This year's Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit."The Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was a milestone not only for the KDE and GNOME communities, but also for the free desktop in general." said Cornelius Schumacher, president of KDE e.V., "New collaboration efforts were started and existing ones revitalized. We already have seen results for example in the area of the semantic desktop, and on improving the specification processes on freedesktop.org. I'm sure we'll see more results in the near future."The summit accomplished its goal of increasing co-operation between GNOME and KDE to improve the Free Desktop experience. Throughout the conference there were many examples of successful collaboration including shared technologies, community co-operation and growth of the local free software community"I was really excited to see all of the energy at the conference - 800 free desktop supporters in the same building!" said Vincent Untz, Director and Chairman of the GNOME Board. "I heard conversations about search technologies, recruiting developers and marketing. Both our communities benefited and I look forward to seeing the benefits passed on to GNOME users." read more