Life as a jet-setter
February 5, 2007 4:03 pm gnome, openwengo, workSolutions Linux
Last week I was in Paris for Solutions Linux all week – hobbling about on my sprained ankle, catching up with some cool people like Michael Meeks (with whom I profoundly disagree on some of the community-related stuff we discussed), Fred Crozat, Daniel Veillard, Dodji Seketeli and David Faure.
The dichotomy of Solutions Linux is the cohabitation of sleek professional commercial teams such as Novell (who undoubtedly paid a healthy six-figure sum for their presence at the show) and the Association Village – a bazaar-like environment which is kind of other-worldly. You can’t stand for two minutes at a commercial stand without someone coming up to you to bar-code scan your badge, and ask you if they can help you out. In the association village, you could probably stroll in, sit down, roll up a joint and make yourself at home in a stand without anyone asking you why you were there.
I went with a colleague, who said it was like walking off the main drag in Morocco and wandering into a market – “Did you notice”, he said, “that the smell changed when we came here?”
More travel
Next weekend, I will be travelling to LA for SCALE 5x – hopefully I will have some time to help Eitan with the GNOME stand aside from my presentation on the OpenWengo project and meeting other projects (which I really want to do).
I will also be trying my best to catch the first Ireland international to be played in the mythical Croke Park – kick-off at 8am local time in LA.
After that, I will be trekking off to Brussels to FOSDEM, where I will be giving a lightning talk on OpenWengo, and two presentations in the GNOME DevRoom – one on the promotion and marketing of GNOME, and a repeat of the presentation I gave in Brazil in November – attempting to explain how & why people get involved in free software.
From there, a short hop (via Paris) and I’ll be in San Francisco for eTel. It will be my first time in the Bay area, and I’m looking forward to meeting up with people I’ve only met online up until now. If anyone is interested in meeting up the week of the 27th of February, please drop me a line, and we’ll meet up.
