Sponsoring
Call for Sponsors for the
KDE Developers and Users Conference 2005
(in Málaga, Spain, 27th of August to 4th of September)
"aKademy" Program Overview
The KDE aKademy is an international meeting of KDE contributors, active KDE supporters and KDE power users from all over the world, scheduled for the end of August 2005. It will feature...
- ... a weekend (27th/28th) for a public 2005 KDE Users and Administrators Conference at the same venue, where we will be showcasing all the exciting technologies and applications which make KDE the leading, most innovative and integrative Korporate Desktop Environment.
- ... followed by a two-day KDE Developers and Contributors Conference (29th/30th of August) of primarily technical talks and tutorials;
- ... followed by a five day KDE Coding Marathon (31th Aug--4th Sep) -- a big opportunity for interested groups of developers and contributors to gather together in computer labs for various organized and unorganized hacking sessions, spontaneous workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather meetings and KDE software design discussions until the end of the event;
For a better overview, here is a table about the complete event:
| Overview "aKademy": All Events during the KDE Developers and Users Conference 2005 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Date of events: August 27th to September 4th | ||
| Location: ETSI Informática, Universidad de Málaga, Andalusian Region, Spain | ||
| Event Module 1 | KDE Users and Administrators Conference | 2 Days (weekend) |
| Event Module 2 | Conference of KDE Developers and Contributors | 2 Days (Monday/Tuesday) |
| Event Module 3 | Coding Marathon for KDE Developers and Contributors | 5 Days (Wednesday to Sunday) |
About KDE
KDE is the Free Software Project which was, nearly 7 years ago, the first to start the long march onto the corporate Linux and Unix desktop workstations -- a march hich is only now acquiring full steam.
KDE is one of the largest and most successful Open Source projects. With currently nearly 1000 active contributors from around the globe (including programmers, translators, artists, documentation writers and quality team members), we are managing a growing project with more than 3.000.000 lines of source code, 80 mailing lists, contributors from over 90 countries and translations into 49 different languages.
KDE is by all measurements the most popular and highest rated desktop environment for Linux. KDE ships as the default desktop with most Linux distributions. We manage to roll out one major release or upgrade per year, while meeting release dates (which are pre-announced 8 months in advance) to almost within 24 hours of target. This reliability is a big tribute to the Open Source software development model KDE follows as well as to the excellent Qt Development Toolkit (from Trolltech) which allow us to deliver such a large and high-quality product in good time.
KDE's desktop environment has now fully matured to be accepted onto many enterprise and mission critical desktop workplaces. KDE is now going into its next stage of development where we are tightly integrating "external" applications (such as OpenOffice and others) into our framework. In future, user experience will hardly recognize any usability difference between KDE- and non-KDE-applications. This includes the usage of one common "Print", and one "FileOpen" and "SaveAs" dialog across all integrated applications.
About the Sub-Events of the KDE Developers and Users Conference 2005
Here are a few details about our plans for our grand summer event.
Sub-Event 1: KDE Users and Administrators Conference
We expect around 500 international KDE enthusiasts to participate at the Users Conference conveyed at the beginning weekend.
Here we will be showcasing all the existing and forthcoming technologies and applications which make KDE the leading, most innovative and widely integrative Korporate Desktop Environment. Some very new and exciting developments will be shown here for the first time ever to the public, previewing the new features and applications going into KDE-4.0.
Date: weekend of 27th/28th of August.
Sub-Event 2: KDE Developers and Contributors Conference
We expect 200 of our more than 800 currently active contributors to participate at this (more or less developer-internal) conference. It will be organized in 2 parallel tracks of technical talks and presentations dealing with KDE-related topics and desktop technologies.
The separate Call for Papers for the different sub-events have been published on the aKademy website at the Users and Administrators Conference's Call for Papers and the Developers and Contributors Conference's Call for Papers.
Date: weekend of 29th/30th of August.
Sub-Event 3: KDE Improvement Coding Marathon
Following the developer conference, we expect 200 of our developers, artists, translators, quality team members and documentation writers to be present to stay for the week of the Coding Marathon.
The Coding Marathon will also be open for a limited number of interested KDE users and the general public who are curious to see how the laboratory of KDE development works out in real life.
Date: weekdays and weekend from August, 31th to 4th of September.
Worldwide and Local Publicity
A web site is in preparation at http://conference2005.kde.org/ to provide full info about the activities around the event.
The fact that KDE will be showcasing some of its most exciting new technologies in preparation of its next stable version 4.0 release will ensure a high level of attentiveness for the event and its sponsors. We expect the press, including TV teams and radio reporters visiting us as well as many community-based internet news sites to report about it.
For the publicly most exposed parts of the event we are concentrating on getting a strong presence from IT professionals, Windows or Unix network administrators, and responsible IT managers interested in Linux server or desktop migrations to come. The attractive program of our world-class tutorials, and the public KDE Users Conference are helping with that goal too.
Participants of the KDE Developers and Users Conference 2005
All KDE developers, documentation writers, translators, promoters, other contributors as well as KDE power users are invited to come to "aKademy". We expect to have 200 of our active contributors from around the globe present for the full 9 days. Up to 400 additional visitors will be attending at least a part of the events. This will make our event one of the largest gatherings of active contributors to the Free and Open Source Software movement worldwide.
More info is available at http://events.kde.org/info/conference2005/ (Bookmark this page, because there will be more announcements and infos forthcoming!)
Location
The KDE Developers and Contributors Conference will take place in Málaga. Málaga belongs to the Andalusia Region, and its located in the south of Spain. Facilities are hosted and sponsored by the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática (ETSII) of the University of Málaga.
We have reserved 160 beds in the University Residence and also we are planning to reserve 50 more beds in Youth Hostels of Málaga for the complete period. Accomodation will be available for around 16/17 Euro/night (including breakfast) at the University Residence (a little bit more expensive in the Youth Hostels) to all participants registering in time.
Financing the Event
KDE e.V. is soliciting donations from companies and individuals towards this conference. These donations will be used both for running the conference and for bursaries for participants from other continents and/or without income. Delegates with an accepted talk/presentation will be prioritized in the distribution of these bursaries.
We are also aiming to get Linux users and administrators as well as other IT professionals (from the Málaga region as well as anywhere else in the world) into participating in our conferences.
Asking for Sponsors
KDE has some exciting new technologies in the pipeline which will mature over the next few months. 2005/2006 will really see the consolidation of the Linux desktop domination, and KDE will help a big part with that.
We expect the event to draw a lot of international attention. Also, we will have a lot of local press coverage and also expect some television teams there not just for one day.
But we need more sponsors. KDE is a large community project delivering high quality software for free. But we are not a company. We don't command a lot of cash flow. If our software helps to run your business more successfully now or in future -- isn't this a reason for you to consider our appeal to support us with money (or equivalent)? It will be put to good use: in organizing the KDE Developers and Users Conference we are ensuring the future fast development of KDE as the leading Desktop for Linux and Unix systems.
Where Sponsors can help
Here is a rough overview of expenses we expect to occur, and where sponsors could help us:
- We want to keep our developers together for the whole period and we want them to not need to pay anything for accommodation. That's why we are looking for a sponsor who receives the bills from the University Residence and the Youth Hostels where we reserved for hosting 200 people each for 10 days (the bills are expected to be around 30,000 Euro, 16-30 Euro per person for 1 night+breakfast).
- We will have at least 25 active KDE developers coming from overseas (USA, Canada, Latin America, Asia and Australia), all of whom require full-sponsoring or at least partial subsidizing of their airfare by us. Sponsors may "Adopt a KDE Geeek" to help him come to our event and take up all the procedures to reserve and buy a plane ticket through their own corporate-internal channels.
- The cost of each lunch/dinner in the canteen at the university will be around 10 Euros. In case any sponsor wants to subsidize these expenses, he can decide between subsidizing them for one day or for a maximum number of developers.
- We'd like to have as many developers and IT professionals as possible present from commercial corporations to take the opportunity to learn how to integrate their own programs with KDE and who tell us what their needs are.
- We want to have at least 50 modern Desktop or Laptop computers present with Linux/KDE pre-installed (sponsored by some hardware vendor), for use by our developers during local hacking (as well as for building a "compile cluster").
- "Infrastructure hardware" such as ethernet cables, switches, WLAN access points, b+w and color printers, etc. is also needed.
- It would also be nice to offer evening "Social Events" on both Saturdays, paid for by corporate sponsors, with dinner and music provided free for the visitors (more than 200 people at each occasion). This might amount to anything above 5,000 Euro.
- Of course, sponsors can also opt for "cash sponsorship". We offer deals for "Premium Sponsor" (30,000 Euro), "Platinum Sponsor" (20,000 Euro), "Gold" (10,000 Euro), "Silver" (5,000 Euro) and "Bronze" (1,000 Euro) sponsors.
What does a sponsor get in return?
- All sponsors will be duly mentioned on the conference website: The website will be up for at least one complete year (this includes banners of sponsoring companies with links from this high-traffic website to the sponsors' homepages).
- The Premium Sponsor will get the privilege of a special place: he may occupy the prominent right-hand "hotspot" at http://www.kde.org/ for 8 consecutive weeks including the conference (for size see current hotspot).
- The Premium Sponsor will be allowed to put up one banner in each of the conference and tutorial rooms and in the main entrance hall.
- Premium and Gold Sponsors will be mentioned on the portal site of the special Conference website (http://conference2005.kde.org/).
- Gold Sponsors will be allowed to put up 2 banners (one in a main conference room and one in the main entrance hall).
- The Laptop hardware sponsor will get a background wallpaper pre-configured as a default on all laptops.
Premium and Gold Sponsors may choose to transfer their sponsorship contribution in cash only, or in 10.000.- Euro cash minimum with any additional hardware or other support evaluated according to marketable cost.
