KDE's Akademy 2020 - A Quick Summary

What is Akademy?

Akademy is the yearly conference for the KDE community, which is a community devoted to creating free software for desktop and mobile.  Typically, Akademy takes place in a different city each year.  However, due to the pandemic, the conference was online this time around.  September 4-11 marked the dates of Akademy 2020.

KDAB and KDE

KDAB and KDE have a very close relationship. Around 40% of KDAB employees are or have been KDE contributors. In fact, some have been contributing for more than a decade.  So, KDAB has been sponsoring KDE's Akademy for quite a while.

Overview of Akademy 2020

The first day of the conference, September 4, included a full day of training sessions for KDE contributors. KDAB taught 4 of the 6 training sessions: UI/UX Design in QML for Desktop, Debugging & Profiling on Linux, Introduction to QML, and Multithreading in Qt. These were reduced, half-day versions of our popular training offerings.

Throughout the weekend, the conference brought forth several talks. These covered topics such as QML, static analysis, Qt on Android, licensing, and even how to write better software for dentists and hospitals.

Most of the weekdays featured more work-focused meetings, involving round-table discussion. In addition to that, we managed to have time for community-building activities, like escape rooms and a quiz.

Finally, on the last day of the week, the talk schedule returned with important topics. A couple of the topics the talks covered on this day were maintaining a good work/life balance and knowledge retention within the organization when contributions cease, for instance.

Praise for KDE

To conclude, we want to congratulate KDE for such a successful conference and thank them for the help they offered us with organizing Qt Desktop Days (which happened at the same time of KDE's Akademy, from September 7-11).  Thank you, KDE!  Keep up the excellent work!