoping to start my own Gothic-clothing-line one day. First I'll start with making and adjusting clothes for me and if I get the hang of it, maybe I can make some money out of it??? Who knows...

Finally found what I'm looking for

2007-05-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

I graduated in Communicationmanagement in 2003. Since than I started searching for a job in which I could loose my creativity and my experiences.

I started working rather fast as an Event manager in a big financial company. But since they only worked with contracts of 1 year, that story didn't last long.

Since than I was searching and searching for a similar experience, but couldn't find myself again in the next companies I worked for.

Last week I started at my new workemployer. It immediately felt fantastic! Everyone is very enthousiastic, everyone is allowed to be creative in his part and to help colleagues with new ideas. Just the thing I was looking for!

More important it's a fast growing company specialized in a young booming business: presents!

A few days ago a colleague asked me to help organising team-events. They would like to organise one a month, so this is gonna be fun, fun, fun!

As I already am helping on the marketing and merchandising part of KDE, I would love to gain some more experience in this domain. Event-organising, merchandising development, product development and every other creative process... are just my thing!

I'm very eager to know how I will develop in this great company I work for now...

T-shirt design

2007-05-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

What do you think of this design?

A little explanation. The KDE-logo is rougly sketched in paint on the T-shirt.
The text "Desktop Environment" is stitched on the T-shirt in a darker grey colour.

Creative thinking

2007-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

I firsted learned about KDE a few years ago. My boyfriend is a real Linux-fan and started to help programming for the Amarok project.

In my eyes it was all too difficult to get involved in it. All those programming languages! Pfff... Until Oktober 2006 I got a message that KDE was still searching helpers for the Booth on Fosdem 2007.

Since I already had some experience in organising events and loved to build up some experience in the domain I signed in to help. And you can guess where it went next. I got involved...

I learned that KDE-people weren't geeks. In fact they were really nice, high socially involved and very pleasant to go out with.

I'm not really the programming-type, but rather the creative type. I'd love to help brainstorming to solve problems, to create new opportunities and cool merchandising stuff or even new software.

This year I already helped a bit on the merchandising-thinking, but I'm eager to do a lot more.

step by step I'm learning a little bit more about programming too and hope to contribute also in this part of the project.

I totally got a crush on the cute symbols of KDE: both Konqi and the KDE-logo. I even get creative with them!
I hope you're not gonna laugh with me or maybe think I'm some kind of freaky girl, but I love to do some handcrafting from time to time. Why? You don't have to use your brains, so it relaxes me and I can do it on auto-pilot in front of the tv.

My lates creation is something I guess KDE people will love: I crocheted a Konqi-teddybear. No it's not for sale. But for the interested ones, I'd love to share the pattern.

my first time

2007-03-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Life is wonderfull.

Everyday you learn something new and doing something for the first time. Not true? Well let's make a little review about how your day could look like: you wake up, for the first time your hair seems to be having a great day although your head doesn't agree with it. you go to work and see, maybe even meet people for the first time. You take the train and are sitting in that chair for the first time, ... bla bla bla

Hi, my name is Wendy and this is the first time I'm blogging.

I'm gonne talk about various items from traveling experiences until my experience as a start-to-lear programmer.

Hope you'll enjoy it!