This post is long winded and unfocused. If you prefer to not experience my rambling, this is your warning. If you do, enjoy!
Pre-Akademy Akademy-ing
Hello! I was at Akademy 2025! Along with Devin and Derek, this trip was actually part of a larger grad trip, the ending of which happened to conveniently line up with Akademy. The last time I attended Akademy was back in 2022, so I was excited to be back!
The last part of the grad trip was in Hong Kong, so naturally that’s where the journey to Akademy begins! We flew out using Turkish Airlines (a first for me), stopping over in Istanbul. I will say, the economy seats do come with a nice amenities kit:
In any case, after a brief (and really expensive! the food was not cheap!) layover in Istanbul, we arrive in Berlin! It was night by the time we got into the hotel, so we got some snacks and then headed to bed.
The first full day was all about getting setup, doing a bit of exploring, then heading out to the evenings main event: the welcome event!
The Pixel 3a was my Plasma Mobile device of choice for this Akademy (I found it in a Hard Off store in Japan during the trip!), and since Derek was getting a SIM for his phone, I decided to also get one for the Pixel. This lead to a pretty entertaining sequence of pulling out a Plasma Mobile device when the employee offered to install the SIM for me.
It all worked out, though! I mean, I ended up doing most of the work actually navigating the OS (they looked somewhat concerned when I rebooted the phone to get the SIM card recognized and the tty sped by), and they had to take a moment to look up the APN settings (probably an uncommon occurrence for them), but the SIM installed and I was connected to the Vodefone network without any drama.
Of course, before heading back to the hotel room, we had to indulge ourselves with some local Berlin cuisine, which means currywurst. (for those not aware, it’s sausage and fries with ketchup, mayo and curry powder).
Back in the hotel room now, and you would think maybe we’d take a nap or otherwise rest. But nope, my hotel room instead became a place to lock in. After all, there were things that needed to be done! I for one spent the time flashing a fresh copy of postmarketOS on to my Anbernic RG35xx.
Akademy Welcome Event
Finally, it is time to go to the welcome event! Being in the Plasma Mobile sphere, naturally I sat with various Plasma Mobile and adjacent people. Overall a fun night, lot’s of excitement in the air with people meeting each other (some for the first time, some after years), and of course excitement for the week of Akademy to come. Also naturally, the table was full of drinks, food, and Plasma Mobile devices.
Akademy Day 1
Talks, talks, and more talks! That is the name of the game for the first two days of Akademy. Taking place in university lecture halls, they cover a wide variety of KDE related topics and are really interesting to listen to. There are also a lunch break, plus some coffee breaks sprinkled in.
During the day, there are usually two talks running in parallel in the two rooms, so you need to pick one. These are the talks I attended on Day 1:
- Keynote: Open by Design: How Governments Can Lead the Shift to Digital Sovereignty (Alexander Rosenthal)
- Plasma: Lessons Learned and Our Path Forward in 2026 and Beyond (David Edmundson)
- KDE Linux: Banana Growth Cycle (Harald Sitter)
- The Role of New Languages in the Future of the Qt Ecosystem (Dr Cristián Maureira-Fredes)
- Report of the Board, Report of the Working Groups
- KDE Goals – One Year Recap
- Lightning talks: What’s New with Qt Learning? (Emilia Valkonen-Damjanovic), Gently Retiring KWallet (Marco Martin), Emergency and Weather Alerts (Volker Krause), Boosting your code and simplifying your life with clazy (Alexander Lohnau)
If any (or all) of those titles seem interesting to you, you can check out the Akademy program website for full descriptions. At some point the talks will also be edited and posted online as well.
In the little bits of time I managed to get during the day, I did get some work done as well! A handful of improvements to KRetro (my Libretro frontend for Plasma) and some hacking on Plasma Mobile.
After the talks finished for the day, people headed home or out to eat dinner in various groups. I went with one such group and had some really tasty vegan thai curry!
Akademy Day 2
Wake up! It’s a new day, more talks! You don’t want to miss it! (I might have slept in a bit)
Day 2 is structured much the same as day 1, with the exception of the group photo! Always a fun time seeing everyone gathered together in one space.
The talks I attended on day 2 were:
- Handling Negative Feedback (Akseli Lahtinen)
- Developing on Flatpak (Aleix Pol Gonzalez)
- Getting Hired to Work on FOSS – The Do-s, Don’t-s and Pitfalls for Everyone Involved (Till Adam)
- Next-Gen Documentation Infrastructure for KDE (Nicolas Fella)
- Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition is Real, Now What? (Neal Gompa)
- Lightning talks: Say what now? – Communication Theory for Software Developers (Nicolas Fella), The Art of a Good Commit Message (David Edmundson), Plasma Mobile Power Management: Reliable Sleep and Wake Ups (Bhushan Shah), Funding and Growing – Kdenlive Experiences and Perspectives (Jean-Baptiste Mardelle)
And would you look at that, the talks are done! Blink and you’ll miss ’em. Honestly it felt like they went by so fast, it’s lots of fun getting to see all the KDE community members you see online in person, and getting to hear all the cool things they are involved in.
The rest of Akademy week?
After the saturday and sunday full of talks, the rest of Akademy week is dedicated to various activities, notably BoFs (birds-of-a-feather). They are essentially meetings of different interests (usually of specific topics, for example there is a BoF for Plasma Keyboard). These represent a pretty important part of Akademy, all these developers and community members from around the world are in one place, and so you get the unique opportunity to have in person meetings, discussions and planning. Besides BoFs, there are also various workshops and trainings held as well. Plus, there is the day trip in the middle of the week!
Unfortunately I could not attend the rest of Akademy due to timing with other obligations, and so it was time to finally head back home and bring the trip to a close.
Goodbye, Akademy!
The 3 days of Akademy were a lot of fun! It was great to meet fellow KDE community members and hear about all they had to say in the talks. I look forward to hopefully attending Akademy again next year!
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