Inkscape’s 20th Anniversary

5 Nov. 2024, 23.59

On November 18, 2023, the Inkscape project celebrated its 20th anniversary.

The anniversary celebration was an online get-together of Inkscape users and contributors.

This was an initiative by the Vectors team and the intention was to bring Inkscape users and contributors together to celebrate 20 years of Inkscape.

Inkscape is used by people around the world. To accommodate that, two sessions were organized in different time zones. The first session was scheduled at 12:00 UTC for folks from regions like Eastern North America, Europe, India, & Indonesia. The second session started at 18:00 UTC for other regions, including Oceania.

The attendees were invited to share their approximate location in the world so that we could “map” the Inkscape community that came together to celebrate the anniversary. The interactive map can be viewed online. It is a beautiful souvenir of Inkscape’s global reach.

The larger Inkscape community also sent birthday wishes which were read during the sessions. An interactive slideshow of the wishes is available on Gitlab.

These sessions featured interviews from people in the Inkscape community. The interviewers asked guests about their Inkscape journey, how they discovered Inkscape, what they liked most about using Inkscape, among other questions. Guests answered that they use Inkscape for various things, some of them being designing board games, a children’s book for their loved ones, doing professional design work. One guest said they loved the feeling of freedom when designing with Inkscape. Another guest wanted a free vector graphics application, they stumbled upon Inkscape and found a bug. After reporting it, they ended up eventually contributing translations for their language.

After the interview ended, the room was opened to the chat so that people could ask the guests questions. The sessions went well over time as those in attendance wanted to keep the great Inkscape party going.

You can get involved with the Inkscape project, too, and help make the next 20 years even greater!