Following the release of GNOME 3.0, the world has been celebrating GNOME 3 here and there starting from April 6th: 141 registered GNOME 3 release parties spreading over 47 countries according to this wiki page. Being on the GNOME.Asia committee for 4 years already, I am happy to see that 43% (61 parties) of the release parties are from Asia (in 15 countries), India actually organizing the most (20% i.e. 29 parties in total), followed by Greater China (9% i.e. 12 parties in total). That makes me feel that all those efforts and time spent on GNOME.Asia are starting to bear fruit.
In Europe, we have 41 parties (almost 30%) coming from 21 countries, Germany leading the pack with 8 parties, followed closely by Spain and France (6 parties respectively).
The Americas have 36 parties (25%) coming from 8 countries with Mexico hosting almost half (16 parties i.e. 11%). And finally we also have 3 parties in Africa. While this is not a lot for such a big continent it is definitely a start for GNOME and we should try hard to keep those people motivated and participating in the project.
In Greater China, it’s worth mentioning that organizers from Taipei, Kaohsiung, Beijing and Hong Kong coordinated their events to provide live video between each others. It is a good sign for the community to see collaboration among different cities or countries and maybe something we could extend on different aspect of GNOME.
Another challenge among us now is to transform those celebrations into deep involvement in the project. GNOME has a lot to offer, and that was very obvious when we discussed with the college hosting GNOME.Asia 2011, however the road to participation is not always clear to everyone. I wonder what could be the most effective way to achieve this goal and would be happy to hear how people started to get involved at first (maybe something to learn there?).
It is now time to promote GNOME 3 by blogging about your parties! Don’t forget to tag your blog posts, microblogging messages and photos with #gnome3parties, and link them to the GNOME wiki page. You can also join the best photo competition by simply adding your photo link here.
