February 29, 2008
11:54
FOSDEM was great, and for me the coup de gras was meeting so many people from SUSE/Novell and the community. I was finally able to put faces to nicks, and also and speak to so many people about openSUSE/GNOME/KDE and generally just chew the cud (yes I did talk about Bongo too)
For me this was one of my main reasons for
going, in a modern age things can be detached somewhat and almost sterile due to the lack of real interaction. I met far too many people to mention them all without missing people out,
appologies. Suffice it to say Coolo is as grumpy in real life as he is on IRC 
(having a cold and missing out on birthday
goodies may have contributed).Seriously though, as a member of the community I am really impressed with the whole team's approach to things. They are completely approachable and want to help, they are full of suggestions and advice. There was no hint of a "them" and "us" attitude with regards to employees and community members which makes being a member oi the community so much better as you are made to feel an equal
I met up with Benjamin Weber and Francis Giannaros on Friday night amongst others and consumed many a pint. Poor Pascal Blesser was running around like the preverbial blue arsed fly making sure that everyone was satified, but he made a few minutes to talk; I had a great chat with Zonker about all sorts of topics over a cone of chips and a beer at lunch on Saturday, I spent much of my time at the booth trying to pimp the Geeko and get more people involved (not sure how effective I was but it was fun). The only talks I attended were those in the openSUSE Dev Room, and even then I managed to miss the one talk I really did want to attend due to doing my Lightning Talk. Timo Hoenig tried to help me get my Vaio running rather than strolling under openSUSE; Martin Lasarch helped me with some packaging (I'll mention the details shortly); spoke to the excellent speaker that is Michael Meeks about accessibility; and chatted with JP Rosevear and Michael Wolf about GNOME bits - Michael managed to get eeeSUSE working on the last day. Like I said there were so many people there that I genuinely can't remember everything I did. Sunday was spent in very much the same way, although I attended more talks in the openSAUNA room.
I was invited to dinner with the team at a nice little Moroccan place, JP and the others did invite me earlier but I was under express orders from the wife that my curfew was till 1900 and no more so I had to negotiate - it isn't everyday that you get invited to dinner by openSUSE and certainly not twice in a day
In a nutshell I would like to thank all those that were at FOSDEM. For those that want to join the community or are already part of the community, events like this are brilliant and really help you to see the goodness that is ahead of you.