Camp KDE at FOSSY 2026: Vancouver Edition

I just got to writing this blog post, regarding FOSSY 2026 in Vancouver, where I co-ran the Camp KDE track, gave a talk, sat on a panel, and spent a decent chunk of the weekend standing behind a table full of stickers. Here’s how it went.

What I was up to

Wearing a lot of hats, apparently. I was one of the co-runners of the Camp KDE track, which meant organizing, scheduling, and generally making sure things happened. I also gave a talk on KDE Plasma in the immutable space, and took part in the KDE 30th Anniversary retrospective panel.

On the logistics side, I got stickers, a “branded” tablecloth, and some laminated QR code pages printed up for the booth. I also played shuttle service, hauling folks from Seattle up to the conference in my truck.

Then there was the booth itself. I brought my XP-Pen tablet for Krita demos, plus a second laptop for a bit of Kdenlive when I was around to run it.

How it went

FOSSY went really well. It’s a great conference, and it’s much more community-focused than some of the others, where the corporate presence is higher. It feels like a gathering of people who actually use and build this stuff, not a trade show.

We were only assigned one table, but we got lucky. Whoever had the table next to us didn’t show up, so we took it. Nobody complained.

The XP-Pen tablet was a hit. At least one artist camped out and drew for a good while, which is exactly the kind of thing you hope for at a booth. Troy brought a Steam Deck, a Surface, and a Raspberry Pi with a small LCD touchscreen, and was demoing Plasma Mobile, which generated a lot of questions and interest.

Krita was probably the star of the booth, going by how many people walked up asking about specific things. I’m a little embarrassed to admit I’m not an artist, but more on that below.

As for whether any donations came out of it, I haven’t a clue. I’ll be curious to find out.

What I learned

• Not having a US booth is a problem. KDE doesn’t have a pre-existing booth setup here, so everything got ordered in a hurry. Rush orders on stickers and the tablecloth cost more than they needed to.
• People love the Konqi/Katie hex stickers. They’re a conference favorite, and it’s not close.
• I need shiny stickers. Because of the rush, we only had basic white-background stickers. Shiny ones are always the hot item, so I’ll be looking into getting some.
• The booth was sometimes unmanned. Between my own talks, organizing the track, and wanting to catch other people’s sessions, there were stretches where nobody was at the table. Not ideal, and a pure staffing and scheduling problem.
• Attendance felt lighter. I haven’t seen numbers from the organizers, but it felt less well attended than FOSSY 2025 in Portland. This was the conference’s first year in Vancouver, which may explain it.

What happens next

The main project is a “Booth Box” for the US. It would probably live with me when not at a conference, and hold the tablecloth, stickers, promo material, and at least a couple of demo laptops or devices. No more rush orders.

A bit more speculative: it’d be nice to demo Plasma Bigscreen on an actual big screen. Shipping a TV to every conference isn’t viable, so this one is more of a daydream than a plan.

I’m also going to get properly familiar with Krita and Kdenlive. I’m not an artist or a video editor, but I can’t keep demoing the star of the booth while only knowing which buttons exist. Getting to a reasonable level of proficiency should make for better demos.

And there’s a vague idea in the back of my head about getting a KDE presence at more North American conferences, which means finding people willing to staff a table.

One honest note: I didn’t come home with any big code ideas, either for Kalpa or the wider KDE ecosystem. This trip was all conference, community, and comms. I’m fine with that. Not everything has to turn into a patch.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the track happen, to Troy for the demos, and to the FOSSY organizers for putting on a great event.