In the morning we split off for a few little meetings and I was in the one discussing the Dot. Things have been going pretty well there with lots of stories getting published but there are a few things we need to sort out to make sure we get stories published on time (and at the right time) and we also really need to fix the broken links from old stories written for the old Dot.

We also discussed Camp KDE which sounds like it should be awesome so if you’re over on the side of the pond where keyboards seem to be lacking a working ‘u’ key (that’s why you keep saying color and honor when you mean colour and honour, right?) you really have no excuse not to check it out.

Over lunch, we had presentations from the team leaders of the various projects we’ve been working on so that we could all see the progress that has been made and then we worked through until about 2100 on the content for the KDE handbook (initially for FOSS.in) and the release announcement for 4.4. Martin also gave an interesting presentation about KONSEC (our hosts) and the work that they are doing. We also got a sneak preview of a mock-up for the new website design that it-s put together in about 48 hours. Based on that, the guy is a genius.

A few beers and chatting followed in the evening, but you knew that already, right? We also plotted KDE’s world domination, to be realised with a five-year plan – free software == communism

So now, most people have headed off but a hardcore few of us – Lydia, Kenny, Eckhart, Jos and me are still here working on the things we didn’t quite manage to get done. The hotel people are vacuuming the breakfast room all around us and probably want us to leave but haven’t actually said so yet…

A Dot article summarising what we got up to this weekend will follow shortly(ish).

Yesterday – day two – we started off with another discussion about the rebranding, repeating a few steps from the day before but coming quite quickly to some conclusions and a concrete proposal written up by Cornelius. This is still being discussed internally with some of the people who will be most affected and so I can neither confirm nor deny rumours that the workspace in 4.4 will be known as “Ferrari” and that Konqui is going to be retired and replaced by a prancing horse known as Shergar… There will be an announcement about the real names on the Dot in due course.

After that, we got down to work on the release announcement for the 4.4 release of the KDE Software Compilation. Apparently writing it more than a couple of weeks before release is a new experiment. Jos had a draft already and he, Luca, Claudia and myself spent some time going through that in great detail to get the wording just right. We also managed a bit more work on the FOSS.in booklet adding a lot of new content in the big sections about KDE applications.

We also had a brief discussion about whether we have plasmoids, applets or widgets on our desktop and seem to be coming to some conclusions there too, thanks for Aaron, Sebas and others via email. And we fitted in a long overdue group hug too

In the evening we headed to the market at Schlossplatz for some gluhwein – first time I’d had that actually in Germany. Then we headed for a curry so for once I didn’t need menu translations A few beer enthusiasts (perhaps not surprisingly they were all German, except me) headed for an extra beer afterwards too.

Still, we made it in for 10am in the morning and this time remembered not to leave Luca behind at the hotel. Today’s work I’ll blog about later today or, most probably, tomorrow.

You may have noticed the Dot disappeared for a while – this happened halfway through a meeting of the Dot editors but we’re convinced it wasn’t us Anyway, it seems to be back now.

KONSEC has provided us with a couple of nice conference rooms (both big enough to hold everyone, but also allowing us to split in to different teams working on different projects) complete with wired and wireless internet and even free hot drinks so we can all get a caffeine boost from time to time and stay awake

As Troy mentioned already, one of the first tasks of the first day was sorting out the basic structure of the rebranding – separating the entity that produces our software from the software itself and really making it obvious that you can use KDE applications on Gnome, Windows, Mac, wherever…

It also gets us away from trying to find sensible ways of saying “KDE releases KDE” which arises when we have the same name for product and community. There’s still more discussion of branding issues (going on now) and we need to actually pick some names too

In the afternoon Jos made sure we got down to some “proper” work One team re-writing and updating a great KDE Handbook that was initially put together by community members in India – we’ll be delivering the text for the updated version by the end of the sprint. The other team started to work on a new navigation structure for kde.org, to make it a bit easier to find things and put everything in sensible locations.

That kept us busy from 9am to 7pm, then we headed out for dinner and a few drinks (well ok, quite a few) for some community building and general chat and gossip. Making it in for the 10am start time (an hour later than yesterday in recognition of it being the weekend) was a bit of a struggle.

• I should pay more attention to street names to avoid getting lost
• Meeting up with someone at the one of the biggest u-bahn stations can be tricky
• The German rail network really is good (still)
• Late arriving newcomers get hugs and beer – was apparently supposed to be a group hug – still have hopes for that later
• Pigs do indeed fly (Troy can confirm)

Proper work starts today – at 9am sharp. So now… breakfast.