A Coruña is a beautiful place to host a get together with a bunch of really inspiring, motivated, friendly people. Even better when those folks are from the KDE community.
This was my second Akademy and I had a fantastic time. The talks were, hands down, awesome. So I'm one of those guys that will yell at movie trailers telling too much of the story before I actually watch the movie. So I actively avoid movie trailers for movies I already know I want to see. I delight in being surprised. Apparently I was the only person completely in the dark about the Plasma Mobile effort, and what a delight it was to be surprised! Another highlight for me was WikiFM/WikiToLearn. Holy crap what an excellent project!
For the Visual Design Group stuff, it was quite enjoyable seeing several projects work through defining a vision. There is little that provides the foundation for, among other things, great UI design than a well prepared project vision. Thomas also led a great discussion on the recent Phoronix article describing the experiences of switching to GNOME for a week and then back to KDE. That plus lots of little impromptu sessions here and there.
Lydia's community keynote and the Evolve KDE BoF were also very enlightening. My primary take-away is how thoughtful the KDE community is about where it has been, where it is, and where it wants to go. It is never an easy thing for anyone to look in the mirror to find opportunities to become better. It necessarily means identifying aspects of yourself that make you not quite what you aspire to be. I was inspired by the willingness of folks in the community and at Akademy to do just that; a desire to work together to make our community an even more incredible place to produce fantastic, enabling, free software for everyone. No peanut gallery nay-saying. No insufferable pessimism. Just a take-of-the-gloves, step-down-from-the-pulpit willingness to learn together and work together toward an ambitious future. I. Freaking. Love it.
Till next year!!!
