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Hi Debian Women
Here is my report of the visit of Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) 2005.
It was my second visit: I went also to FOSDEM 2004. The main differences are that I now stayed from Friday till Sunday (I went only on Saturday last year) and the Debian Developers Room (last year it was shared with the Java Developers Room and it was located opposite the Debian booth).
Don't be afraid to ask for clarifications or more detailed information (about anything actually) ...
I took the train to Leuven (Mind NV) where I would be sleeping during the event. I had my dinner at a pub near the station, after which I walked to Mind NV. There I dropped my gear and connected my laptop ;-) If the CEO arrived we went off to the Pre-FOSDEM party at Le Roy d'Espagne, Grand Place, Brussels. There I've met (or at least seen) jvw, stargirl, mjg59, Alan Cox, _rene_, Uli Martens, Dag Wiers and many more
As I forgot to bring a pad (or some other kind of mattress to put between my sleeping bag and the hard floor), I didn't sleep very well. So at 8 am I was already awake and taking a shower next to the server room (yes, there was almost some water damage at some moment). Being awake that early I still managed to miss the Wikipedia talk, but I've met my local LUG (Zeus) from the university at Stallman's talk. We ate some chicken fast food after which I went to the Debian Developers Room for aba's talk about the Debian Release Process. The room was very crowded, I think they all thought to hear when sarge would release. The question was answered not with a date, but with what still has to happen before the release (as I expected). I stayed for wookey's Embedded Debian talk and Frank Lichtenheld's Debian Web Services talk. It's a pitty I can't find the slides online... I've met cobaco, fjp and others who I only know from debian-l10n-dutch. Then I've met my other (not so local) LUG (Lugwv) for a drink, after which I went for dinner and apparantly a discussion on open standards and how to get Belgian Windows end users to use Free and Open Source software.
The following day I visited the Debian booth for the first time where I bought some shiny posters and donated some money. I went to the hackers room as I had brought my laptop I thought I should use it ;-) In no time it was time to head for the Debian Developers Room again as stargirl would give a talk on The Debian Women Project [1]. I stayed for the talk of mjg59. I admit more for hearing a candidate DPL as for the subject, but "Free as in DFSG" turned out to be very interesting. As Yoe said there was a keysigning party, I just got some sandwich for lunch. The official keysigning party wasn't very well organised as you had to ask the information desk when and where it was and the time changed twice. As in the end the keysigning party was at the time of Alan Cox's talk (and stargirl's Lightening Talk which apparently got rescheduled too) Yoe decided to have an unofficial keysigning party at the booth (I've met 11 people joining the party) after which the official keysigning party took place (which I also attended, though I would have liked to go to Alan Cox's talk) where around 25 people joined the party. It's called a party as normally you would expect to drink and chat when doing a keysigning party, but I only once had a real keysigning PARTY... As I wanted to see the differences between stargirl's talks I saw 'Women and Open Source'. As I expected the content was very similar, but I was surprised to see also Naima talking. As I don't like presentations in the dark (way too easy to fall asleep), I appreciated that their talk was with the lights on ;-) Last, but not least I went to jvw's QA talk [2], apart from leaving via the Embedded Developers Room (as I could get a lift to Leuven where I packed and left to go home).
So, to conclude it was a very tiresome, but pleasant event. The thing I liked the most was meeting different people (especially the ones I only knew from IRC/mail), though I'm a shy person.
Cheers
Luk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux)
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