conf.KDE.in 2017 Live Blog – all the events as it happens
conf.KDE.in, KDE India’s annual conference, is a platform for Qt/KDE contributors, developers and enthusiasts to come together, share their knowledge, contribute, learn and play. Most importantly it’s an excellent arena for collaboration and exchange of ideas, skills and thoughts among like minded people passionate about open source in general. conf.kde.in is an awesome opportunity for any student who is passionate to experience the magic of open source.
This year, conf.KDE.in is being held at IIT Guwahati. We are attending the event and wish to bring before you the happenings as they unfold. Watch this space from 10th March 2017, 10 AM (IST/GMT +5:30) onwards to get real time updates. The event has ended and live updates are archived here.
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Hello guys! Sunit, your reporter here. We’ve currently in IIT Guwahati.
We’re really excited about attending this event and can’t wait to attend the keynote. 😀
See you guys tomorrow at 10AM.
ALRIGHT!!! The event is set to begin.
People are assembling in the conference hall.
Event inauguration has begun.
Chairman of Technical Board, IIT Guwahati shares his views on Open Source and encourages Open Source Development.
Lamp lighting ceremony.
Pradeepto Bhattacharya, Red Hat, addresses the audience.
He talks about the upcoming sessions in the conference.
“Open Source is not just about source code, it is about the community!”
Valorie Zimmerman, KDE.
She motivates the attendees to contribute.
Skill + Talent + People = SUPERPOWER!
“KDE is made up of people of all kinds. People who translate, people who code, people who design, people who just help!”
[Edit – Questions]
• The talk extends to talk about KDE, explaining KDE products (kde.org).
• Educational apps are worth a look – from nursery school to astronomy/physics simulation.
‘Ask Me Anything’ session is going on. More updates soon.
Live coding session has started, introducing students to Qt Framework.
Python Developers should see: https://wiki.python.org/moin/PyQt – This would get you started with GUI programming in no time!
Shantanu Tushar, SoStronk, is conducting the live coding session.
In case you were wondering about our updates (which have been missing for the past 2 hours), we were on a lunch break! The lunch was good.
Open Source beginners should look forward to the upcoming sessions. We’re sure, if you decide you delve into the culture, you’d be a fan!
Bhushan Shah, Blue Systems GmbH, shares his story of involvement with KDE.
“Learn the product & get involved!”
Bhushan mentions multiple KDE products. Here are a few to try depending on your interest…
Art: Krita
Astronomy: KStars
Geography: Marble Maps
R Harish Navnit, KDE, is delivering a talk on KDE Build System and CMake.
Developers looking to make executables should look into this.
There would be session in the coming two days which would explain this in a lot more detail. Stay tuned for that.
Live coding demos are fun!
A Talk Tailored for the Educationists – “Bringing Academia to the Internet era – a Revolution in Knowledge Sharing.”
Srijan Agarwal is talking about WikiToLearn.
He mentions the issue of too many textual notes and the inefficiency in the study process of most students these days. WikiToLearn is a platform for OpenSource textbooks;
“We are a very friendly community!”
He invites people from the academia to contribute for revisions and creation of new content on the platform to meet the vision of more accessible educational resources.
“Summarizing what you’ve already learnt, explaining your learning to someone else would help you understand your subject even better.”
“You get a platform that allows you to write books. Most of the other wiki platforms are not good enough.”
What’s for a developer in contributing for WikiToLearn?
There are plenty of tools which make this platform a possibility.
The primary platforms to code are JavaScript and PHP.
Pradeepto Bhattacharya tells us about the journey of KDE India.
“Although it is about software, it is more about the people” – Pradeepto
“Although it is about software, it is more about the people” – Pradeepto
Pradeepto Bhattacharya tells us about the journey of KDE India.
“KDE India is my spiritual child.”
“I used to shamelessly ask for invitations to various conferences to interact with people, learn from them, and even teach them. Needless to say, it was a fulfilling experience. There was even a situation when I had to leave my job to organize a conference in Bangalore.” — Pradeepto
“When you do Open Source stuff, you would meet people whom you would admire for the rest of your life.
These people would become your idols and they are rockstars, believe me!” — Pradeepto
“The talk was more about different people in KDE. So… the history thing didn’t have much for developers but was more about the culture and motivation.”
The conference was wound up for the day. As we await for the next day, we decided to go around and meet some people.
We met the SuperX OS (http://superxos.com/) team and participants of conf.KDE.in coming from various walks of life.
Day 2. We have reached the venue and are excited about the event to begin.
Amarok Music Player would give you artist info from Wikipedia and also the song lyrics right in the application interface.
Other software she mentions: Okular (Document Viewer), Calligra (Office Suite), Dragon Player (Video Player).
This happens to be my personal favourite from the talk. A great IDE to write code. – C, C++, Qt, Python and JavaScript Developers would love this!
S Kumari concludes the talk encouraging people to get involved!
It might be a good idea to take this slide seriously and incorporate KDE software to your daily use! 
“Promote open source, which is what we all are here for!”
A brilliant Q/A going on.
S Kumari makes a remarkable point about why people are reluctant to use Linux. She says: “It is important that people just start using it on a daily basis rather than just dual booting to Linux when they need to code”
“It is all about the learning and unlearning. There are people who cannot use Windows because they are so accustomed to Linux.”
Is it Siri? Is it Cortana? NO!
It’s Mycroft!
Mycroft is smart!
See all of its features here: https://github.com/MycroftAI
Mycroft has been developed in Python.
Developers willing to contribute, people seeking to know more about Mycroft should look forward to joining the Slack Channel.
Mukunda Madhab Puzari
Head, State e-Gov Mission Team, Assam
Delivering a talk on Adoption of Open Source in Government.
“The vision is about connecting the community.”
Would be posted a dedicated write-up in what was a gem of a talk.
http://superxos.com/ – Visit to know more.
SuperX is a KDE centric distribution and reaffirms its support for KDE.
The talk has come an end! What an experience this was…
I really need to get Sunit to post a word here as I head for lunch.
Shantanu Tushar, SoStronk goes on stage to describe how QtQuick apps can be debugged.
He gives us a bit of a background on what was taught on tree-ownership model in QML in yesterday’s live coding session.
As an example Shantanu gives us a glimpse into his eSports application named SoStronk written in QtQuick.
He also gives us an insight into debugging QML, which is similar to debugging JavaScript.
GammaRay is a debugger that is used to debug and profile Qt applications.
Resources, Models, Timers, etc. is viewable inside GammaRay.
QnA session is going on..
Shantanu is encouraging everyone to start contributing to Qt apps.
Bhushan also mentions that Plasmoids can be debugged with GammaRay.
Divyam Madaan is here to help us get started with GCompris.
GCompris is an educational tool that teaches children using a collection of activities.
Divyam shows the usage stats of GCompris across the world.
Divyam shows us how one can help contribute to GCompris, for example, in artwork, new activities, translation, and the like.
“GCompris is not yet packaged for most Linux distributions. We need your help to package it for all distributions.”
Tony Thomas, WikiMedia, tells us about himself.
Tony tells us how to choose an appropriate organization in GSoC.
He tells us what not to do in written communication, i.e. basic etiquette,
Tony also goes on to tell about the GSoC outreach programme.
He explained what has changed in GSoC this year.
QnA session with Tony is in progress.
Garvit Khatri, Zomato, explains how you can integrate Python and C++ modules.
“I started by integrating Canter to LabPlot”
“GIL is global interpreter lock in CPython. It prevents true parallel execution of threads in Python, as locks change hands between threads. This is done deliberately to avoid corruption of the Python interpreter. That’s why we use the alternate approach of integrating C++ modules with Python for speed and parallelism.” — Garvit
An example of Python-C++ integration.
Aniketh Girish gives a talk about object tracking using OpenCV and Qt.
QT is the future!
Aniketh goes into the nitty-gritties of the programming language syntax for detecting moving objects.
More examples follow……
Aniketh shows the demonstration of his code. The program detects moving people in a video clip.
We’re finally done for day 2.
Eagerly waiting for the coding sessions on day 3.
Day 3. Reached the venue. AMA with Valorie Zimmerman is going on.
Git 101 gets started you with the basics of code versioning and Git.
M. K. Yadava talked about the current sad state of computer education in schools and colleges. He says that the current curriculum makes students the users of expensive and subpar software and raises them as consumers. He talks about the need of revamping the education system to include open source software and concepts so that they can code and build better software and know about their internals.
Tony Thomas is holding a seminar on Qt and QML development.
The final attraction of the event: Q&A with the entire KDE team + how you can submit your first patch to KDE
Valorie addresses the audience for the final time.
conf.KDE.in comes to a close for this edition. We’ve had a wonderful time here. Thank you for following our updates.
We wish you all a Happy Holi! 🙂
M. K. Yadava talked about the current sad state of computer education in schools and colleges. He says that the current curriculum makes students the users of expensive and subpar software and raises them as consumers. He talks about the need of revamping the education system to include open source software and concepts so that they can code and build better software and know about their internals.
About the Author
I’m the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there’s no tomorrow.
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Great to see such good articles, this is a good step for those who couldn’t make it there. Keep up the good work. (Good Job!)