There was laptop, hackers, beer. There was Fedora, LibreOffice, debian, perl. There was interesting talks, huge conferences, sleepy face.

There was Freedom.

It was FOSDEM:

Feedback on FOSDEM 2011

Retours sur le FOSDEM 2011

english version

This year was my fith FOSDEM, I started to go there in 2007 which happens to be the turn in my relationship with Fedora. In 2007 I met at FOSDEM a lot of great guys Thomas, Johan, Eddy33, Max, Pablo and many other. They made me what I am today, a contributor to Fedora, RPM packager, vice-president of the Fedora-Fr NPO. FOSDEM is for all those reasons a very special event for me.

This year again FOSDEM has been great. Thomas, Nicolas and I have met Jared and Max to speak about the French community and Fedora-Fr NPO. There has been some changes on Red Hat side regarding the Fedora trademark and it is our turn now to take it into account. I am glad we could speak face to face about this topic with Max and Jared. Face to face meeting is by far better than a long thread of email where emotion can so easily get involved. Thanks to Jared and Max to take time to discuss about this with us!

But FOSDEM is also a really good place to meet people. Over the last months I have been hanging around the Fedora-Java guys and I was really pleased to meet Stanislav and Alexander (although we realized that last year Alexander and I had been dinning at the same table). It was also nice to meet again Dodji with who we had a heat discussion git vs mercurial, Frederic present this year as always, Dimitri sorrry for your bag dude, Nicu and of course our two tunisian ambassadors who made it to Brussels which few days earlier was not something they were sure of.

I have not assisted to any conference this year (except the one from Stanislav on Java packaging) but it was really nice to meet you all guys !

I am already looking forward for next year, or maybe even the next EMEA FUDcon to see you all again!

french version

Cette année j'ai été à mon cinquième FOSDEM (à la suite!). Tout à commencé avec le FOSDEM de 2007 qui a été certainement le moment clé dans mon histoire avec Fedora. Cette année là j'y ai rencontré Thomas, Johan, Eddy33, Max, Pablo, et bien d'autre. Et c'est certainement grâce à eux que je suis là où je suis aujourd'hui, contributeur de Fedora, packager de RPM, vice-président de l'association Fedora-fr. C'est pour tout cela que le FOSDEM reste pour moi un évênement à part.

Cette année encore le FOSDEM a été vraiment bien. Thomas, Nicolas et moi avons pu rencontré Jared et Max pour parler de la communauté francophone et de l'association Fedora-fr. Il y a eu depuis une paire d'année des changements du côté de Red Hat par rapport à la marque Fedora et c'est maintenant notre tour d'être concerné par ces changements. Mais en parler en face à face avec Max et Jared est tellement plus productif et agréable qu'un long échange d'emails où l'on peut si facilement mal interpréter les intentions. Merci à Jared et Max pour avoir pris le temps de discuter de ça avec nous !

Le FOSDEM est aussi pour moi une occasion de rencontrer des gens. Cette année n'y a pas fait défaut. Ces derniers mois j'ai pas mal trainé avec les gars de fedora-java et ça a été un plaisir que de rencontrer Stanislav et Alexander (même si on c'est apperçut qu'en fait Alexander et moi avons diner à la même table l'année dernière). J'ai pu revoir aussi Dodji (avec qui il y a eu un gros trol git vs mercurial), Frederic toujours aussi fidèle au poste, Dimitri (désolé pour ton sac man), Nicu et bien sûr nos deux ambassadeurs tunisien qui ont pu faire le déplacement malgré les évênements politique récent.

Je n'ai assisté qu'à la conf de Stanislav sur le packaging Java mais je dois dire que ça été vraiment sympa de vous rencontrer tous.

J'ai déjà hâte d'être à l'année prochaine, ou peut être même au prochain FUDCon en Europe pour vous revoir tous !

I have been to FOSDEM today. This was a terrific moment. I first attend FOSDEM in February 2006. See the photo upwards. We were three on the booth. Today, I don’t even attend the booth to welcome people as it is very very crowded by Fedora Ambassadors. This is so great to see so many Fedora people at the same time. About my personal experience, FOSDEM is no conference day. 99% of them are much too difficult for me to understand as I am no developer at all. However, this is a great place to be to meet people and talk about how things are going inside the French Community.

So nearly as soon as I arrived, I met Frédéric Hornain, my first Belgium buddy I set up a booth with back in February 2006. Every year, I have a little chat with him. Today, I explained how my feelings were mixed inside the Fedora Project as a contributor. Actually, I feel sometimes tired about explaining the same things to people about Fedora again. I’m looking for another way to contribute inside the Project and certainly a place where I could avoid the very user base of the Project. Deeper inside translation and maybe inside some learning Project that I talk about later in this blog post.

Once I could reach the Fedora booth (wow, FOSDEM is even more crowded this year than it was last year!!) I met Dimitri Glezos and exchanged about our lives, about how good the Indifex company is. We were joined by Max Spevack and Jared Smith, who I first met today. It was a delight to see all of you at the same time. Jared, you’re right. We have to meet people to achieve a full circle of right communication. We decided to run a meeting with Pierre-Yves Chibon, vice-president of the French Fedora NPO and looked for Nicolas Chauvet to join us.

We discuss about the future of the French NPO. I’m glad to say that we are doing everything we can to be really back in business. The last two years were a bit confusing and slow pace unfortunately. I refuse to bear this again for the two upcoming years. Communication, again, is the key. Meeting Max and Jared was so good, that we dealt with all our topics in 40 minutes no more. At the end of the discussion, we talk about having Moodle inside the Fedora Project Moodle with Max and Jared and we were so excited about all this! I really want to help doing the right thing on this project. I just can’t wait for it.

We then decided it was time for lunch. We went to eat a very nice couscous in Brussels with some ambassadors, of whom two Tunisian ambassadors. I was very happy to meet them again and see they are safe after what they endured in their country few weeks ago. Guys, you really rock!!! I had a talk with Gerold Kassube which helped me understand the death of the Fedora EMEA e.V. NPO. Too bad it ended like this. During the meal, I listened to some very interesting conversation about “what does being an ambassador mean?”. Very hard question to answer, even 5 or 6 years after the creation of the first ambassador group by Alex Maier.

When we came back to the booth we tried to settle a money problem with the last CD order of the Tunisian guys. This is going to be solved very soon thanks to the good will of everybody and the French NPO. Glad it exists. Then I met up my former colleagues from Mageia, bought them a t-shirt and discussed how they are doing. I’m really looking forward testing the first ISO of this new distribution.

Finally, I had some quick talks again with Dimitris about how Transifex.net could save the Fedora Translation Project and how far we can delegate translation management in the hand of the community. These are really great stuff I’m looking forward to playing with. Just before I left, I met Pablo Martin-Gomez and we discussed about translation and again how Transifex.net seems to be the last valuable option we have to enjoy a workable translation environment that would not afraid people anymore.

I can’t wait for all these projects to get realised. I can’t wait for next year FOSDEM, to look back on what we have achieved in that friendship altogether. Thank you to all of you guys, you rock, see you next year!!

Back on FOSDEM 2010

La fin du FOSDEM 2010

English version

There we are, on the way back home.
These 2 days have been really nice, this event is attracting every year more and more people and covers more and more topics.

Today I have been able to attend 2 very interesting conferences. One from Richard Hughes on PackageKit one year after. It is a very good tool and the future of it, looks really nice. After that I stayed for the talk on 'Semantic Desktop' this being a technology that I have professionally interest in. The conferences covered a quick introduction to the basis of the semantic technology and format with a quick presentation of the RDF format, the second part was more applied to the implication of the semantic technology in the development of the 'Desktop Environment'. Unfortunately time was running I could not stay to this part.
I have to say that I would love to see more conference about this, but FOSDEM is probably not the best place for that. I should look for more semantic oriented conference.

Thanks to Max I am also carrying with me about 600 laptop stickers that the French NPO will be able to redistribute, thanks a lot Max !

Finally I would like to thanks all the people that made this FOSDEM such a good one, starting of course by the FOSDEM people and Frederic who organised the Fedora and JBoss participation this year again. Thanks to all the folks from Grece, Turkey, USA, The Netherlands (yes there were some, although not all were real Dutch), the German community present as ever, the French and Belgium guys who showed up but also our ambassadors from Switzerland, Hungary, Roumania, Italy (I am probably missing some, sorry about that).

I was nice to see all and I am already looking forward to see you next year.

PS: Nicu if you read this, since I could not pay you a beer today, let me know how to be sure you get one. I want the Fedora Comic back !! ;-)

On the road to FOSDEM 2010

Sur la route du FOSDEM 2010

English version

FOSDEM, for the third year in a row I am going to FOSDEM. I am looking forward to it, this year again it will be great I am sure ! I'd like to thanks Federic for all the work it did on organising this amazing event.

I have not looked deeply into the program yet all I know is that I will be giving the talk about the french speaking community and its NPO on saturday afternoon. I will also likely be hanging here and there, looking for people and likely give a hand to the booth. I already know that I need to find the debian maintainer of Guake ;-)

But first things first, first let's arrive to Brussels (I'm still in the train to) then find the hostel and this afternoon I'll be joinning the Fedora FAD.

To all of you who are going to the FOSDEM, see you later !

It's gonna be great ! I'm looking forward :)

French version

Cette année et pour la 3ème année consécutive je suis en route pour le FOSDEM. Cette année encore le FOSDEM s'annonce superbe. Frederic a fais un superbe boulot pour tout organisé, merci à lui !

Je n'ai pas encore étudier le programme des conférences mais je sais que je donnerai la présentation sur la communauté française de Fedora samedi après-midi. Le reste du temps je pense me promener, profiter des conférences et être un peu au stand sans doute. Je sais déjà que je dois trouver le mainteneur debian de Guake ;-)

Mais une chose après l'autre, d'abord arriver à Bruxelles, puis l'hotel et cette après-midi le FAD.

Je sent que ça va être génial ! J'ai hâte :)