This is the second time I have participated in the GNOME.Asia Summit (hereinafter we call GNAS). Last year’s GNOME.Asia Summit was held together with openSUSE.Asia Summit and COSCUP in Taipei, while this year this cool event was held in Indonesia, precisely at Universitas Muhammadiyah Gresik (UMG) in Gresik, East Java, a small city not far from Surabaya (the capital of East Java).

Before I begin this story, congratulation to everyone who participated in this event, the local committee, volunteers, sponsors, community colleagues, participants, and anyone who has been involved in this long process.

In GNAS19, besides being a speaker, I am also involved as a local committee, more specifically, the graphic design coordinator. I have a number of great staff who help me to complete all the tasks in GNAS19 related to design matters. They all included Ariv, Nugroho, Hervy, and the youngest Faza. One more person, who also has an equally important role, Soyan Sugiyanto a.k.a Artemtech, who has been assisting the committee to handle web affairs. I swear, this web affair is very complex and thankfully everything can work as it should.

Btw, this design team doesn’t live in the same place. We stayed in several places and almost never met during the design process. Yes, we already know each other because all of them are members of the Gimpscape Indonesian design community, but (in the context of this GNAS19) we only met about a week before the GNAS19 event began.

So how do we work? Haha, next time I’ll tell you the challenges and obstacles working on artwork for such a large event remotely. Just wait :")

Depart to Gresik

A few days before, I attended the openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 event in Bali, then I stayed for a few days around the city of Surabaya. I deliberately did not go home first to save time, energy, and, of course, cost.

Before I headed to Gresik, I attended an event that was held by LibreOffice Indonesia at Narotama University, Surabaya. The speaker in this event is Shinji Enoki who explained about the benefits of using LibreOffice and ways to choose if you want to contribute to open source, especially LibreOffice.

Around 4 pm, I went with Sofyan and Arif to Gresik. We stayed in the same hotel. Shinji too, but he will only check in tomorrow afternoon.

Thursday night, after eating, we approached another local committee around the venue. We discuss technical matters briefly in preparation for tomorrow. Ahmad Haris also came that night to help ensure that everything was settled, especially about the pickup of foreign speakers.

Day 0

We (me, Sofyan, and Ariv) came to the venue around 8 pm. Today’s agenda is a workshop with several topics that have been posted on page 2019.gnome.asia. Some participants have started to arrive and re-register.

That morning I got an impromptu assignment from Andik to make a show to be displayed on the Main Hall screen during the event. Hmmm, I’m a little confused about what to do too, because I didn’t prepare a video for this at all. I only made a short motion logo (about 10 seconds in duration) before. Finally, I asked Andika Triwidada (thank you Eyang!) to give a short video of greetings to the participants.

While helping with the preparation for the afternoon session workshop class, I began to do video editing quickly with very limited resources. Haha, I think this is the fastest video I’ve ever made, but I’m quite happy with the results.

Around 4 pm, the video was successfully done. Here is the video.

Short Video about GNOME.Asia Summit 2019

After completing this video, I then proceeded to edit the video sent by Kristi and Sammy Fung. Very sad they both could not join this event, even though they both are people who have been guarding this event for months. Sad.

In the evening, the local committee held a welcome party at Luminous Gresik Cafe. It is said that this is the highest place in Gresik. We arrived too soon. When we arrived at the location, there was no one yet, ahahaha. But not long after, then came Frank and Haris, and Fenris and his families.

The night was very bright, the city lights flickering in various colors. So beautiful. I greeted with several other speakers that night. Btw, thank you for appreciating the designs that I have worked with the team. Very touched to hear that.

Day 1

I didn’t do much that morning, just helping with the preparations and checking so that everything went as expected.

In the first parallel class session, I attended the Sevagen Veerasamy class on Human Interface Engineering (Icons and Graphic Design). The material is very easy to understand, even for a beginner though. I think Veerasamy should make an advanced class for this material. For the second parallel session, I was in the main hall to help Ariv deliver his material.

Btw, I am happy with the concept of snacks in GNAS19. All snacks are available since morning and are free to take at any time, this is certainly very helpful for me which incidentally has an irregular eating schedule, haha.

In the evening, we had dinner at the Floating Restaurant. The location is only about 8 minutes walk from the Grab Hotel where I stayed. The food offered is very diverse, and most importantly, almost everything is delicious, yummi!

Some of us, including me, try to taste traditional drinks and local drinks. Among us, Sajeer was one of the people who enjoyed the meal that night. He was amazed by the “happy soda” which was said to be the first time he had met his entire life.

After eating, we spent the night talking and telling each other. What is the topic? Anythings :")

Day 2

On the second day, I departed faster than before. Some hotel friends go to church first before going to the venue. That morning, I was asked for help by Ahmad Haris to help with the presentation of Stephanus Koeswandi, one of the keynotes in GNAS19.

After that, I continued to follow parallel class material delivered by Hananto Herlambang about Guitar Shredding under GNOME Environment. To be honest, this is the material that interests me the most. I am not a musician or a person involved in the music world, but art with open source applications is something that always attracts my curiosity.

One of the things that I have captured from the topic presented by Hananto is the technique for producing super-awesome music using open source applications. In other words, for those of you who are low budget but want to be creative in the field of music, this topic from Hananto is what you should see. I will not spoiler this interesting topic, so you feel sorry for not participating in GNAS19, –evil laugh ‘(6_6)’

Today is a special day for me because the next parallel class session is my session. On this occasion, I brought a topic about Gimpscape: The Biggest Open Source Design Community in Indonesia. Slide about this topic can be seen by friends via the following link. Yes, this time I’m doing good. wow.

At the end of the event, the committee give many prizes to the participants. The process was quite long, so Ahmad Haris asked me to help the MC so that the drawing process could take place faster so the event could be finished on time.

Unexpectedly, this prize drawing session was very lively. The participants were also more enthusiastic in this session. In addition to participants, prizes were also given to the best volunteers who had carried out their duties at GNAS19.

GNAS19 was closed by Andik, chairman of the local committee, with great fun. After the event, several speakers, including me, were still engrossed in conversation and saying goodbye to one another.

Shhhtt, in the evening I and some other friends were treated to dinner by Ahmad Haris, arigatou sacho :").

One Day Tour

The bus from UISI picked us up around 9am. Ah, btw … sorry Shinji about Pecel this morning: “(

The first destination one day tour (odt) is a batik studio around the Sunan Giri graveyard. Odt participants were taught about how to make batik. This is not the first time for me, but I always believe that the process of making batik is an experience that will always be new and cannot be compared to the process of making batik before.

We were asked to make a group when making batik, I was a group with Shinji and Neil. I have to admit, Neil’s batik are truly amazing and amaze me. It made me even more excited to finish batik with a motif that I improvised myself.

After making batik, we headed to the main tomb of Sunan Giri. Many people pray there. We wandered around for a while before finally moving to the Sunan Giri museum.

In the museum, there are many ancient items. One of the things that caught my attention was the Quran manuscripts that were stored on the second floor. I am currently reviewing this manuscript in my final paper. That’s what makes me pay more attention to observe these Manuscripts.

After leaving the museum, we headed for lunch, ah I forgot the name, shofa? Seems like that. There Fenris and his family were waiting for us. Btw, Fenris has a very cute boy named Adam. Ah, I miss that little kid.

After lunch, we headed to Universitas International Semen Indonesia (UISI), one of the cool campuses in Gresik. This campus is amazing, it is surrounded by large buildings of former cement factories that are no longer in operation. And what I like most about this campus is the auditorium, ahay, I hope one day I can hold an event there. Together with Mrs. Renny (or Sis, because she is still quite young) we went around to some interesting spots in UISI including the library section.

After UISI, the group was taken to their respective hotels, and this was the moment that Fenris said was most unpleasant from a meeting: Farewell.

One day tour ended. Shortly after arriving at the hotel, I rushed to the bus terminal to return to my hometown.

What’s Next?

Finally, thank you all. GNAS 19, although the process is really tiring, can you imagine that I have been in the committee since about the beginning of the year, but in the end I enjoyed all of it without regret. Maybe some things from this program are not perfect, but it is imperfections that make us, especially me, to continuously learn to be better.

Meeting and sharing stories / experiences with new people is an amazing experience. Things like this will certainly never be repeated (unless there are among us who have the Doraemon time machine or the Denliner Time Train). Hopefully we are all given a long life, so that next year we can meet again at GNOME. The Asia Summit 2020 will be held everywhere (apparently in Malaysia, isn’t it Adam? I didn’t ask his father ahaha).

And …, this is the end of Rania story during GNOME.Asia Summit 2019. How about you?

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Thanks to:

Our photos can be access via Google Photo Groups: https://s.klas.or.id/GNAS19-Moment