The story about this meeting was quite casual, during our typical beer session after our also typical KDE 4.5 release dinner party we decided we could meet sometime with our laptops to do some hacking, considering that all KDE contributors in Barcelona we have very different targets (catalan translations, pianos development, distribution development and some colorful devils) it was something that came along quite fresh so, after some discussions on where could we do it, we decided to gather on some linux classroom our city hall offers for free (rather than a bar, which would be what some spaniards would typically do on a saturday afternoon) and announced in some local mailing lists, blogs and asked to spread the word.
I must say I was impressed because I didn’t expect much people to come and that made me realize that probably we should do that more.
I think it was quite nice to be able to meet KDE users in Barcelona, there was even people from any kind: who had sent some code to KDE but, since they don’t come to Akademy(-es)’s we never got to know each other, there was also some users who just wanted to meet for a while, also people of those who know they want to collaborate but never find their spot, people who used to collaborate with KDE but life grow us apart, people who are from my surroundings and kind of forced them to come and, of course, those people inside KDE Spain who knew about this event from the first time.
I think it’s really good to be able to interact in person with the community, I guess we all know that (e.g. sprints, akademy’s) but also it’s always helpful to grow KDE interest in your local area. Just one hint: make it sure to announce it to the local free software mailing lists. It’s going to be the best place to get to the people that’s not directly into the KDE circles that are quite easy to reach, apparently not everybody reads the KDE Planet!