 So, hi, we're here with Volker Hilseimer and Pedro Vesa from the Qt Company, and they would be presenting a keynote at the Academy 2022 with the title Building the Future of Qt Together, which sounds extremely interesting, of course, but we will not be talking about that topic here as we don't want to spoil the talk, but as we have the rare privilege of having both of them here, we will be finding out more about themselves, how they started, their role in the Qt Company, their views of the community, and things like that. Just to get things rolling, can you could you introduce yourself and explain what you do at the Qt Company, Pedro Volker? Shall we start with you, Pedro? Sure, thanks. So, I'm the Community Relations Manager at the Qt Company. I started in this position in March this year 2022, so it's been six months. In two days, it's my six-month mark. And so far I've been taking care of planning and building the community strategy, which is basically analyzing and aligning the resources and personnel we have in order to make sure that we are providing enough support, that we are really nourishing the relationship with our community. And by community, I mean our focus right now is the open source community. Volker. All right, yeah, I'm Volker Hilsheimer. I am in our Oslo office here at the Qt Company, not today, but in principle, I'm in Oslo. I am one of the area leads in our R&D organizations, our R&D organization in the Qt Company right now. It's about 150 people, I would guess. It's a bit hard to say. And we are organized in different areas that are responsible for different parts of our development efforts. A large part of that is obviously working on Qt, where we have a couple of areas. And one of those areas is graphics and UI, which is a bit of a misnomer because there are a lot of things underneath that umbrella that are not really graphics or UI, but very strong, for instance, focus on platform work. WebAssembly, for instance, development is happening in that area. So I'm the lead of that area. We are about 30 people in that area today in different teams. Anything from graphics enablement, putting pixels on the screen, sloppily said, to building the UI components on top of that and integrating that with the different platform layers underneath. Being in Oslo and being an area lead makes me one of the senior managers on the site. So I also look a lot at the site itself, supporting HR and my manager colleagues with different things, organizing events, reaching out to the schools and universities, for instance, is something we are doing right now quite a bit. Recruiting. Yeah. I have been with the Qt company now since October 2018 again. My history in Qt starts a little bit in the darker history of the world. We can talk about that a bit separately, I guess. You've been in the Qt company forever, I would. Your curriculum goes way back. Okay, but we'll talk about that in a minute. Actually, we're going to talk about that now. I would like to know about your origin stories. Normally, when I interview people who are into technology, they all compete points. The moment in their life where they suddenly, something went off in their brains and they decided that they loved computers and stuff like that. When my dad brought me a Commodore 64 back in 1982, or when I discovered it, et cetera. And then there's another moment in the life of most technologists when they discover open source. They can also pinpoint that moment. This is when I discovered that Pearl was, I don't know, something. So I would like to tell me about that. What was that moment in your life when you discovered that this was going to be the love of your life, doing stuff with computers? You can go alphabetically. My story is quite different, quite different trajectory. Well, I grew up with computers already. So I remember being, I don't know, maybe eight when I got my first computer. It was the family computer. And I mean, it's just, I guess, for my generation, we grew up with it and we do not see our lives without it. But I guess also with time, you end up trying to, you know, you have other entities and then you start to get a little bit more resourceful when it comes to your needs with technology. And I remember encountering a lot of those programs that would be quite expensive to acquire or to pay for their licenses and so on. And then I remember that I found out, sorry, for example, for example, Microsoft Word, Excel, all of those. And then I remember that I guess that was probably my first contact with open source, LibreOffice and so on. But also a few years later, I went into like, you know, test and experiment with Photoshop and this kind of things. And also quite expensive to acquire that, especially if you're like 13. Yeah. But then there were actually some open free options out there. And well, with time, you know, guess my trajectory has more to do with community on the community side of things. I was playing games here and there. And I had quite a few different jobs in my life. But when I was living here in Germany, I got a job as a community manager, with which I really kind of fell in love with. And I really, I really liked it. So different stakeholders and getting projects and tackling them and making things work for the community is really the thing that I really liked about my day to day life. And so to continue my career, I kind of decided to get away from games and try to get into something a little bit more, maybe resourceful or would be a little bit more focused, right? Because when you work with games, it's quite but hectic and it's quite nice. But at the same time, you're always working with a different game. You're always working for different projects. So maybe you start doing something, but you never see the result of it, not ever, but sometimes you don't see the result of it, because you just jump to another project and then you just jump to another one. And when I saw the opportunity to work at a cute company, I thought it was a really nice one, because we already have a community there. And there were so many things that I saw that we could do for the open source community that we drove me to apply and start working there. So, yeah, I guess vocalist trajectory will be what is quite different than mine from my vocal. Tell us. Yes, my jump into technology, my defining technological awakening. I did not wake up in a very technologically sophisticated environment, little village in Germany, parents that don't necessarily have much use for computers and so forth. I got my first computer, which wasn't a Commodore, not T64, but rather a Commodore PC actually, running MS dozen and kind of stuff. In the late 80s, for my 40th birthday, because my mother in particular was far-sighted enough to understand that understanding how computers work and so forth is going to be quite a quite an advantage for future career and so forth. And I really dug into that machine and program it. I had a nice printer, a needle printer, 24 needles, high quality stuff. So I went through the book on how to program that printer and control the different needles and so forth. I didn't understand anything of what I was doing. But at least I got some some stuff printed and I started to write some little software pieces in GW basic on MS Suspeck in the days. And I started having a summer job at a local computer consulting company, basically, where they had problems with some database. So I helped them with writing a little, I think it was also basic program that changed the naming to the correct capitalization in their customer database. So that was a testing in production. Back in the days. At school, they're learning Pascal and that kind of thing, working, working on small software projects, working on my my exam thesis, so to speak, in school, as far as that is, is something meaningful in Pascal. And decided then to study computer science and make programming software my professional career. So I went to Rostock in 1995 to study computer science there. That's in North and Germany quite far away from my hometown. But that was also a bit part of the idea, getting a bit out of it. And that's where I ultimately as part of a summer intern job, got to know and to use Qt in a very early version that was in the late 90s. Or in the 97, 98, perhaps, I think it was a Qt version before 1.0, or at least very soon after, one of the research institutions, institutions there started to use it for some UI development. And that was also to be honest, that was my first real exposure to the concept of open source software, not so much as a cultural and political, perhaps movement, but rather the fact that I could look at the source code of Qt was interesting and enlightening and quite a revelation for me. Went then to Norway, ultimately to do an internship myself at the troll tech back in the days, which was very lucky for me in 2000, to be able to do that as a support engineer. And since I had grown up with Windows and with, you know, the software you get when you buy a computer. Yeah, I was the first and for a long time only software engineer or support engineer working on Qt on Windows full time, getting things to build, implementing a couple of things, fixing a number of bugs, obviously, here and there. So as part of that role, touching a lot of different parts of Qt developing a couple of frameworks that are to some degree still part of Qt, like like active Qt, for instance, very Windows specific at the days. But by and large responsible for the support organization customers of organization in troll tech. And then yeah, the rest is perhaps known history, we got acquired by Nokia in 2008. And I decided that that might be a good moment to move into a different role within the organization. So I stepped into a program management role, which is much more about coordinating different projects and activities and so forth. And as part of that change, I really lost touch with software engineering. I was quite busy in other things, traveling and meetings and coordination and so forth. And there was less and less work on software happening. So I decided 2011 to leave Nokia. Yeah, I worked in different startups and different companies and different large companies. In the meantime, then until 2018, when I came back to the Qt company, because you didn't like working in management. If I liked working in management, exactly. I mean, you left Nokia because you didn't like working in management. Is that correct? I didn't like working only in management in a very large company. And I also saw the writing on the wall in Nokia that this told the change that happened when when Steven Elon, for instance, took over the helmet Nokia. Yeah, I didn't I didn't quite see my role in that. And I didn't quite see that this is going to be the right thing for for the technology. So I decided to try something else after 11 years in the same team. That was really foresightful of you, because everybody knows what happened then. Well, it was it was pretty obvious. It was pretty obvious. A few, a few months into Steven, a few months, maybe not even a few months, but a few weeks, if Steven, a lot tenure, it was pretty clear where where they were taking things. Okay, cool. So, um, Peter, you joined the company quite recently, I think you said six months, March or something like that is when you started, right? Yeah, exactly. March. So I read that you did quite a lot of things before, including raising money for an African nonprofit. Is that correct? Yep. So I also work on a side project. So they keep company having my full time job. And I also work on a side project which is called light up impact. And we actually last year around December, beginning of January, we were running this fundraiser for East African social organizations. And we were able to fundraise. How much was that? But it was like over 4,000 euros in a month or so. And with that money, we were able to help those local projects. So we did not lead those projects by any means, we actually supported them. So what kind of projects are we talking about? Yep. So there are many projects going on there. So for example, there's one organization called Activate Action and they promote awareness also to lessen stigma towards HIV. And they also run programs not only for people who might have gotten a positive task, but also for prevention and all the awareness program. There are all patients that focus on economic empowerment of women. So they run, they run professional programs, I would call them professional programs in which they teach them some skills, for example, so they are able to contribute to their housing income, or maybe they are the only ones, the only ones in their family contributing financially. So yeah, there are many other projects here. And as a community manager at CUBE, do you find that some of the skills that you are developing in one place are transferable to the other? I mean, for example, I mean, this is, I think this is no secret, but in the free open source world and technological world in general, the matter of diversity is a bit problematic. We have lots of white male engineers and not so many of anything else. Do these skills that you develop in one place help you in the other, for example, to promote diversity? If so, how? Yes, that's a very good question. I think there are definitely a lot of transferable skills there on the light impact project that work as a social media and community manager. So they're obvious transferable skills and some they're not so obvious, as you're asking. So for example, one of the things as a community manager that we have to be quite aware of is that people join the conversation, people contribute, people give feedback, people come to the events. But we also pay attention to, for example, why did some people not come to the event? Why are people not joining the table of discussions? Or even if people are joining the table of discussions, why are they not speaking? You know, so this is something that really has to do with, as you mentioned, diversity and inclusion. And it's definitely on my plans because I do see our community or at least the people who are more vocal or who attend the events or who come talk to me, they are usually white male, white males. And I would like to see more diversity, right? I would like to see people from not only gender diversity or migration background, but also, where are those people? Usually, we get a lot of response from US Europe. But what about Eastern Europe? What about African continent? What about South America? Actually, we have a vibrant community in South America, just mentioning. Or for example, what about Asia Pacific folks? Where are they? Because we do have a lot of our numbers, let's say in China, for example, India, they are quite high. So people are using Qteer. And I think that's something I don't think I'm sure of it. I'm sure that that's something that we'll be tackling on soon. Because I really think our community should be more well connected. And also, what can not only what can they contribute to the community, but what can we learn from them? What are they doing there? Is there something we are not seeing here? They are. So yeah. But it is true that, for example, in Brazil, for example, you have a QtCon, which I am not aware that there's apart from one in Europe, there's only one other and that's in Brazil. That is correct, right? I mean, there's no other QtCon in other places of the world. So in Brazil, you're doing okay. Yeah, and the thing is not only if we have them, but are we promoting them? Or are people even aware that they exist? Because maybe they even have other local meetups going on or other events happening around the world, but maybe you're just not aware of it. And that's one of my worries. We really need to be out there and be open and say, hey, please contact us, let us know. And at the same time, we try to identify those groups and to build those bridges that maybe are not here yet. In poker, in a similar, in a similar, on a similar topic, use speak often of, or at least write often about how part of your role is to motivate and develop a vocation amongst the developers you work with. How do you do that? And do you find that different, also touching on the matter of diversity, do you find that different groups have different ways of being motivated or developing their vocation for programming? Because you talk about programming as if it were a thing vocational for you, you talk about how it is related to art and things like that. How do you do that? And how and how do you think there are some people that that maybe motivated one way and other people, other groups, people that maybe motivated another way? Do you find that? So motivation of people. How do I do that? I mean, yeah, I'm a I'm a personal manager with line responsibility and all that stuff. But what I've always appreciated about working in the cute company is that we have people in the in the organization that want to build good technology and want to solve technical problems. So there is an internal drive, there is an intrinsic motivation that is already there. One could argue that perhaps that exposes us to some selection bias in that we don't maybe appreciate that somebody could do a lot of good for our technology. If all they want to do is have a job in software engineering. So yes, all else being equal, we would perhaps prioritize or prefer somebody to join the company that convinces us that this is more than just the job. But yeah, that makes it of course, then easier ultimately for us as an organization to make sure that people are motivated to solve the problems that we are seeing ahead of ourselves. And then really, the challenge and the task for the manager is to make sure that everybody knows where we are trying to go, what we are trying to do, what's important, and then get out of the way unless unless there is some you know, help needed to to remove roadblocks, you know, the famous quote of don't just don't just do something stand around. That's a good good way of managing people that have a lot of intrinsic motivation. And then of course, being part of that team and being part of the of the development. As far as diversity and inclusion and different groups is concerned, I do believe that it's extremely important that the technology of the future is built by people with different backgrounds, different experiences, different perspectives. And again, one of the things I have always enjoyed working in the cute company is how international the organization is. I wouldn't necessarily we are a solid party. We are male to a very large degree in the R&D organization. We are primarily white, at least as far as Oslo and the European R&D office is concerned. It's not it's not 100%. But it is very clearly in a certain corner of the democratic demographic spectrum. Nevertheless, there are people with different backgrounds and very different backgrounds. We have a very international organization in Oslo with I think we have 20 different nations in a team of 50. So that's pretty that's fun to work in for me, as a colleague, because it's interesting to talk to different people with different backgrounds and different expectations. And of course, also it makes it interesting from a being part of a team with a special responsibility of being the leader and the manager in the sense of yes, people respond differently and have different expectations and maybe different requirements. We have a couple of women on the team. And it is not a very big secret that maybe they they will need different encouragement to put themselves forward in certain meetings to present their staff to feel confident that it's safe to show what they have done. We have been very lucky with the people that we have in that respect, but it's definitely something to be aware of. Also during interviews, for instance, during the recruiting process, to not just try to apply a cookie cutter and assume that we are looking for more people like ourselves, but that we also need to respond to the to the notion that people come with different different opportunities that have gotten them to the position where they apply for a job in the Q company. And then, you know, encouraging that and discovering that is important. Okay, that brings up an interesting question. If somebody would like to work for the Q company, what would you look at first? What would your ideal candidate look like? I mean, would you look at the qualifications, the GitHub repository? What would you look at first? When I read this TV, I look for a couple of keywords that tell me that this person has tried to solve interesting problems and find it interesting to use software to solve problems. Whether they are using C++ or not. Of course, again, all else being equal, we are a C++ shop person foremost. So having C++ experience is, of course, getting you a bit closer to the top of the pile than if you are talking about different technologies. But it also needs to be the technologies and the problem space in which we are in. With Qt, you can work on a lot of different things in the computer scientists or computer science space. But if your CV tells me that you have been spending all your professional or even your educational life with building full stack web applications, then there is very little overlap between those two things. So there are a couple of things that we look at and that we use to prioritize candidates. And then in the conversation that we have as part of the screening interview or as part of the first interview, what I look for is, has the person shown any interest in what we are actually doing? Have they done a bit of research perhaps on what is Qt, what is the Qt company? It's not exactly hard to find out what all of that is, even though it can be very confusing perhaps, but at least having a reasonably educated guess on what we are doing and what problems we are solving. That helps a lot. And then having a conversation about a couple of basic R&D computer science software engineering problems that I believe somebody who is working on that kind of technology that we are building should at least have a relationship to. I don't need people to explain how a binary search tree works in detail, but at least being able to relate to the problem of solving a search problem using binary search and seeing the benefits and seeing the trade-offs. That's a good conversation to have. Okay, going back to Pedro, you are the new community manager, social media, I guess communication guy in general now. When we talk about stimulating the Qt community, does that include the people at KDE too? Because KDE is a free software community. They use Qt, it is famous because it uses Qt. Do your responsibilities cover us as well? Yes. So just to clarify, I'm not responsible for social media, the good company. I have a communication with social media, but I'm not responsible. I don't own it. But yeah, answer the question. The scope of my job includes KDE because I guess, I mean, I don't guess. I know how much of history Qt and KDE they share. Sorry, my phone's just reacting to my voice. The technology. So yeah, definitely the scope of my job includes the KDE community as there is a lot of share between the Qt company, the KDE and the Qt project. And that's something that I would really like to strengthen with the Qt community to understand. I'm here to understand what you need, what your vision also is and how we can collaborate for a shared future. So that's really my vision. And I think the KDE Academy event will be an awesome opportunity to meet those people and, you know, face to face getting the conversation and understand we can actually collaborate and how can we do that. So yep. And okay, so now we're moving into the KDE slash Qt area of the of the conversation where I'm going to ask you some questions about that came through from people I asked to submit questions. I have a question for Volker, which is about are you aware of the KDEco project? No, I'm not actually. No, I would briefly explain it. And then the project by Joseph. That's correct, Joseph. Oh, I am. You are. Okay, so then it's a question for both of you then. So the KDEco project is an attempt to bring, let's say, environmental responsibility to the development of software. So what we are doing is we are trying to measure the efficiency of the code and see if it can be improved so it uses less power, less energy, and we can make it more greener. This is not only for KDE. This is a project for all all projects normally. They will have to be open source because it's the code has to be audited. You don't think that that means you cannot do that. So my question specifically regarding Qt is, are there any projects with or does Qt development include or consider improving the energetic efficiency of the code, which would in turn help KDE improve the energetic efficiency of the applications and the desktop, etc. Is there anything in Qt working to Qt for that? So from a technical point of view, performance and efficiency is of course something that we have made a business driver for ourselves. We communicate that Qt being written in C++, being optimized to use the GPU for at least QML or Qt based rendering. We are communicating that that is one of the advantages of Qt over some competitive or alternative technology stacks. And of course, just out of a business rationale, making sure that Qt performs well, also on small devices, that is to large degree the heart of our many of our technology strategies inside of the company and inside of the project. Not primarily or not directly motivated, perhaps by ecological concerns, but really because this is what we believe makes Qt successful as a technology. I'm not aware, to be honest, of any conversation inside of the company to look at sales or at a marketing pitch or at a other way of communicating around Qt helps you reduce your CO2 footprint or any of that. I think it would be a difficult message for us to get across to our customers today. Nevertheless, efficiency, effectiveness, performance clearly is part of the equation and going also down into smaller device form factors or device platforms like our work on microcontrollers and so forth is going into that same direction. But again, from a different rationale than perhaps ecology. But surely it would be a good argument to make to add to already the good arguments we're using Qt take also, you know, it's energetically efficient. I mean, I'm sure there can be, I'm sure we could spin a story around that. And I'm sure we would not, you know, make up a lot of stuff on the way. We could, I think, pretty solidly support that story. Also, if we look at competitive analysis or competitive or comparable performance with different technologies, also internally looking at this, you know, from our own, we operate our own data center that runs our own CI system. We are not posting that in the cloud for many technical and also business reasons. And even there, you know, saying it's we save kilowatt hours by improving certain parts of the boat. Could be a possible story. But again, it's not been a focus for us so far. Peter, have you so you have heard about this project? Have you been in touch with Joseph and talked about this? Yes, actually, I've been in touch with Joseph. He has sent me some some things about it. And actually, we met face to face at the KDAB event this year, and we talked about it. And it seems very interesting. And I'm looking for the effects of this project on the whole industry actually. Because this is something that I guess we don't think so much. Or just in general, okay, how much energy am I using just to run this program on my computer? And it could affect the whole industry as Joseph was telling me. What if we really start to pay attention at the energy efficiency of what is running on my machine or on a train or an airplane or and so on? Yeah, I think I think maybe small steps can lead you to great results in the future. We're in the hopeful. Okay, next question from the community is okay, it's a bit general, but. And this I'm just going to throw it out there for both of you and yeah. And you just say what comes to your minds. Let's see, says what can cute the cute company learn from Katie and what can Katie learn from the cute company? Either of the two, I really don't know if it's looking for a technical question or it's looking for a social question that's your answer or something like that. I think one of the things that we already also discussed that one of the previous contributors summits is fostering a community of contributors and also recognizing that contribution happens on many, many levels. We have a very strong bias towards those contributors that open patches and changes for review and get it. We don't always recognize that there are many other ways that people contribute to cute. So I think that is one way where we as a good company definitely can look at the KD community also other open source communities. One of my former colleagues from the back in the no kid is Andreas Kling what he has been doing with serenity or as for instance is absolutely outstanding. And with how little evidently or at least apparently he made that work. I think taking lessons from there looking at that and understanding understanding what we can adopt there in terms of community building and fostering and encouraging there is there is a lot we could do more and better. Also things like inclusion looking at accessible software for instance looking at like a project like KD ECO and really trying to take a bit of a broader stand in the software industry about what software means for society and what impact we might have as somebody who or as an organization that builds fairly popular toolkit that a lot of software is based on and that gives us of course an amplification with any of these things that we could do. So I think yeah, having a slightly broader perspective there as well would be useful. What the KDE community can learn about could learn from the Qt company. I'll have to think about that for a bit. Maybe Pedro wants to talk about what we can learn from the KDE community. Yeah, sure. But as Volker said, I'm actually very interested in the KDE community as it's I would say it's a very stable one and it's not a new one. So it's been going on for a while. And I would say it's a very successful one and it's it's really spread around the world and it seems to be very well coordinated. So I mean, I understand. So so. It's more like an organized chaos. Yeah, I mean, it's better than chaos again. Yeah, we can definitely. Learn from this set this shared sentiment that I see from KDE members and how can we activate this same sentiment towards the Qt project, which as Volker just mentioned, there is this clear focus on cold contributions and this is something or spoiler, but with spoiler, it's not a TV show. But it's something I really want to work on because there are so many people collaborating in translation and documentation and event organization, probably missing a lot of other ways people are contributing to the KDE community that I really want to support those people too. So they not only can keep doing what they're doing, but they can do them better. They can. They can. They can. Target larger audience and really get the results they're looking for and fostering also those local segmented communities. OK, so. OK, this one. OK, this one, I guess again, it's I guess it for both of you. It's one of the more pointed questions. So I just say, take it at face value. It says, what would you say to people who are skeptical about Qt company's commitment to openness? This, as you know, is something that is the earthen in the room. It's been on many social media places, etc. Just I know. Shall we reassure them? I mean, I think my G my knee-jerk answer with, first of all, we say, I completely understand where people are coming from when they look at the Qt company with some doubts about our commitment to open source. That is not really a surprise. And I'm generally rather grateful that we still have such a vibrant open source community and contributor community. Um. Open source. We have as a company in the past, maybe not being very successful in understanding the business contribution of open source, because ultimately the rubber hits the road when we can understand. How the needle moves because we have an open source community. It's very easy for the business minded people in the organization to put a number on the table and say, if we make this decision, then so and so many more million dollars will come in. That is a very easy conversation to have. And whereas we who believe that open source community and contribution is essential also to our success. We can't really measure that in such simple perhaps terms that are so easily comparable. So yes, I understand where people come from if they have skepticism and if they are looking at us as a community, as a company with skepticism and also, of course, within the Qt project is a special project in that we have such a singular, uniquely positioned player like the Qt company that has special privileges, that's to be honest, but also a special role in the amount of work we are doing and in the amount of resources we put into this. So that makes it a bit different from any other open source communities perhaps. Yes, can we build confidence? Can we build trust that this will be different or that Qt will always or the Qt company will always be committed to open source? I think works at this point are not going to be nearly as powerful or effective as needs. So making some decisions such as bringing Peter on board and we will hear more about his plans how to grow the community and how to support the community. I think if you put the money where the mouth is and see then how things are actually improving and what we can do, it's going to be much more effective than making promises or trying to calm down the, again, understandably strong emotions in some cases. Yep, just to reach. Yeah, I think if people think like that, they're not so sure about the Qt company's commitment or they have their, I'm afraid of it, but everything we're moving towards and let's say maybe a new mentality or just think they're shifting a little bit and part of my job also is to internally get people to understand the value for open source not only for the community because there's value for the company and that's something I am actively working on because it's very easy for me to get my plans and say we should do this, we should do that, the community will love it, but it's the same to show to the organization. Okay, you will also benefit from it and to make those two meet so we can get things going. But what I can tell the good community or the KD community is that we have plans that they will do actions and I hope you stick around to see how they develop and then you can see for yourself because for now that's all we can say. Yep. Sounds very, very good and very promising, excellent. So this is one last question, it's kind of related, but it's from a more looking for, a more tick for tact relationship with Qt says, how can KD contributors influence the way Qt is being developed, influence the path it follows in the form of, I know, features, changes, et cetera. Is there anything that a KD community member can do to influence where Qt is going? Yes, I believe so. And we have people that come out of the open source community and are not part of the Qt community that have a very strong impact in the direction of Qt, as not necessarily as a whole, but at least certain parts of Qt. Tiago as the maintainer of Qt Core, which is quite essential. But it is definitely the exception that people that are defining the roadmap or the strategy of Qt are sitting outside of Qt company. And I think I as the chief maintainer now would like to involve the maintainer community itself more in the discussion of where do we want to take Qt? What's missing? How can we stay interesting as a technology and make sure that problems are solved that the open source community cares about, even though they are perhaps not exactly the same problems that our customers or that the Qt company from a business perspective cares about. It is a meritocratically organized project. So contribute, make yourself, build yourself a brand within the community by putting effort and work into it. And that way you will gain credibility and authority ultimately as well. I think that's a very laborious way of going about but it's also ultimately a very effective way of going about becoming part of the community, join the conversations. There are a couple of things where the community, both of customers, but also the open source community in the past has felt like, okay, the Qt company no longer cares about XYZ features of Qt widgets, the desktop and so forth. That might be true in some cases that the Qt company doesn't see that this is a business strategy or a business priority for us, given that we have many other things that we would like to do and only so many people. Working, contributing to that, again, I understand that it's a difficult and sometimes contentious discussion to have, okay, people put their time into developing a feature or fixing issues or supporting a new use case. And then the Qt company goes and sells that stuff. Yes, that is the nature of our project, that we have that kind of relationship. But I think I hope that there are also enough people that can accept that as the reality that we have and nevertheless contribute. And there are plenty of people again that are doing that already. We talk about the open source community, of course, a lot in this context now, but I think Peter already hinted there are other communities as well that we think can be encouraged, the community of commercial customers. If you as a company make the strategic choice to use Qt as the technology that you built your future product on, yes, it's easy to argue that you pay a license and therefore the Qt company should fix all your bugs. But perhaps it is a wiser choice to also say, we are investing in this technology as a strategic advantage for us. Perhaps sometimes with more than just money and not for every company that is possible, but for some companies that's definitely possible. And we have a couple of commercial companies that are also saying, okay, we are actually having people in the team that are helping develop Qt in the direction that is interesting and relevant for us. So again, there are, ultimately everything comes down to participation and contribution and putting the time into it. Standing on the sideline and requesting that the community at large or the company specifically take Qt into a certain direction is not going to be very effective. Yep, exactly. And also not only about the technological side of things, but I'd say in a meta community kind of way as well. So the community influences itself. So what are the future plans? What values are we going to focus on what kind of events do we need to have more and more often? What projects should we sponsor? All of that's part of the discussion, not only contributions. So we have a wide range of things. We can tell community orders. The more people engage, the more people contribute to the conversation, we can shape the community in a way that makes more sense for the community or those members themselves. So that's also a very valuable contribution. Excellent, okay. So I don't have any more questions. Is there anything else you would like to talk about or mention in your projects, anything you're working on that's got you really excited at the moment or you just cannot resist not sharing with us? What's got you excited recently, for example, Volker? What got me excited recently? Currently, I'm working on porting Qt Location to Qt 6. And that is exciting to finally be able to respond to the many requests we have for that particular module. I was very excited. I was really happy to see what, for instance, Lauri, who is not a Qt company employee, but he's a commercial or he's a user of Qt, working for a company that's using Qt. That he has been taking a lot of the initiative of porting things over. So that's exactly the kind of thing that makes me feel really good and feel really positive about the community being a healthy organization and a healthy bunch of people that we are seeing these kinds of contributions and people saying, I need this, I'll work on it, which is fantastic. So working on this now makes me happy. Yeah. Qt Location. I think that's improving Qt every day. That is, I'm very blessed in many ways that I can be a manager, but at the same time, spend half of my time with my hands in the code. And that's a lot of fun, it gives me a lot of energy. Every day is an adventure. Volker. Again? Sorry? Every day is an adventure. Exactly, yes. Oh yeah, some new interesting code to explore, yes. That's really good. What about you? How do you, what did you learn, Pedro, that is exciting for you? So, I think it's kind of exciting at the moment because you're still new and everything is, right? Yes, yes. I mean, I'm new, but I've gathered a lot of knowledge or a lot of information. But I'm really excited. And maybe that's something that we're going to present during our keynote. Still need to align, exactly. But I'm envisioning this whole, I would call it a project, which is how do we in our community to, how do we, how do we want our community to look like in the very near future? So what can we do for our members? What members can really get from the community? So we can really make a basically a pitch of this community has value for your community members. So it is, it can be of your interest to join it, to contribute, to hang out, to participate in our events, to apply for this program or this other thing. And I really would like to see all those things that we provide, tied it up. So how are they all connected? So you can really visit a page and really understand what it's all about and how you can engage and contribute and et cetera. So I'm really excited about that. And it's kind of like a bold move. I mean, it's not really a move, it's more like a pitch, but it's a whole one. And I really think I should at least aim really high. So, you know, we get something nice going on. But yeah, I'm super excited about that. And really the amazing thing is that at least the Qt company has been hiring a lot of new people and investing in different areas. So there are a lot of people I can collaborate with. So that's good because at least so far I'm the only community manager at Qt company. But there are a lot of people I collaborate with and they always bring me some really good insights. And of course, I'm always in touch with Qt developers who are really, really helpful when I'm dealing with the community and our plans. Also, I'm not a technical person, by the way. I did not mention that, but just for the record. So I might get lost when people start talking about programming, but at least the framework I'm here to understand and make it easier. Yeah. Okay, well folks, KDE folks, you heard it here first. Ready for a surprise during a Volcker and Pedro's keynote which I don't know if it's on the Saturday or the Sunday. Doesn't matter. Go to both. No, they're both gonna be great. So, and the one with Pedro and Volcker will have a surprise, something that will blow your socks off. Anyway, thank you so much for sitting down with us. And thank you for attending all the questions from the community. I guess you would get asked a ton more while you're at the event, which I think is normal. And we will see you there. And I hope you have a really excellent time when you come to Barcelona and visit with us. Okay, bye-bye. Thank you for the invitation and I'll see you in Barcelona. I'll see you all in Barcelona. Yep.