As I mentioned last week, I was lucky enough to get to go to FOSDEM last weekend and get to see what all the fuss has been about all these years. I’ve been hearing about FOSDEM for quite some time, but hadn’t had the chance to attend one until this year.

Obviously, I’ve been deprived. I’m not sure what the final turnout was — I’m not sure anyone knows what the final turnout was, since the event was free and there was no registration required for the event — but by the crowds in the halls of the ULB campus, I’d estimate it conservatively at several billion, give or take… actually the numbers I heard floating around were in the range of 4,000 attendees. I do know that Saturday’s crowd was enormous — and Sunday was slightly less packed, but we still had throngs of people at the openSUSE booth and through the halls.

One of the things that I look for in a conference is a good “hallway track” — which is to say, the conversations and meetings that happen outside the scheduled session tracks that you ostensibly attend a conference like FOSDEM for. Yes, the sessions at FOSDEM and other shows are often invaluable (and sometimes massive yawnfests, but that’s not usually the case) and you can learn a lot from a presentation, talk, or tutorial at a show.

However, the most valuable thing about shows, for me, is the opportunity to have actual in-person discussions with the people you typically only interact with via IM, IRC, email, or phone. Electronic communication is the backbone of our community, but it’s a lossy form of communication and a pale comparison to sitting down with one or more people and being able to have a good discussion.

And many a good discussion was had. I had a great time meeting and talking to openSUSE contributors, got a lot of great input about things we could do to promote openSUSE and grow its community, and have some ideas for shows in the future. (Also found out that I share a birthday with Coolo, who also celebrated his birthday at FOSDEM on Saturday.)

I took a few pictures at FOSDEM, but haven’t plopped them up on Flickr yet. However, Carlos is racking up an impressive number of links to FOSDEM pics at Flickr on his blog. (Sorry you didn’t get to attend this year, Carlos, maybe next year?) Also, check out Francis Giannaros’ post on FOSDEM and news.opensuse.org.

The only disappointment at the show, for me, is that I didn’t win anything in the FOSDEM drawing… but, I did come away with a spiffy FOSDEM t-shirt (because, you know, I didn’t have any t-shirts before…) and I’m satisfied knowing that my 25 Euros went to supporting FOSDEM. I still think it would have been more satisfying to have supported FOSDEM and have come away with a Nokia 810, but such is life.

To the FOSDEM organizers, congrats on a show well done. I can’t wait to attend next year.

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