Le Delphinarium

Back from FOSDEM and once more the event was just… incredible. It was my second time there and although I am not a developer, it is still by far my favorite open source event of the year.

Why?

Many reasons actually. Very quickly, here are some of them:

• the atmosphere - freedom, hacking (software and anything else you can possibly imagine), fun, ...

• the people - open, intelligent, interesting, original, passionate, sharing, …

• the talks, either in rooms during sessions, at booths or in crowded hallways - just the best way to share and exchange ideas, to get really excited about a project and to be able to share that face to face with someone else, …

• Belgium beer - do I really need to explain?

And this year, getting to meet members from the WoMoz community just made it even better!

Women in Mozilla Unite! Starting on the left: Irina Sandu, Lukas Blakk, Mitchell Baker, Flore Allemandou, Delphine Lebédel, Mariana Benavidez Rodriguez, Christelle Thomas (Kinouchou), Barbara Hueppe, and Alina Mierlus (Photo Credits: Flore Allemandou, under CC-BY-NC-SA)

It was also a great occasion to meet members from different FLOSS communities and to talk and exchange ideas with other women present at the FOSDEM (btw there seemed to be more women this year than last year, and they seemed eager to talk with members from the WoMoz project which was a wonderful way to gather more feedback and suggestions)

Lukas Blakk sums up the week-end really well in her blog post here, which I definitely recommend reading if you wish to have a glimpse of what FOSDEM can represent and be like 

Thanks to the WoMoz morning sessions at FOSDEM we were able to draw a 2010 Roadmap for the project. Although it still needs some refinements and further development with the entire community, I think we can say that the main backbone of the roadmap has been defined.

You can find the notes from the sessions as well as the WoMoz Roadmap here.

(We are currently working on rebuilding the wiki so please don't be surprised if there are some weird display bugs - or whatever - during the upcoming days)

It was a wonderful experience and meeting in real life the people that I work with has just strengthened by feeling of cohesion with the community and with the project. It feels good and motivating and just makes me want to continue working within this community!

So again, a *humongous* thanks to all those that came and made this possible

Can't wait for FOSDEM 2011!

Debian Wine Bottles, kindly offered by Debian at the Mozilla booth (photo credits: me, under CC-BY-NC-SA)

Back of the Debian Wine Bottle: "Wine (...) has been known for centuries in many cultures as well as on IRC" (photo credits: Flore Allemandou, published under CC-BY-NC-SA)