The Desktop Summit is a co-located event which features the yearly contributor conferences of the GNOME and KDE communities, GUADEC and Akademy. Next year the conference will take place from 6 to 12 August, 2011 in the city center of Berlin at the Humboldt University, Unter den Linden. The event will feature keynotes, talks, workshops and team building events.

Find the official announcement of KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation here and the Desktop Summit website here.

Desktop Summit

The GNOME and KDE communities develop the majority of Free Software desktop technology. Increasingly, they cooperate on underlying infrastructure. By holding their annual developer flagship events in the same location, the two projects hope to foster collaboration and discussion between their developer communities. Furthermore, KDE and GNOME aim to work more closely with the rest of the desktop and mobile open source community. The summit presents a unique opportunity for all of us to work together and improve the free and open source desktop for all.

At the Desktop Summit 2011 the organizing team expects well over a thousand core contributors, prominent open source technology leaders, government, education and corporate representatives and hundreds of open source desktop engineers, usability experts and designers. Local and international IT industry are invited to learn about and join in developing the latest innovative desktop technology. The event is locally supported by the TSB Innovation Agency Berlin GmbH and the Berlin Senate.

Location



Berlin Mitte with the University Berlin Mitte with the University

The conference will take place at the 200 year old Humboldt University in the district of Under den Linden, part of the city center of Berlin. This area has plenty of good hotels and hostels, great restaurants and shopping areas and good public transport - all that in walking distance. Cultural needs can be met by the near-by Deutsches Historisches Museum, the City Library of Berlin and many other prominent buildings and institutions. A must-see for visitors of Berlin, the Brandenburger Tor, can be found on the street the university is on.

The registration for the Desktop Summit will open on 1 February 2011 and a call for papers will be issued. Talk submissions will be due on 15th of March and one month later the conference program will be announced. Saturday 6 August kicks off 3 days of joint keynotes, talks and social events followed by four days of collaborative workshops. The conference officially ends on Friday, 12 August.

Important dates

Febuary: registration for Desktop Summit will open; Call for Papers issued.

15 March: Deadline for travel & hotel reimbursement requests. Registration remains open until the conference.

15 April: Feedback on travel and hotel reimbursement requests.

6 - 8 August: Kickoff and joint keynotes, talks and social events

9 August: General Assembly of KDE e.V.; Gnome Foundation meeting

9-12 August: Collaborative workshops

Website up

Meanwhile the website went online on DesktopSummit.org where you can read a bit of information on the conference, its history, the upcoming desktop summit and the location. More content will be added over the coming months. You can also subscribe for news on the conference so you will be notified whenever there is something going on.