We tried to get the combined GUADEC and aKademy conferences to Tampere in 2009, but a warmer place unfortunately won. However, we will be hosting this year's aKademy so at least KDE and Qt fans will get to enjoy this beautiful northern industrial city.

The main conference will be held at the Tampere University over the weekend, and then the remaining hackweek will be in the nice Demola facility in the Finlayson district. Expect great connectivity and close proximity to all Tampere nightlife.

I'm involved with two aKademy activities:

• GeoClue presentation on the location service that can be used on any Linux desktop and is used in MeeGo. I'll also talk about what desktops can do when location is available
• Midgard Gathering during Mon-Wed of the hackweek. Midgard provides a content repository for applications that should be available also for Qt apps through GObject Introspection. With some proven performance benefits and replication support, Midgard should be interesting for any desktop or mobile app that deals with structured data

In addition there will be a Maemo / MeeGo meetup in the Plevna brewery on Friday evening. See you there!