Pierro’s Spot

Fosdem 2010 is over and indeed I had the time of my life.

It was nice to be back this year and I noticed that some things changed. As a matter of fact we (as FedoraProject) were informed that this year we could not have our dedicated Dev Room but instead we were given a Distributions Room in which we should do some combined presentations with other Distros. At first we were a little puzzled. I mean, ok we need to collaborate but on what and with who?

Anastasis and me hanging around :)

Some initial thoughts came up (on combined presentations with CentOS, or SuSE etc) but soon we realized that this year gonna be a “trial and error” year for that room so we kinda improvised a little bit and go for it like the other distros did. I guess the result was pretty good, taking into account that we never had such thing before. Many people got to know how other projects worked and I think that little bit of cross distro collaboration (like the excellent round-table that we had) next year would be just great.

On the rest of the event, I got to meet the Mozilla team and I am very happy about that. That’s because I want to throw a nice presentation on Mozilla Labs on Fosscomm 2010 so I was excited to attend almost any talk on Mozilla Room.

On Fedora Booth we had everything just right. We had the right attitude, the right persons and some nice newcomers (like Andreas and Anastasis). Next year it will be my personal goal for FOSDEM to have more and diverse swag for the Fedora booth.

Some of our swag

Finally, I managed to watch Super Bowl for my very first time live! Thanks to Max, we had the final reservation on a pub showing the game live. I had some REALLY great time (Thanks Max!) and I can’t wait to see a SuperBowl again!

Overally FOSDEM was once again a great exprerience and I am starting to believe that I should attend every FOSDEM from now on…

After a long Friday, that included travelling Athens to Brussels, sightseeing and finally drinking beers on Delerium, I was on the “misfortune” to sleep with Christos and Vangelis (good friends of mine) with lots of snoring (I guess i was  snoring too )

Day 1 started early,waking up in 7am to prepare ourselves for the first Day of FOSDEM. We (as the fedora team) was the first one to set up a booth, which arguably was the best one for the first day

The talks started, and I was happy enough to get informed by Robert Hughes on ICC profiles management and GNOME. If all those fabulous integrations are integrated in GNOME it would  certainly become a professional multimedia/art/studio platform (something that I desperately need )

Next one was Max Spevack with his talk on Fedora Governance. The talk was an excellent presentation of how things are decided in Fedora and what sets us apart from other projects. Knowing how things work on your project and trying to resolve decision and leader problems is what keeps a project running smoothly, and Max presented that to us in his own special way! (by chalkboard, waking up and down, graphical renderings of his thoughts etc) Always glad to hear a talk from Max

“Governments are not inspiring, people and ideas are” said Max on his talk. Couldn’t agree more.

Next one was a very entertaining and kinda funny presentation on HTLM 5 by Paul Rouget. I really like the clearness of the code

Finally it was time for Fedora again with a presentation on SpaceWalk by Marcus Moeller and Sandro Mathys which started with a brilliant showcase of SpaceWalk’s feature but unfortunatelly due to time constraints we weren’t able to see any hands-on testing and deployment

Now, in the end of they day, after hours talking on communities and projects I HAVE to sleep… See ya next day! (Still can’t believe I am in FOSDEM this year too )

So the time came! And we gathered up in Egalite Pub to celebrate the new Fedora 12 - Constantine. Thalia, Anastasis and myself arrived early to set the things up. Soon we were joined by the newcomer Pantelis

We did some testing on new features (mainly the ipv6 and connection sharing) and during those tests the first people started to come. At first I was afraid not many would show up, but fortunately I was mistaken.

Gathering Up!

Then it was time for the presentation! Thanks to the Belgian Ambassadors I was able to have good media on my hand to throw a really nice general presentation on Fedora Project and on Fedora 12 in specific. There were questions mainly on the new features and I though that some hands-on testing of them should be good.

Giving the presentation

For that reason we setup 2 laptops with F12 and we saw some Virtualization magic (nice flaw-management), the really nice new packageKit plug-in (although it needs some bug zapping-I’ve already filed the bug ), and other cool feature including some testing of the Moblin platform which is now proudly based on Fedora!

The time passed by so we got ready for the surprise of our party - the birthday cake!

Damn! We really enjoyed that cake

Many discussions followed and I am really happy with the support and respect everyone shows on Fedora Project. Some couple round of beers later and a nice dropout on a local restaurant and the night was done, leaving me (and I hope others too) with the can’t-wait-for-the-next-event feeling!

…

…

Thanks to Thalia we have some really nice photo album from the event here !

I guess she is becoming a nice photographer with her new camera

Many thanks to all who attended and made this event happen. See ya on the next one!

I am in the plane, returning back home (Athens). I recall the things that we have done during the last 2 days in Rheinfelden and I am amazed! They amount of things that can be organized-done by a bunch of people given a small amount of time and specific goals, is just impressive! We managed to have all our discussions (noted in our agenda) on schedule and even discuss on topics brought up, out of the agenda

One such topic was the “merit badge” idea! Instead of having a t-shirt or something (apparel) distinctive for each Fedora Team whouldn’t it be nice to have a generic polo shirt (Fedora Contributor) and then put badges on it depending on the team that you participate ? This way you can show the involvement that you have in Fedora right-away! We can even have regional badges for every region of the world (NA,EMEA,LATAM,APAC). The other participands of FAD EMEA liked the idea so I’ll contact the Art Team in order to discuss it further and possible put it in motion! Please leave some feedback on that so we can have multiple opinions

Maybe Fedora ones?

For the last dinner in Rheinfelden we went in a nice Italian restaurant to relax from the tension of the day. Max was kind enough to explain me some USA sports issues :)  Afterwards we all slept like woods (thats a Greek phrase ) except from Max and Gerold cause Gerold had to give Max a ride to the airport at 5:30 in the morning!!

Next morning, after waking up once again by the “4min bells” (!) we dropped by Gerold’s house for a morning calm session. Then Fabian, Yaakov and Jeroen were kind enough to join me lunching in Rheinfelden while I was waiting to catch my train back to Zurich Airport.

All things considered,  FAD EMEA was a wonderful experience for me as I got a real smell of what “organization” of a big project (like Fedora) means. Hopefully my addition to that was positive

Can’t wait for the next Major Fedora Event in Europe, possibly FOSDEM in Feb 2010 !

After a smooth ride to Rheinfleden (air-plane-train) on Friday, I ended up in Gerold’s house with the other Fedora EMEA team and Max (visiting us from USA). We had a night talk on next day’s agenda and some minor things and then we were dragged into a conversation on legal issues for using Fedora logo and name regionally. Gerold’s wife was kind enough to cook us dinner (a wonderful local pizza-like thing :O ) !

Later night, we ended up in the castle, in witch we will sleep the next two days (kinda creepy ).

In the morning we were woke up by  the castle’s chapel bells ringing for 4 minutes! After a quick breakfast we ended up at Gerold’s living room once again and the sessions started!

We discussed on what and how we need things from Red Hat (especially on shipping etc) and then it was my time to present the Greek Community and the Fedora Coffee event proposal. This will be an easily-organised minor news-update event (I said it in a phrase!) organised by a local Ambassador. More updates to come on this topic after next Friday (the first Demo Fedora Coffee in Athens). Then Joerg informed us on mentoring ambassadors processes and updates on this subject, just before the coffee-break happening just about now

More on the rest FAD EMEA 2009 tomorrow! Meanwhile feel free to join us in #fedora-fad @ Freenode