I've just been to the keynotes from J, J & J, after which I went out for a smoke and meet with some people that just arrived for FUDcon...

It's amazing how little people know who's who, but then again these events are all about meeting people, and not just people you know already, of course. We already met a few people first night we were here, in the bar of the Sheraton which BTW is LOADED with Red Hat Summit attendees, visitors, speakers, etc - and most of the FUDCon people still have to arrive, I imagine.

Tonights plan is to go to Fenway Park, a baseball stadium even the baseball-ignorant Dutchmen know -that's how famous it is ;-) I'm curious whether just a badge (whether for FUDCon of for the Red Hat Summit) will get you inside as one of us, Jonathan Steffan, originally wanted to register for the Summit but didn't -now it turns out some of us do have all-access, like me being the European RHCE of the Year, he's about the only one without registration. Either way though, we'll be drinking beers and chat no matter whether we all get into Fenway Park ;-)

Another amazing thing is I'm about the only one in a Fedora Ambassador polo, some other people have Fedora shirts, and some more people (like, the rest) all have Red Hat T-shirts and caps and stuff.... I'd like to see that change when FUDCon really takes off; we'll have gotten everyone who pre-registered for FUDCon the Official FUDCon Boston 2008 T-shirt, so secretly I hope the amount of Red Hat vs. Fedora T-shirts goes 180 ;-))

LinuxTag 2008 is now over. I hope everyone got home OK, and got a chance to relax and rest a little.

I need to apologize for not keeping my promise; I was supposed to blog a little every day, but I didn't. There's no real excuse, but you gotta imagine these events are very busy -and exhausting. So many people to meet, so many people to talk to, so many things to pursue, so many talks to attend (and in my case give), so many patches to sources to enable giving out localized spins, so many beers.

On average, I think I had 3 hours of sleep a day -and so did many others. As there were 26 of us, give or take, you're never finished talking to all of your fellow Fedorians. Of course, alcohol was involved ;-) It was very nice to see everyone and meet some new faces.

My personal highlights for LinuxTag include the bathrobes, and especially the entrance we made at the LinuxNight Social Event. I think there was about 300 exhibitors, speakers and VIPs wondering how cool they were, and where they could get one - instead some of them asked us a few questions (Why? Isn't it hot? - no, it's cool!). I'm sure there's many, many pictures floating around the web that can give you a good impression.

Another highlight is, there was this one person at the booth whom I've met at last year's LinuxTag as well, and whom was using Revisor for all kinds of stuff. We talked a little about some brokenness that had been in Fedora 9 (the GUI wasn't starting) which luckily I had fixed already, and some of the use-cases he is trying to get done with Revisor. Long story short; he saw a bunch of Fedora T-Shirts go past us and he showed interest. I gave him one in his size and I got a "Linux Inside" coffee mug in return; Thanks again ;-)

I'll upload some photos I made when I'm back home.

We're 10 minutes away from entering the Ambassadors meeting so I'll keep it short. The flight was short (Amsterdam to Berlin Tegel). You take off and almost immediately start descending ;-) It was nice and smooth though. Going off to have a smoke, and enter the Ambassadors Meeting which will definitely involve a lot of talking about Fedora EMEA.

Only one day left before we all get together at LinuxTag in Berlin. I'm excited! I'm going to try to blog a little about LinuxTag every single day.

There's about 28 Fedora enthusiasts getting together at LinuxTag, which makes it the single largest event besides the official FUDCon's. Most of them I've already met in person, others I'll meet for the first time. It's always interesting to speak to someone in person and see what vision that someone has, what drives him within Fedora, and if I can help -or know someone that could help- to achieve these goals -even if just by talking, which I'd like to think helps someone get the idea he's not alone and can ask for help. Either way, it's still fun to share ideas, vision and ambition -preferably over a beer (or two).

LinuxTag is one of those events that gives you the chance to do just that. It spans 4 days, instead of the usual 2 or 3, and everyone arrives a day or so in advance, and leaves one day after the event is over. That makes it an exhausting event as well, but then again, who in Fedora ever gets tired of doing more with Fedora? It'll mostly be work and no play, but then again there isn't all that much difference between work and play when it concerns Fedora.

More coming up over the next few days!

Yesterday was an interesting day at FOSDEM. I've been working on pyJigdo mostly -in order to get the proposed feature for Fedora 9 done, and while I was doing so I attended talks (mostly in the Fedora/CentOS developers room). After FOSDEM (all work and no play :P), we went to a restaurant by lack of a conference in the Hotel we are staying, and founded Fedora EMEA. Greatly anticipated, now finally done. I've taken some pictures you can view at my Fedora Unity space. Announcements in all the proper places coming up soon.

Today I'll be helping someone with boot problems -I didn't have the correct Re-Spin DVD with me and he promised to come back today, but before I start doing that, I usually browse through my e-mail and then mark everything read, and while I was doing so, my eye catched the message from Max Spevack saying he was aggregating all the blogs and pictures about FOSDEM (I'll add this one), and I came across this blog post on his LiveJournal blog.

I love Filet Americain! I ate it Friday, and I ate it again yesterday. The waiter warned me -he must have learned his lesson last year, but I knew what I was getting ;-)

This second day at FOSDEM (or third actually) I'm going to meet up with z00dax from CentOS and talk/brainstorm a little about Revisor on Enterprise Linux 5 or recomposing and rebuilding in more general terms, and look into the future a little given that he knows a lot more of what is going to happen in EL6 then I do. It promises to be a very useful and educational sit-together for me at least ;-)

Later today Yaakov Nemoy and myself will look into Revisor and the Server/Client model we've been talking about that FUDCon in Raleigh and express some ideas based on the code we've seen so far. The good thing is, this will shape up as we move forward and we do not really have a design set in stone or anything. Just the general goals. We've promised to just get some ideas up on some white-board first, and then discuss which one would fit best for what we need right now, and then look into what would be best in the long-term. I'm sure we're gonna end up with a solid plan.

That's all for now, time for some coffee.

Coming in to Belgium yesterday, I noticed a huge difference with the Netherlands. A pretty important one too. If you don't bring enough cash with you, and you don't have any bank passes of one of the local banks, you'll find yourself unable to pay for a lot of things. If you want to buy a subway ticket, you either need change or an ATM card from one of the local banks. It just wouldn't accept my MasterCard, nor my Maestro card.

Anyway we arrived at the hotel around 14:00, en decided to hit the center and walk around for a while and get some chocolate and a charger for my phone, waiting for the rest of the Fedora Ambassadors and Developers to arrive. Brussels is a beautiful town but I'm amazed with what they did to it. On our way over from Central Station to the real center there's a dozen building sites; every street you walk through seems to have at least one. What are they doing? Other then that, Brussels is still very nice to just walk around and do nothing ;-)

At 18:00-ish, the others arrived and a little later we headed off for dinner. We didn't go to the BeerEvent but we had a good time anyway. There's lots to talk about on the pre-eve of Fedora EMEA, of course, and so we did. It's all going down today...

The booth is set up, a schedule has been made so that we're not swarming our own booth. I'm sitting in the general Hackers room right now as the Fedora Developers room isn't available yet. Check out the new posters, and other pictures More coming up! ;-)

It's... exciting. I've been to events before and I've definitely been to Brussels before -I've even been to events in Brussels. This is the first time I'm going to FOSDEM though, and with everything in place for the Fedora EMEA non-profit organization, I expect it to be a very busy event for all of us. Besides, I'm bringing Revisor with me as well as pyjigdo and a couple of Re-Spins and repositories; let's see how much work one can do in a weekend ;-)