aKademy 2007 Was Great

Originally I thought I would just attend the aKademy conference on the weekend and return home after that. I submitted an abstract for my talk on Gentoo and KDE and had hoped to meet some KDE developers and see if we could work with KDE better. Later I applied for my Google Summer of Code project working on the Kalzium 3D molecular editor and was accepted. This caused me to change my plans and stay for the entire week and I am really glad I did

I have been to quite a few open source conferences over the years but I have to say aKademy is my favourite so far. There was a great atmosphere and lots of very intelligent and dedicated hackers present. There were also lots of laughs and humour along with important discussions and debates. I got to meet so many people who work on KDE and whose blogs I have been reading for years. My only regret is that I couldn't get out for a few more beers in the evenings...

I thought it would be a good idea to camp as aKademy was in June and the odds were good that the weather would be fair. In the days leading up to my departure Sheffield flooded and I think it rained every day of aKademy (some days solidly throughout the day). On Sunday evening we came back to a rather large pond at the side of our tent that had previously been a patch of grass with a dip in it. I chose where to pitch the tent well though and the tent remained out of harms way