LGM 2019 – Knowledge and Design at Saarbrucken, Germany

OpenSource is the kind of projects that can actually change someone’s life. We use it in pretty much everything without knowing, cause technologies advance faster than ever, and better at single second. However, we kind forget that software, apps and all of that is made by humans and not machines. Having the opportunity again to spend some time at the most important graphical event from the OpenSource World after 6 years is something that makes you get back into your roots and reminds you what is that you actually like about this IT environment. I got the chance to see old friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time, meet some more news, hang with my heroes from the community but above all, get back to do what I like and what I enjoy. Is at that moment when you put a face to those who make the software that you daily use that all the community has a meaning. I couldn’t be more than grateful to all of the LGM organizers who actually made it possible for me.So, what was LGM for me? I came to my first conference after almost 6 years without being directly involved into a community (except the Fedora minor local events, flisol which is also local and darktable translation for years), so this reminded me of what I left behind to organize a suitable life for myself. However, it showed me as well how much I miss it, and how useful I was without knowing it. I’s an insane environment where even the small part of human resource is needed. Self-sustainability is hard to achieve, but not impossible. So, lets cut to the deal and talk of what I managed to participate and do while I was here. Developing nature photographs with Open Source software – Anna let us saw her workflow and shared some difficult images to push our workflow a bit further. Was good to see another photographer work with the tools I use on a daily base and compare our ways to edit the same images. No design without research – Why and how to incorporate design research practices into our free software projects – Belen’s presentation was probably the most charismatic and honest (and real) from the LGM. She did empathize the fact that without understanding users, we would not be able to have a useful and appealing app to provide to the community. With her awesome tips we will be able to understand better our user base without that much effort. PIXLS.US Community Meeting USER PERSPECTIVE in the funding model – Pat was definitely one of the most cheerful person I have meet in the last years. A deep voice with a fun attitude, but a lot of professionalism is the key features you should have to run such a successful community like PIXLS.us , he encouraged me to be back into the tutorials section, into the creative part of what I like to do, and will help me curate and improve my visual capabilities with the help of one of the greatest communities.Turning the Community into a Business – This was my 2 cents to the LGM. As users, developers and community people we usually forget that we actually have to make a living to be sustained, and most contributors at some point end up being overwhelmed by the experience of having a separated work plus the community responsibilities. In my talk I tried to show my results as merging my company with the opensource community way to function, into a place where people is inspired to create and learn, where no big corporations are involved into the decision making, and we are all free to stay there as long as we are comfortable. However, I was able to talk about a more personal project in there that got more interest than what I was expecting. This project will begin to be develop into the next months and this will be the main source of information for it. (Sensual) Portrait photography and post production – Stefan show us with the insanely gorgeous model/photographer Ewa how to work and interact with a model on site. As photographers, most of us haven’t had the opportunity to direct a production the way he does. We also got to see his workflow and compare it with ours, and was really enlightening the full experience. Our birthday!!! 10 years of darktable – Probably the most important moment to me in this LGM was to meet Jo (hanatos). I’ve been using darktable for so long that finally meeting those who build it was like a dream come truth. Spending so much time with Hanatos and Tobias (houz), listening to how they come with their ideas for modules and workflows, and actually having to show them how I use their app so they could see something different (and actually show them things that they didn’t used) was the best feeling ever. I owe this guys a lot, since darktable is part of my life. Again, I’m more thank thankful to have a new opportunity to be part of all this ecosystem. Sometimes daily responsibilities cut our time to do what we really love, but at some point, a bit of organization can do the trick to keep on the right path. I will be starting to post most regularly, doing some more detailed post about the LGM experience and on some topics that interest me, leaving all the non-sense and mandatory things on a side… so stay tuned!