• If you’re a KDE developer, let us know what’s new
• If you’re a use of KDE software, let us know what’s new
• If you’re using a 4.8 pre-release, get us some screenshots of cool new features

Simple huh? But how can you do it?

Well, we welcome direct edits at our release note drafting Etherpad. You can type in notes or full text and you don’t even need a KDE account – just go to promo.notes.kde.org/58

If you’re a developer, you should make sure that the 4.8 feature plan is up to date for your code.

If you’re really lazy, just leave a comment here with a link to more info

If you can make screenshots, please use the default wallpaper, styles and fonts. If you can store your screenshot online somewhere, just put a link to it in the Etherpad. If not, you can simply send them to me (find my contact details on the About page.

Help spread the word about our 4.8 releases and be a part of KDE.

We’re collating information in an etherpad at promo.notes.kde.org/14 – you don’t even need an account to help us.

Developers

If you develop an app, drop by and tell us (even in bullet points) what is new and cool in your app in 4.7. If you have some screenshots, please add links to them in the doc. Afterall, you know what has changed in your app since 4.6. We, the promo team, might not.

Users

Do you follow an app team? Tried the RCs? Know about some cool new stuff that is coming? Well you can help too, just note the features in the pad. you can also look through old copies of the Commit Digest since the 4.6 releases to pick out features from the summaries that have made it into the 4.7 releases.

Plasma Workspaces and KDE Frameworks too

The above also applies of course to the KDE workspaces and the KDE Frameworks, in fact to anything that is part of our general release.

Be a hero, step up and help us tell the world what KDE has been up to in the last six months.

Web, by Curt Smith

We had a combined sprint back in 2009 when the current version of the main KDE website was designed in consultation between the two teams and KDE’s artists. The result was a site that much improved on what we had before, but there is still more to be done.

The last few years have also seen the growth and improvement of KDE’s wikis, from the phenonmenal UserBase that should be the first stop for any user of KDE software experiencing difficulties to TechBase and our Community Wiki. However, these could integrate better with one another and with the main website and – importantly – all look like they belong together.

The Web Team comprises many of KDE’s unsung heroes, so in addition to building links between them and the Promotion Team, I’ll also take the opportunity to blog about the cool things they are working on and get some interviews done to raise the profile of their work a bit. Like many (all?) teams in KDE, they need more help to progress at an even faster pace and to help us all get the most out of *.kde.org. So if you’re interested, keep an eye on the Planet and the Dot for more information

So please, head over to the Blue Mint and help if you can.

Over three days, we tackled such issues as improving the Join the Game website, had a discussion with some of the GNOME guys about promotion at and before the Desktop Summit, reviewed the KDE website itself and worked on cleaning up the Promotion Team wiki to make it more useful for new and existing contributors and started work on a glossary of KDE terms. As usual, the sprint is not just about completing things, but getting people together to agree future directions and many of these projects are ongoing.

The sprint also gave us the opportunity to all meet in person, making it the first KDE sprint for Damien Tardy-Panis and Lukas Dzikaras. It was also the first time we had managed to get Leinir and Agustín and Pau at a promotion team sprint and we called upon their experience from other teams in KDE many times. Above all, we got to know one another better, which always helps future collaboration. Of course, there were many other promotion team members who could not attend, but we had discussions on IRC and managed to get all the Dot editors together to discuss the state of the Dot. You will see few changes there in due course.

Overall, it was a busy, but invigorating weekend. It was great to have such an event in the UK and show a few of my KDE friends a bit of Southampton. We are also very grateful to Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science for not only hosting the sprint but also giving us some very nice lunches each day – with particular thanks to Joyce Lewis of ECS for making all the arrangements. It was great to chat with a few people from the department about our software and our community. An extended fire alarm on Sunday that saw us eventually decamp to a local pub only served to give us a pleasant break sitting outside in the sunshine (it is always sunny in Southampton, whatever the other attendees may tell you).

So, here it is – the rather cute piglet squid:

Image © courtesy of the SERPENT project. www.serpentproject.com

Otherwise, we’re enjoying the Southampton sunshine, have settled on our agenda and are getting stuck into work on KDE’s Join the Game campaign.

The Promo Sprint Venue

The attendees include some well known KDE contributors and some enthusiastic relative newcomers that I am looking forward to meeting in person for the first time. We have a whole load of things to work through, including preparing for the Desktop Summit, planning for the second year of our Join The Game campaign to attract individual supporters, reviewing the performance and management of the Dot (I think it has been a great year, but there is always more to do) and considering the KDE websites ahead of the KDE web team sprint.

We will be enjoying the hospitality of the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science, who are kindly sponsoring the sprint with both meeting rooms and food. We should also have a chance to chat to interested students and staff there.

Later today, I will be meeting three early arrivals: KDE e.V.’s Claudia Rauch (who also attended the previous promo sprint), Agustín Benito Bethencourt of KDE Spain and quite a new contributor, Lukas Dzikaras.

We may not have a snazzy sprint logo, but you can expect frequent updates over the next few days on Planet KDE to make up for that

Something similar to that happened recently when I contacted the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) to see whether they could help out with hosting the upcoming KDE Promotion Team sprint.

I only contacted ECS as I am currently working on my PhD thesis at another campus of the same university and was not at all sure whether they would have heard of us at all – compared to many places, the UK always seems to me a bit backward when it comes to embracing free software. So an enthusiastic response offering some of their facilities (very nice seminar rooms in addition to break out areas) and the assurance that “as a School we are very big supporters of Open Source” was a very pleasant surprise. ECS even want to hold a joint event with us, giving us an opportunity to present KDE to some of their students.

ECS will also be a nice place to be working as researchers from the school have worked hard on freeing data and ECS is also one of the current homes of Tim Berners-Lee.

The sprint will be held from 6-8 May. It’s great to have KDE coming to my home city and hopefully by the time we’ve finished KDE’s profile around here will be a bit higher than it was before.

Navigating the web

This will be taking place at the LinuxHotel in Essen, Germany. The sprint will bring together people working on the KDE web infrastructure, the wikis, the forums and the promotion team. Among the topics we will be working on is reviewing the current web presence of KDE and looking at how to improve communication between the various teams while strengthening the wikis such as UserBase and TechBase.

I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the attendees at the combined Booth, Web and Marketing Sprint (when the current KDE website design was first developed) in 2009 and at Akademy 2010. I have worked with most of the others over mailing lists and IRC in the meantime. However, it’s always good to get to meet people in person and, with a five day sprint, we should be able to put the communication structures in place to better manage KDE’s web properties and also make some tangible improvements during the meeting itself.

In other news, we will hopefully be holding a promotion team sprint in May, in which we can look at the next challenges in promoting KDE and our software to new audiences.

Background to the Feature Guide

Early next year, KDE will release new versions of the Plasma workspaces, many of our applications and the KDE Platform that makes the rest possible. You may remember that for our 4.4 releases we had a feature guide that gave a nice visual description of the new features. This helps existing and potential users of KDE software see what is cool in the new releases and gets picked up by other news outlets. Getting your app or feature into this guide is a Good Thing.

However, preparing the guide takes a lot of time. We did it for the 4.4 releases, but for 4.5, with Akademy happening too, we did not have time. Normally we create the guide by looking at the release Feature Plan and trawling through developer blogs that appeared on Planet KDE.

How developers and application teams can help in a few minutes

Please check the 4.6 Feature Plan and update it to reflect what will be getting into the 4.6 releases. This is very important as it also helps to pick items for the release announcement

Also, if you can spare a few minutes, please add your features to our shared document on KDE’s Etherpad (you don’t need an account). If you can write a description of the feature, that is great. If not, just give it a name and provide a link to a relevant blog post and/or screenshot and we’ll do the rest. You don’t need to worry about your English skills or spending time making it read well (unless you want to). The Promo team can take care of that for you.

Just listing your features and providing links to info will help us hugely. You know what is new in your app/library for SC 4.6 – we do not and would have to search for features and maybe miss yours.

You want to be a KDE Promoter?

Of course, you don’t have to be a developer or attached to one of the development teams to help with this. Anyone can find features in the Feature Guide, look through blogs and add the information to the shared document. You can also expand and improve what other people have written. Etherpad has a full revision history so you won’t accidentally break stuff.

If you are interested in this, please also drop us a mail on kde-promo@kde.org to say hi, tell us who you are and ask any questions. Or, if you prefer, you can contact me directly using the comments below or contact details on the ‘about’ page.

A team effort

Last time we got several people involved in writing the Feature Guide:

• Aron Asor
• Carl Symons
• Jos Poortvliet
• Justin Kirby
• Luca Beltrame
• Ricky Laishram
• Sebastian Kügler
• Vivek Prakash
• Other contributors who did not get properly credited

If you edit the doc, add your name to the list of authors at the end and we’ll give you a mention in the final feature guide.

A cute pony

I promised, so I deliver (image courtesy of Katie@!)

Cute Pony