Prologue
The GNOME Asia Summit is an annual event organized by the GNOME community at the Asia region. This year, it was held in Gresik, Indonesia GNOME Asia Summit 2019 in October, 12th – 13th 2019 and the venue was University of Muhammadiyah Gresik . This event can be said as a gathering place for developers, activists, and users of Open Source Software especially GNOME technology.
My experience just started when the local committee (gresikdev) published GNOME Asia Summit 2019 Call for Paper poster. At first, I was confused, what would I send, because I never did be a speaker at every conference held by the community. The deadline for submission has only 1 day left. A friend tried to persuade me to submit paper as a speaker. Yeah, finally I followed his advice on how to write paper as a speaker. Then, i just waiting for the announcement of accepted speakers.
Time for announcement of accepted speakers just arrived. I got an email from the committee, that the paper I submitted was accepted. I was happy to be one of the speakers at this event, but, in other side, I was worried something like so scary to me because it was my first experience to become speaker in big event like GNOME Asia Summit 2019.
I was also asked for help by local committee friend to maintain the official website of this event. This is a new experience for me while caring for a website, just because the web is written using ReactJS. I was little confused at first saw the program code, but thanks to the help of friends and stackoverflow :p , so I could help committee to take care of this website š
Artemtech’s Trip to GNOME Asia Summit 2019
Iām going to Gresik with Arivle, who was volunteer at this event, at October 10 took the Logawa train from Jember to Surabaya first, because there was no train from Jember to Gresik. In Surabaya, we met Shinji Enoki (LibreOffice Japan Member), Rania Amina and friends from KLAS at Narotama University who were giving guest lecture on Utilizing LibreOffice and FLOSS Technologies. After that, Arivle, Rania, and I moved to the Grab Hotel in Gresik using online transportation service.
Shinji’s session 
Shinji’s session in Narotama University 
Shinji with Dean of Narotama University 
Me, Shinji, and Arivle
We stayed at Grab Hotel, Gresik. The distance is about 2 km from the venue. The place is really nice, with doodle-art decorations on the walls, friendly staff and great service. Unfortunately this place is blocked by the KFC building and several shops in front of it, so it is not visible right off the main road.
Grab Hotel’s front look 
Inside room
In the evening, we met with a local committee around the venue, to discuss preparations about tomorrow’s event (October 11), Workshop. In addition, we also met @princeofgiri, one of coolest guitarist from Gresik :ā).
Artemtech During GNOME Asia Summit 2019
Day 0
Today is workshop day. The workshop was divided into several sessions. The first session hosted by GresikDev that talk about “Gitlab Introduction”. Unfortunately I did not participate in this session, because the place was full, in other side I got a mandate from Ahmad Haris to repair his toys that I borrowed in last we met š
Gitlab Session by GresikDev
The second session was held after Friday Prayers. This session is a parallel session, the first parallel class was talking about “GNOME Translation” presented by Andika Triwidada and second class was talking about “GNOME: Newcomers workshop (BoF)” presented by Gaurav Agrawal, Felipe Borges, Sajeer Ahamed.
In the second session, I attended Andika Triwidada’s class, with his assistant, Kukuh Syafaat. In this session we learned together how to participate in translating GNOME, use the Poedit application for translating and he also shared tips for translating GNOME. Here, we met participant from Malaysia, Khairul, who was quite enthusiast and had a lot of discussions related to language adoption from Indonesia to Malaysia.
In the evening, we had welcome party with speakers and other invited guests at Luminous Cafe. The place is sooooooo beautiful, located at the top of the hill, and very romantic. Recommended place to visit while in Gresik. After having dinner, we were going back to hotel.
Day 1
We were with a group from Grab Hotel to the University of Muhammadiyah Gresik at 7.30 WIB. Arrived in the venue, we were immediately directed by the committee to take the seminar kit in speakers room. In there, we met Mr. Sokhibi, a book writer who uses LibreOffice and Mr. Aftian who is an ancient script activist in a Linux distribution environment, he discuss about Pegon Script in GNOME, Ms. Ananda Dwi who is the youngest team in BlankOn Linux, she talk about Linkerd 2.0 and many peoples from other communities.
Today is my schedule to present my paper about “Collaboration in Game Development using Godot: an Open Source Software“. This is my first time speaking in class at a conference, being able to speak at this big event. At first, I felt nervous, but over time, my nervousness disappeared and I even enjoyed bringing my presentation materials. The participants also very enthusiast and hopeful. At the end of the session, I distributed door prizes to lucky participants in the form of a book from Sokhibi, “Writing a Book with LibreOffice” and some Godot stickers to all participants.
After the presentation session, I attended the lightning talk session of “GNOME Translation Progress” by Kukuh Syafaat, “IRGSH” by Estu, “Open Source and Education in Indonesia” by Faiq, “Deep Learning in Linux Distros” by Radical Rakhman Wahid and lightning talk by Franklin Weng. Frank’s talk was about big event made by LibreOffice in the next year, just because LibreOffice will 10th celebration. He said that event will be held on Taiwan.
After the closing ceremony, we returned to the hotel to rest before attending the dinner invitation. On the way, Rifki Affandi joined us at Grab Hotel. At 19.00 WIB weāre going to Warung Apung Rahmawati for dinner invitation. Here, Rania force me to talk with Franklin Weng to discuss about way to create extension for LibreOffice. Thank you Frank! š
Day 2
This day was the last day of summit. I attended āGuitar Shredding under GNOME Environmentā class that presented by Hananto Herlambang. This class was very interesting. He explained how he use deep learning process to make some musics and effects to help guitarist when perform at the stage without using many tools, using guitar and Linux was enough, said him. Woouw, itās so cool!
After that session, I attended Rania Amina session, that he was talking about āGimpscape: The Biggest Open Source Design Community in Indonesiaā. He introduced the Gimpscape Community, what are they, whatās their activities, and more about their contribution.
Documentation of Rania’s session
After Rania session, I attended a lightning talk by Khairul who will bring GNOME Asia Summit 2020 to Malaysia. Maybe I should attend this special event next year :p (Amien)
After the lightning talk session, I attended the “How To Contribute To FOSS Projects” class by Ahmad Haris. This session was very important to encourage peoples to start contributing in FLOSS as beginners, students, professionals, teachers, even government.
Day 3
This is one day tour, we were invited to tour the city of Gresik. We departed from the Grab Hotel to the tomb of Sunan Giri at 08.00 WIB. There we learned how to make batik. It turns out that making batik is not as easy as one might imagine, full of patience and foresight. Neil got praise from the batik makers because his work looked good and was asked to work there as a batik maker, but he declined their offers :).
After making batik, we went to the tomb on the top of the hill. I don’t have much to say here. After that we went to the Sunan Giri Museum. In the museum, I learned a lot about the history of the city of Gresik, especially the area of Sunan Giri. And also, can see firsthand the oldest evidence of the spread of Islam in Indonesia and the oldest Holy Qur’an in this Gresik area.
We make batik 
Photo with Batik made by us 
Tomb of Sunan Giri 
Tomb of Sunan Giri 
Kemasan Region 
Kemasan Region 2
After that, we had lunch at Shofa. There, we met Khairul for the last time, hopefully next year we could meet again in Malaysia, and met Adam there :)). After lunch, we headed for UISI. I just found out that Semen Indonesia changed the cement factory in Gresik into a University. After that we were going to Kemasan but just passed because we ran out of time š¦ , so we just go to Grab Hotel and prepare go home.
Epilogue
At last, I would like to thank the committee, sponsors, speakers, volunteers, organizers, exhibitors who helped this event and Kudos! for all of you. We hope that can see you again at the next event š
Special thanks to GNOME Foundation for supporting my trip.
PS. you can see full documentations in here.
Artemtech 