 Thank you. Thank you so much, Adam. Thank you, Adam. Hello, everyone. Today, we're going to talk about Katie Network, but first, let me start by introducing myself. My name is Parvisha Dhruv and have been part of this lovely community for the past six years. I started out as a GSoc student and I'm currently a member of the Katie Network Working Group. I'm also part of the Katie Network Advisory Committee, the Katie Promo Team and a standing member of the Katie EV. With me today, we have Anika Kokkar, one of the founding members of Katie Network, Thomas Kanabrava. He has been very active in engaging the Katie Network chapter in Brazil and Eshwarya K.K. She is actually one of the pilot programs for Katie Network in Kerala. But before we go ahead in knowing more about the Katie Network chapters and the pilot project, we'll do that later in a discussion, in panel discussion round, but we wanted to give a bit of context about how Katie Network came to be. Katie is always in search of bringing new and fresh ideas by involving new contributors in our community. And for that, we have Google Summer of Code, our very own season of Katie. We even have a welcome chat group in metrics so that new members that join Katie have a welcoming environment where they can feel free to ask questions. In addition, we have been improving our documentation and have been making our websites more appealing. And of course, we host Katie Academy Every Year, which is the largest meetup of Katie developers all across the world. But we wanted to pivot our focus on three main goals with Katie Network. We wanted to diversify our community. We wanted to increase our end users and even we wanted to create brand awareness. These three are the tenants from which Katie Network was originally developed across. Diversifying our community, we wanted to make sure that we reach underserved, underrepresented communities that maybe countries with STEM fields, careers are still the minority of careers. We wanted to focus an increasing number of women in our community by making sure that, by making sure that they feel that they have a home with KDE and they can begin to contribute to the open source community with us. And the way to achieve this, we wanted to create a grassroots level chapters in small communities across the world. We're one of the two, one or two KDE members from a local team, form a local team and host meetups and spread the word about KDE to students and developers. A second goal, increasing end users. We want to increase our end users and we feel that there is an untapped market where Katie is not reaching and for that we wanted to target educational institutes. We have amazing products that we think would benefit students across each spectrum. And for that we also, we should provide translation and localization to reach across the language spectrum and for that, and most importantly, we wanted different countries to adopt KDE very easily. Alaska would be creating brand awareness. We create some amazing, amazing products like Krita, KDE and Live, KDE Plasma environment and many more. And we think that we have a lot of users but not many people know about KDE or maybe I can frame it in a different way that not many people know as much as they should know about KDE. I feel like there are a lot of people who haven't given KDE a shot and if we increase our brand awareness then we might get a lot of end users and we might make sure that KDE becomes a household name. And for that, we believe that we can achieve it by increasing our social media presence. Annika and Paul have been working regressly for this and we should always tag them for that. And so this is all about KDE Network and it's three goals. Now we would like to move on over our panel discussion round where we're gonna start talking about what KDE Network has done in the past and where we're going in the future. And I want to start by asking Eshwarya about her pilot chapter in Kerala. Hi Eshwarya. Hi. So Eshwarya, I would like to know what was going through your mind when we accepted Kerala as the pilot project and how did you form the team? Because you were in France. How did you do that? Yeah, so to start with before answering the questions for those who don't know Kerala is a small state in the southern parts of India with around 34 million people and the official language of the state is Malaya. So I will use Malaya during the discussion. So it's the language of Kerala. So what were my views? I considered it as a very good opportunity of course because I think when an international community like KDE give voice or attention towards a smaller community or a smaller population that can add certain values to the larger community and to the smaller community which is very important, I think. And though it was an exciting thought but then it was a series of questions or how we start, how we can organize, how which kind of values we want to add in which area and how can we done that? Those kinds of a series of questions but it was nice to have KDE network meetings a bit frequently to gain more confidence or to change opinions or change views and perspectives. And then another big question was now I have to find more volunteer time and that was a haunting thought. But in the end, after processing all these questions I contacted Tubin. He's the coordinator of the KDE Malayalam Translate Shantin and of course I was sure that he would be interested because I have seen that he and his friends were conducting Translate Tone for KDE and they were promoting very much KDE in such different free software groups like I thought he was very interested and we decided to move forward. And so it was him who added more people because he's living in Kerala so he has more updates about what is going on in different free software communities and who would be interested in KDE. So he added Sriram, Kannan and Akhil. This is the core group for now and the KDE Malayalam group has the channel, metric channel or telegram channel has around 150 people. So yeah, I think it was a good start. It was great. Okay, so I would also like to know that what was the first task you did for this project? We started with localization of translations of Plasma Workspace and bit of localizations and translations. Because G-Compre was, I already started this translation of G-Compre but there was a lot of things to localize like letters, alphabets and I had to add different levels for Malayalam language. So that was the first task and we decided to do, and it's still going on. The task is, I mean there's a lot of things to translate so it's going on. And we decided to focus on the localization efforts because we felt that we are not well equipped, not for the university students because in Kerala all the university students are okay with English language, but for common people, for example, last year in Academy Talk, maybe some of you may, so Ambadi was presenting a talk about a daily newspaper moving towards complete free software workflow in Kerala. So, and more newspapers are interested to go towards 100% free software workflow with Plasma. They are using Plasma Workspace and a lot of KD steps and other free softwares too. But for these kinds of achievements to achieve more sectors, we really need to localize and to give the common people not very, people not very easy with English to have easy access and easy way to be in and to you as a user too. So that's why we choose to start with translation. Sorry, that was a long answer. I forgot. And we all know Kerala is a place where open source is given a lot of importance. Was it easier for you to start this pilot project? Yes, Kerala is a very fertile ground for free software and the state government, the Kerala state government has acknowledged the relevance of free software as early as 2001. And in 2007, the government released an information and communication technology policy in which one of the objective was highly concentrated on free software. I would like to read out that part. The government realizes that free software presents a unique opportunity in building a truly egalitarian knowledge society. The government will take all efforts to develop free software and free knowledge and shall encourage and mandate the appropriate use of free software in all ICT initiatives. So I don't need to talk a lot on that topic. So it was indeed, it's not really hard to talk about free software in general. But these achievements are gained through a lot of struggles and there are a lot of free software activists, a lot of free software communities and there were even protests by teachers community against teaching proprietary software. These kinds of things happens and so the community is very political. So it has its own, so it's in a way it's very easy to start a free software initiative there, but it has its own challenges too. For now, to start with, we didn't have big issues because we are a small group and we all know that all are interested in KDE and what KDE, bigger community of KDE, how it is and all. That was easy, but then the hadals came after, I would say recently during academy what I think is now the bigger community maybe thinking that it is our efforts, the KDE network is the reason to include all these KDE application in the education system, but please don't forward this narrative because that could be ignoring a lot of years of struggles and fights from other activists. So if you put forward this narrative that will be hard for us, the KDE network to grow there because of political discussions and issues. So that could be a hadal, but now I think as I presented it, it's okay. So everyone knows that it is not mainly as it started. So all the initiatives are from long time struggle and of course we worked for better men in improvement and for example, they were using G company of Norm Washington, all GTK Washington. So we tried to move to Qt version. So things like that happened, but still the major grassroots things were started before. So we didn't have a lot of struggle in that part. And another, so the difficulty starts actually in April for us. We have been a bit inactive since April. Like you may all know that it's really hard time for India, like many other countries in the world due to COVID-19, socially, economically and all. So this has affected a lot, the team and our activities too. And we were kind of depressed, I would say. And then, but now it's okay, we are getting better. We will try to reactivate soon. And though we were inactive in the sense as a collective, but we were in all in our personal level, we were contributing or continuing our contributions. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's it. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much Ashwarya. Now I would like to ask Thomas about the Brazilian Network chapter. So, Tamiz, hi. I wanted to know what does Brazil think about open source and was it easy for you to start the Brazilian Network chapter? I'm so sorry, Tamiz, we cannot hear you. I suppose Thomas is trying to reconnect again. So give it a minute. We can hear you. Apparently it does not work on Firefox and MyMachine for some reason. So I don't think that it's ever easy on any country because even when the government is okay and even when the universities are okay and we try to start the chapter, not a lot of people will try to go there. So we always have just two little people to work on. I am trying to get developers in Brazil for at least 16 years. And currently the CAE Brazil chapter has 10 developers. And I think that I have more than 3,000 students that I've paid for my pocket should travel to their series and then should teach them how to develop for open source doing a really long, like 40 hours to 80 hours long course on all of the tooling bash gits, C++, Qt, getting from the start, ground basics to fully feature a developer in 80 hours. We do have, and I think that we are like one of the biggest countries in number of developers, we have 10 people. I think that it's improving right now mostly because I'm open for people that are not only interested in CAE. I say to them that I will help them do whatever they want if it is open source for free. This is helping. But when it was just I want to help you only if you do open source, this feels like a little bit of a threat and Brazilian people are a little bit combative. So if you say that I will only help you if you do this, they will not do anything. They will try to combat with you. They will try to show you that they also have strength and that will overcome nothing. So right now I'm helping people on GNOME, I'm helping people on XFCE. It's easier for me if I help them on KD because I already know how to work within KD and I don't need to waste my time learning so I can teach them. But it's working, it's growing. We got three people doing their bachelor tests and their master inside of KD technologies which is really good. Now the, I also got two teachers trying to use KD software within and I've also got one teacher trying to make, to get one of applications that he developed inside of KD. So this is doing great. We feel that a few of the universities are coming to us for help instead of us going to them begging for their acceptance. And this is really good. This is really cool. Basically this is my answer. Yeah, it is so great. And I've heard that you were doing some projects for the Brazilian network chapter. Like if I'm not wrong, something regarding the PONDA project or something. What is that about? You repeat, I did not get your last few words. Okay, yeah. So I'm saying that we've heard that you were doing a project, a few projects for the KD network team, the Prazi network. So it's something, it talked about the PONDA or something. I'm not sure the whole name. Yeah, let me get the link here. So this software here that I'm pasting on the chats, if I find the chat panel found it. So Poyard PONDA, this is a software created by the University of São Paulo. One of the students that worked on the software got in contact with us in the KD Brazil development channel on Telegram. And he said that, we have the software, it works. It is good. We would like to see how hard it would be to get on KD right now. And it's extremely hard. It's extremely hard because they have some stuff on their CI that we can't provide yet. So we are working, instead of KDs, so we can provide their things and we are also working with them so we can make the software up to standards to what KD requires. So we are working on both sides. The software is really good. It is for teaching circuits and circuit logic, so Boolean logic in how to draw circuits in a way that it's not professional software, but it's specifically for teaching and a lot of universities are missing that. I don't think that we will actually be able to move the software to KD this year because on KD we are missing the CI on GitLab and I know that Ben is working quite hard on that, not just Ben, but Ben and all of the seasoned vins. So this is one software. The other software that we are working on is the KD Plasma Firewall that was done with me, Caio Caipoli Berlich, and also Lucas Januário from the University of São Carlos. Forget the name sometimes. I'm too long without speaking Portuguese. And he was doing his masters on top of the firewall which is quite cool because then he actually managed to do two things at once. That is help open source and help his university graduation. Besides that, we are also working on console. So because I am one of the main developers of console and it's one of the things that I'm touching, the most people ask me, how can I jump on KD code in a way that you can actually help me a lot because I am a newcomer. I said, man, I'm touching console every single day. So if you jump there, I will probably see your code really fast. So we had three people join there on console and submitting a lot of codes. And one of the best thing that console got this year, the tax reflow was made by one of those students and he got a job because of the work that he did on console which is also really cool for me because it shows that working on free software will boost your resume and then companies will realize that you are a good developer and then work. Yeah, that's true. So that was great. Thank you so much, Thomas. And now I would like to ask Anika, the founding member of KD Network. Hello, Anika. Hi. So I would like to know, how did this KD Network idea strike you? Okay, so it's originally not my idea. When I started my career, I was working for a company for a non-for-profit organization. So I was handling the Middle East and the UK chapter, but after that, we found a lot of people who wanted to support from other countries and we started developing over there. So this idea clicked to me that if they can do it, and I'm from Pakistan, it was happening in Pakistan and we had chapters all over the world in the US, UK, Canada. So then why not let's supply this idea to KDE because KDE has people all over the world. Of course, we have mostly in Europe and we want to improve the diversity. So let's try it. So that's how the idea came up and we thought India as the pilot study because on LinkedIn, we have most of the viewers from India. So that's how we decided for India. Oh, okay. So we know that our next chapter is going to be in China. How did you contact them and how did you form this team? Okay, so it happened was those connected me to two people from to actually run. Her name is Mina and then she connected us to Burgess. So Mina and Burgess are basically handling China network and now they have started having events, but not now, but soon we are going to have an event over there where we would like people from KDE to have docs and we will be also participating in other events in China so that we can attract more students and users. So that's how actually China started but now of course, we are having a little bit of language barrier but hopefully soon we'll be able to overcome that as well. Okay. And once this China network starts properly, any talks about our next chapter? Okay, I think we need help from the community because that's how everything has started because people start coming up that, okay, there's a potential in this market. If they think that, okay, they can actually help us and support us because we need people who are committed towards this cause. We don't want people who just come today and say after a month that we can't do it. So if anybody, maybe from Bangladesh or Malaysia, Africa, anywhere, if you think that you can start a chapter in your country or city, please connect to us and we will surely help you and we'll let you know how you can start with it. Great. I still vividly remember Nika when we were planning about this KDE network, you were focusing so much on the diversifying our community. And you had such amazing ideas. So what made you say, thing that, okay, this thing will work in KDE? Okay, so one of our goal is to increase diversity. And if you see that we have majority, if you would even see mostly we have, I would say European males. And that was something in my mind that I have to somehow bring more women and people from different cultures and community to represent. Now you can see on the screen there are three women. Yes. That was my goal that, okay, I have to bring in more women. And I feel that, especially we three can relate that India and Pakistan, we feel that IT is one of the field and engineering is one of the field that we see mostly men and boys studying over there. And females are usually not encouraged to like such kind of fields. So I felt that if they see that, okay, for example, if Ms. Sveria has come and join us, maybe she's starting this in Kerala, a lot of women will be inspired by it. That's true. Yes, so that is amazing. Thank you so much for bringing the skating network project over here. Thank you for actually helping me. Otherwise this idea wouldn't have been successful. No, thank you. Thank you so much, Anika. And thank you, everyone. Please feel free to ask any questions if anyone has. Hello, your question person for today. Yeah. Hi. Hi. So we have two questions. In fact, the first one from Paul, do you know how Kerala governments became interested and educated in free software matters? Were there activists that informed them of their advantages? Yeah, so there was different perspective when the government started to decide, sorry, decided to use computers in public staffs and in schools. There was a public call and the response was from Microsoft, a Wacker and a free software community group. It was Linux user group, a Linux user group. So there was debate and it was free software who won the debate. So naturally free software won the debate because then the first thing is you don't need so to have Microsoft government should spend a lot of money. And the second thing is about Windows was not localized. There was no Malayalam in the stock. So, but Linux distributions were localized fast enough from the beginning. So it was a very good point to gain the one that debate. And then the activists were working towards with some teachers communities, teachers political parties and communities. So I think teachers could connect that faster and that's how there was a lot of protests and that's how all started, I guess. I'm not sure I was, I think from my readings. Yes. Very, very, very interesting, especially to have the user groups, the local free software user group is so involved. So that's really nice to hear. And also from personal point of view, it's interesting to hear the localization point being so important. So I'm happy for that. Okay, another question from David. Can Kerala be a model for growth in the rest of India or do other states demand unique strategies? It's already in other states. They are using, for example, Tamil Nadu. It has already migrated to free software, I think. At least I saw in the teachers training, they were teaching how to use recovery to teach staffs and how to use K-stars or they were using K-Life, Kruta, so obviously Tamil Nadu and I guess, and all the other states too moving towards it. I'm not sure it's because of Kerala, but there are a lot of free software communities here and there in India, like who come with me or more, but yes, so they are all moving towards and some are already migrated. Thanks. Another question from Alesh. How are we fixing the language problem to approach the Chinese community? So what I am doing right now is that I'm in contact with Mina and Burgess and we have actually made, we tried the same thing for Malayalam as well, but because in India, everybody understands English, but in China, that's not the case. So what we are doing is that we are going to translate each and every document which we have in Chinese, so it is much easier for them to understand about KDE. So all our presentations, all our basic stuff which we have about KDE is going to be translated. We have a separate page. Right now we have it in English, but we are going to have it in Chinese as well. Good. There is also another question which could be, if there are no other questions in the meantime, a good conclusion in this. How do I help in making regional communities? Okay, so we have channels, KDE network. You just have to join there and suggest which city and country you think has potential and then we can discuss it and we can take it further. If you know that there is potential, there are a lot of people interested in free software and then we can take it forward together. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't see any other question. Right now, we technically have a few other minutes before the last talk. I'm not sure if Adam is around and would like to. Of course I'm around, of course I'm around. Yes, sorry, sorry if I doubted you, sorry. Thank you, thank you Liji. Thank you everyone from the KDE network session, talk.