FOSDEM 2008

So the FOSDEM 2008 is now over. Writing down some experiences about it. First of all, there seemed to be a lot of people in there. Their broschyr said there will be 4000+ geeks at the place. But nobody was counting, so the number is just an estimation. However the place was crowded, some lectures was too full, people was just standing like sardines in can. There was space in some places too, but the most popular events was just nightmare.


Janson lecture room

Picked some interesting lectures, such as Clutter, integrating the Web into GTK+ with WebKit, Mozilla Mobile, tangoGPS lighting talk, among other full lectures and lightning talks (15 minutes time limit) which I was watching.

Also spent some time watching the stands. There was many Asus Eee PC's and OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) computers, as well as different embedded devices running free software, for example OpenEmbedded stand was interesting.


Eee PC


OLPC

It was not only strict business but also fun time, spending nice time at Friday Beer Event at Delirium cafe and GNOME Beer Party on Saturday. Had a change to talk to people in a relaxed environment. Somebody said that the real conference starts when people gets some beer.

But after all met some good people and changed thoughts, talked about different open source related stuff. And I was able to show my demo with FIC Neo1973. The demo itself was not impressive, it was just a Debian etch booting with working X, touch screen and Matchbox window manager. But what makes it great, is the time spent on that: only a single day. I'd probably talk more closely about it and about the progress in this blog.

But I was nice to be there! Thanks to the organizers, all speakers and people I met.