» FOSDEM 2005 is over

FOSDEM 2005 is over and in my opinion, it was a huge success. I might be a bit biased though, as I'm part of the core staff ;) If you come across this post and if you've been there, please drop a comment or send me an e-mail with your impressions. Feedback is always nice, even if it's (positive) criticism. We know that everything wasn't perfect, as every year, but we really try very hard to do our best. It's a huge amount of work, especially this year as we had an additional building. Believe it or not, there were 140 talks in the developer rooms alone. Most issues were actually related to the wifi network not working properly all the time (or even not at all in some rooms) as well as not having enough schedules and information postered in the rooms (the latter definately being my fault). Obviously, there were several last-minute changes to the room assignments and to the schedules, but those kind of things happen and will continue to happen. I know that people kind of got a little lost in the AW1 building. Please take my word for it, we really tried to fix those issues during the week-end (I even had cramps on saturday evening from running around all day - I think I had my first little 5min break at around 14:00, starting to work at 08:00) but we've taken notes on the things to improve, and they will be in 2006, for sure. Next year we'll definately put the focus on keeping about the same size in terms of rooms, and then on fixing the issues we had this year. Fortunately, almost everyone copes well with the usual chaos at FOSDEM though and from the feedback I had until now, a vast majority of the visitors and project members really appreciated the event a lot, which is very encouraging to keep on doing it. As the entrance is free to everyone, we never have exact numbers for the visitors, but if we rely on last year where we estimated having hosted 2500 people during the week-end, then to me it would be something like 3500 to 4000 people for ths 2005 edition. That's a huge success for an event that's completely free and exclusively organized by people doing that in their spare time and for no cash. Many thanks go to the few sponsors, of course, to the people managing the developer rooms, but also to all the people who have come to FOSDEM and made this one of the most successful Free and Open Source Software events in Europe, if not in the world. As you might imagine, we're very proud of our baby and we'll definately do the very best FOSDEM that has ever been made, in 2006. I'd also like to thank the FIT people that were so dedicated and active during the whole week-end, they really did a great job. If anyone is willing to help us, feel free to contact me, because as we'll definately have even more people attending next year, any help is more than welcome. But please, if you do, then be prepared to be really committed to it because what we need is people we can really rely on. FOSDEM 2005 is over, let's start to prepare FOSDEM 2006 ;)