Mario Fux

… I finally got my diploma for a study that took much longer than I first thought ;-). But then with the knife at my throat (the old study model ran out and thus it was my last chance to finish) and great support of friends and family I found the time and energy to successfully finish and get my Master’s degree. The title of my diploma thesis was “Media Choice and the Media-Synchronicity-Theory – Development of an Instrument for the Study of selected Elements of MST for Free Software Communities” and here you find its English abstract:

This paper will analyse the media choice and media usage of Free Software communities and hence to draw conclusions for a more successful deployment of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) in the area of education and school. After a history of ten years of CSCL in action, relevant failures and possible causes, we develop a questionnaire on the foundation of the Theory of Media Synchronicity from Dennis et al. (2008). The acertained data will be evaluated regarding the daily media usage on the one hand and the media choice in specific situations on the other hand. Additionally we are going to compare the data with the data of the study of Miller (2014) about "learning strategies and new media".
To validate the ideas of a more successful deployment of CSCL two concrete hypotheses will be established: 1. the characteristics in media usage und choice in Free Software communities and the preferred choice of asynchronous media when being longer within the community, and 2. the importance of email as communication media in these communities. The acertained data and its evaluation do not confirm the first hypothesis. But there are lots of results that confirm the second hypothesis.

Unfortunately this is the only English part of the diploma thesis besides the questionnaire. With this questionnaire I collected some data through a survey. Thanks everybody for participating in this survey and yesterday I finally informed the two lucky winners about their prices.

A paper that might be more interesting for you is the one about “KDE as an example of a Free Software community” from a social-educational perspective. In the appendix you find 9 longish IRC interviews with different people from the KDE community. There you might find some interesting insights and different perspectives.

PS: Oh and one of my sons has his birthday today so: Happy birthday little b.

The dates for the sixth edition of the Randa Meetings are set: Sunday, 6th to Sunday 13th of September 2015. The first Sunday will be the day of arrival and the last Sunday accordingly the day of departure.

So what about you? If you know about Qt and touch gesture support, want to bring your KDE application to Android and Co, plan to work on KDE infrastructure for mobile systems, are a UI or UX designer for mobile and touch interfaces, want to make your software more accessible or just want to work on your already ported KDE application please register as soon as possible on our Sprints page.

The registration is open until the 13th of May 2015. Please add your estimated travel cost and what you plan to work on in Randa this September. You don’t need to include any accommodation costs as we organize this for you (see the Randa Meetings wiki page for further information about the building). After this date we will present a budget and work on a fundraiser (together with you) to make it possible for as many people as possible to come to Randa.

If there are any questions or further ideas don’t hesitate to contact me via email or on freenode.net IRC in #randa.

Konqi – the friendly dragon is our well-known mascot. There is the traditional one which didn’t change much over the years and was even created in plush. And on our historic KDE clipart page you find some versions of Konqi and his friend Katie.

There is even a moving Konqi and if you’re talented enough you might create your very own Konqui.

Then there is a collection of new Konqis by Tyson Tan. (And this is not the place to discuss which ones are nicer and you like more. As it’s my blog I dare to say that I like both versions very much. So thanks Tyson for the new ones and whoever did the historic version (after Kandalf?;-)).

But what about the question in the title of this blog post? Today I found some time to read about the “Plasma Sprint 2015” by Ken Vermette (kver). Thanks Ken for this nice outside (and now inside 😉 perspective. Ken is one of several people of our Visual Design Group. Under this blog post I read a comment with the question “why are there no women in the picture?” (another and IMHO very important question but not the topic if this blog post, so for another time!) and later a small discussion about Konqi and his friend Katie and why a female version and why a pink dress and eyelashes. Unfortunately the comments are gone now (although they were very well written and had some good ideas and perspectives).

And as this is a topic (gender research) that interests me very much I had a short discussion with my wife how it would and could be possible to draw a female Konqi without using any gender stereotypes. We didn’t find an answer.

But in the end the answer is actually quite simple (thanks again Ken and his commenters for the insight) and even visible on this picture: KDE Dragons Ensemble.

Konqi is female, male and nothing at all. Just take a look at the ensemble above and you’ll see that there are a lot of different Konqis, different colors and some might be male, some female and some something else. So there’s no specific need for an additional female version of Konqi as we’ve already female Konqis. But there is always need for new Konqis…

But the ultimate proof (at least IMHO) gave my son when I asked him (he is a huge fan of Konqi and I’m completely innocent about this fact 😉 if Konqi is female or male? He answered: “It’s Konqi.”

PS: Another question could be (for bikesheding purposes ;-): if our mascot’s name is “Konqi” or “Konqui”. (Please note the irony, sarcasm or rhetorical character of this question ;-).