Free your Speech

FOSDEM 2007 is over

I was quite nostalgic this year at FOSDEM. It is actually the 7th time that I was involved in the organization of the event. I still remember when Raphaël gave me a phone call to ask me if I could help him organizing the first edition back in 2001. We expected around 40 visitors, and we got around 700, as I was involved in the promotion of the event, I think it proves I did a good job. Since the first edition, FOSDEM has grown into the main annual meeting of Open Source developers in Europe. We expect having attracted more than 4 500 visitors this year.

However, organizing the event is getting easier with time. The team is now bigger than ever and motivated people are helping in all areas of the organization. This year, I was only involved in coordinating the main tracks program and advertising in various magazines (as well as negotiating free subscriptions for donators). Those are the 2 tasks that I wanted to continue doing.

Each year, I wonder if it will be my last FOSDEM as an organizer or not. I am still thinking, but it is very possible that I won’t take part to the organization of FOSDEM 2008. Every good thing has an end. However, I am a bit sad when I think about the possibility of leaving, so perhaps it is not the right moment yet…

Here is the FOSDEM dance I created when being very tired after one of the previous editions :

Ekiga 2.0.5

We just released the 2.0.5 incarnation of Ekiga. It is not a specifically important upgrade, it is however worth it.
We also did a call for volunteers to ask for help in various areas of the project. That way, the current developers can concentrate on the code aspects, while others are helping in other areas of the project. If somebody is interested, feel free to leave a comment.

FOSDEM

One week before FOSDEM. FOSDEM will just be another great opportunity to meet talented hackers. We already published interviews of several developers who will be giving talks during the event:
* Jim Gettys (One Laptop Per Child)
* Aleksey Bragin (ReactOS)
* Federico Mena Quintero (Gnome, Profiling desktop applications)
* Øyvind Kolås (GEGL)
* Kristian Høgsberg (AIGLX)
* Ronald G Minnich (LinuxBIOS)
* Peter Saint-Andre (Jabber)
* Kern Sibbald (Bacula)
* Andrew Morton (Linux kernel)
* Joe Hewitt (Firebug)
* Georg Greve (FSFE)
* Pieter Hintjens (FFII, software patents)
* Tom Baeyens (JBoss BPM)
* H. D. Moore (Metasploit)

Floris really did a great job in finding interesting questions and contacting each and every speaker in order to get their answers.

Life

Life has been hard the last few weeks. The amount of work to do at NOVACOM is impressive. It means less and less spare time for Ekiga, family, and life in general. Fortunately, this week-end, Jonita and me decided to go to the Belgian coast in order to get some fresh air (wind and rain too).