Hi Everyone
I am back and still in the process of recovering from FOSDEM last
weekend so wanted to post a quick update. After two years of being an
online conference due to the pandemic it was great to get back to an in
person event...and FOSDEM excels at being an in person event. I can't
begin to describe how great it felt to be back behind the booth talking
to people about the foundation and our projects. I saw so many familiar
faces of people who keep coming back to say Hello! One guy showed me an
ASF branded USB extender that I gave him a few years ago at FOSDEM for
helping me out with a Kibble demo...:-)
Now normally it rains in February. If there's one thing that seems
assured - it's rain at FOSDEM... well this time it was a little
different. I won't say it didn't rain (because it did) but not that
much. And even more unexpected was the sunshine ..Maybe the city
Brussels was happy to have an in person FOSDEM again too so put on some
good weather for us:-)
Our booth has usually been on the first floor of K block right at the
top of the stairs but this time we were given a new location. We were on
the ground floor on the left hand side along by the windows. We were
also near to one the entry / exit doors. Our position meant that people
had to pass by us to get in or out - so we got a lot of foot traffic.
The FOSDEM team grouped foundations linked to Community Advocacy
together so we were alongside OpenUK, FOSSASIA, Software Freedom
Conservancy. FSFE, FOSSASIA, Ecliipse Foundation etc.
On Saturday I arrived with the bag of swag to find a few people ready
and waiting to help out with setup. We quickly put up the banner (it
definitely needed two people!), blew up some balloons and got the booth
table covered in stickers (So much so that during the event people came
to take photos of our display). We kept telling people that this was
only a small selection of ASF projects. Even so - we did have requests
for stickers we didn't have (so they are on my list for next time). Also
we ran out of the HTTP Server stickers (everyone wanted a sticker of the
first ASF project). We ran out of stickers for Apache Maven, Apache
Kafka this time.
As well as stickers we gave away some balloons for the children (and
some adults too), cleaning cloths for glasses and screens, mugs, head
tubes, pens, small cable bags, key rings and mask extenders (as there
were a few people with masks). The cleaning cloths were very popular -
everyone wearing glasses seemed to want one.
For the things that we had limited supply of - we told people that to
get one would cost 'a good conversation' :-) So we had some really good
conversations - about projects, technology and I think even open source
software for space technology! This is one of the reasons that having a
booth presence is so good for outreach and general community building.
People also came to talk to us about other open source events that were
being organised that they hoped we or our communities might be
interested in participating in. One of these was the Open System Days
Croation Linux Users Conference who have a CFP open
https://www.dorscluc.org/call-for-speakers/. We also offered a free
meeting room for community meetups for any developers based in and
around Portugal.
We had people from different projects spend some time on the booth - so
special shoutout and huge thanks to Claude Warren, Matthew de
Detrich, Arnout Engelen, Myrle Krantz, Jarek Potiuk, Gilles Sadowski,
Johan Corveleyn, Jean-Frederic Clere, Herve Boutemy for helping out on
the booth. Thanks also to everyone that dropped by to say Hi and chat
-it was all fun.
There were rumours of 10000 attending people but nothing concrete.
Usually FOSDEM attracts over 8000 developers. Whatever the number there
seemed to be an endless stream of people, there were lots of people at
the foodcarts, on the first and second floors, walking to and from the
other buildings and going in and out of the talks. I understand that
many of the talks have been recorded so if you didn't make it then you
will still get a chance to see it. If you have never experienced FOSDEM
then I would encourage you to keep it on your radar and see if you can
make it to the next one.
Once again I would like to sincerely thank everyone that was involved in
helping out to make our participation at FOSDEM a success. Am already
looking forward to doing it all again next year if we get the chance.
Please feel free to respond with any of your FOSDEM experiences,
feedback, thoughts or general comments!
Thanks
Sharan
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