Akademy 2025

In September, I spent over 12 hours in airplanes and trains getting to Berlin to attend my second Akademy conference. The experience once again made the long trip worthwhile. It was lovely to see some familiar faces, and to meet other folks for the first time. This was my second trip to Berlin, and it was nice to see different areas of the city than last year. Like last year, people were so approachable, friendly and easy to talk to. The welcome event was at the lovely Schleusenkrug Beer Garden, just a short walk from the venue, nestled in one of the many areas of greenery.

There were more talks and BoFs I attended than I'll mention, these are things that stood out to me. There were so many good talks and workshops, I recommend checking out the recordings.

A small tangent about travel comfort

Or - How to spend a week in a different timezone without feeling like a zombie.

The jet lag was a lot easier this year because I learned the wisdom of hydration and getting decent rest on long haul flights. I took some electrolyte drink powder with me, which I mixed into the little bottles of water on my long flights. This made a huge difference in my energy levels and how much I enjoyed my time in Berlin.

Saturday

Opening things up, the keynote "Open by Design: How Governments Can Lead the Shift to Digital Sovereignty" made excellent points about the importance for countries to enable independence, autonomy and security in the digital world.

My colleague David Edmundson gave an informative talk on "Plasma: Lessons Learned and Our Path Forward in 2026 and Beyond". He recounted, with honesty and humor, things Plasma has done well and not so well over the years. There were good points to keep in mind, as someone focused on testing and quality, while reviewing bug reports and merge requests.

There were a handful of talks and BoFs about KDE Linux and the growth of the obtsalat. This is an important project for KDE in terms of dogfooding and testing, so I like keeping up to date on things here.

The talk "From Misunderstood to CEO – Breaking Bias and Building Inclusion" was particularly interesting, as a woman in a male dominated industry. I heard echos of some of my experiences, as well as useful advice on dealing with bias.

Sunday

The keynote "The Politics of the Pull Request: How Open Standards Can Shift Power" was educational. It made me aware of the ways in which technology does more than enable us to get work done. It shapes the conversations we have and the world we live in, in a tangible way. It determines who can access things that are fundamental to living in society and who can't. Open source can be more than a way of collaborating, it can also help make things more equitable for more groups of people. I especially liked that the "myth of meritocracy" was highlighted and challenged. It's a topic I've seen debated online quite a bit over the years. Recently, especially, I've seen various claims that "technology shouldn't be political", and this described the many ways technology can't help but be political. This is one talk I'd really recommend watching because it exposes things people might not think about or realize - such as how current systems enable rich and powerful families to stay that way and exclude others - as well as highlight ways open source projects can change things for the better.

"Handling Negative Feedback" by my colleague Akseli Lahtinen was informative about types of negative responses we might get in our open source work, and practical ways of handling it. He had useful advice not just about responding in productive ways, but also about taking care of ourselves to avoid burnout. There was also useful information about mentoring people, as well as encouraging community and maintainers. Related, David Edmunson had a talk specifically about "Maintainers Don't Grow on Trees".

"Getting Hired to Work on FOSS" had useful advice on working on FOSS for a paycheck and how it's different than when it's your hobby. It's useful for anyone thinking about making their FOSS work their living. There's information especially good for people who don't have experience working for a more traditional company.

In "Mass Migration from Windows", I could very much relate to the challenges of getting open source accepted in a business. Reluctant IT departments, nervous managers asking about who will support things; I'm sure I'm not alone in having met those points of friction when trying to use an open source operating system at the office. There was practical information of addressing those points and ways the sitation is improving.

Nate Graham, another colleague, spoke about "Minding the Big Picture: Opportunity from Chaos". This spoke to some of the surprising advantages of these "abnormal times" that KDE can take advantage of. There are some areas where KDE can do practical work to be a real leader in bringing the Linux desktop experience to more end users and enterprises.

The Social Event

After all those talks, it was nice to just hang out. We were at a bar and hacker space Sunday evening called c-base, which reconstructs a fictional, crashed space station. Neat! The company and the beer were nicely refreshing and it was a pretty chill place.

The Wednesday Day Trip

The day trip on Wednesday had two parts. The first was a scavenger hunt, which I skipped out on. Akseli, his wife and I went to Alexanderplatz and had bubble tea near the TV Tower before joining the others. The group then went to the Computerspielemuseum (Computer History Museum), which was a treat. In addition to information about historical computer advancements, and interactive exhibits, there is a small arcade, and some mini-room setups. There was a student desk that reminded me of one I had (mine had the Commodore 128 my brother and I shared). There were also models of historical computers on display. One of these was a TRS-80, the first model I had at home and where I learned word processing.

BoFs

End of 10 Campaign - discussion of the next steps and how folks can help out.

Automatic QA / Recoverability - in which I refreshed my familiarity with the tools currently being used.

KWallet Secret Service: problems and roadmap - this is something I keep up to date on in relation to development and QA.

KDE Out of Box Experience - you might be familiar with this as KISS. It's a setup UX for the first boot of a newly purchased / installed system. This is going to make life easier for people getting a pre-built system as well as for enterprise installation fleets.

That's a Wrap

After a week in Berlin, I was sad to leave but was at the same time looking forward to getting back home. As announced on 27-Sept - Rewatch the Highlights - Akademy 2025 Talks & Sessions Now Available Online. Time to check out recordings of things I wasn't able to attend. K'm looking forward to next year. The Call for Hosts is live, and it will be Akademy's 30th birthday!