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[ 21-11-2002 ]
A member zone is now available on the Fosdem site. This member zone gives you access to Forums, where you can ask questions, give answers, help, ... |
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[ 16-11-2002 ]
Feedback from Speakers at FOSDEM 2002
The FOSDEM 2002 was a great success for the visitors who came to learn more about well-known projects, to discover new things, ... We asked the speakers to give us some feedback about what they felt about the event, its organisation, the contents, the audience and so on.First of all, the most important question : did they enjoy their week-end ?
"Yes, I did enjoy it. Although it was low-key and carried out by amateurs (i.e. not people who do conferences for a living) it was very well organized and I thought eveything went well. From the reimbursement for my train ticket waiting for me at the hotel, to the marketing breadth of subjects covered and attendees attracted - I was very impressed." - DJ Adams
"I enjoyed it VERY MUCH!!" - David A. Wheeler
"It really was a great event. I did enjoy it a lot." - Gilles Fedak
"I really enjoyed coming to FOSDEM, and I hope I'll be there next year." - Matthias Brossard
As you may guess, nobody said "well, it was quiet boring, nothing interessant, no free stuffs" ... and as you saw, there were no booth from big companies; in fact, the only small stands were for O'Reilly, OpenBSD, FSF and Fosdem Info Team. Was it the key of its success ?
"The big key is that it was cheap. That attracted a lot of people who would not otherwise have come." - DJ Adams
"I think it's very successful. However, I think keeping attendence fees to zero or very low is more key to its success. Many OSS/FS developers don't get money from OSS/FS, and if their company doesn't sponsor it, it's hard to justify paying lots of money.This enabled many people who wouldn't be able to attend otherwise to attend.
As a presenter, I'm much happier if I got to speak to a larger audience-it meant that many more people heard my message. And I think for attendees, having so many like-minded people around gave it an electric feeling.
There were a few booths, including O'Reilly's, and I didn't mind them at all. More booths would be fine, AS LONG AS attending them is voluntary. Indeed, I think some companies might like bringing booths to FOSDEM specifically since they'd reach more people." - David A. Wheeler
"Imho, not really ;) I think it's more about session themes and speakers. But, it's clear Fosdem has quite a specific atmosphere." - Thierry Matusiak
"It's good that this doesn't distract the organisers; there's no harm in companies coming though - surely." - Michael Meeks
"Yes. I liked the more intimate feeling, being able to talk to people without the distraction of advertisements and companies trying to sell stuff." - Adam Fedor
"I'm not sure it's the key to its success, but it may participate to it.
Other ingredients important in the recipe:
"Yes, it was focused on developers who actually want to create free software, not just use it." - Richard Dale
Regarding the event, the speakers were very happy ... but don't think it's easy to convince someone to come and make a talk about his project. It has been a hard job to convince of one the FOSDEM core team member (Damien Sandras) to give a GnomeMeeting talk. So, how can we convince speakers to come ?
"It's fun, it's the real community, very friendly, and it's one way to give something back to the community at grass roots level. And Brussels is a wonderful city to visit :-)" - DJ Adams
"You meet a lot of interesting people, and also there are a lot of people there, so you are likely to get a fairly large audience." - Philip Hazel
"I was rather reluctant to come and speak at the conference, but it was a positive experience. The audience was really interested and prepared to do some thinking in order to follow my reasonings. That's very motivating for speakers." - Vincent Rijmen
"It is a good way to have your project shown to 100 developers. It is the best way to test (and clarify) YOUR proper knowledge. It's fun and organizers are nice." - Thierry Matusiak
"Meet lots of other developers - there are loads of hackers there." - Micheal Meeks
"It's a great way to get people excited about your work, show off the improvements you have been making and get new ideas from a diverse group of people." - Adam Fedor
"Difficult without knowing who I should convince, but some agruments:
Of course, speakers also followed other sessions depending of what they want to discover. All said FOSDEM 2002 was a great event, there are always things going wrong, so here is a short list of the positive and negative points regarding the event.
Positive:
Negative:
As you can read it, all the speakers really enjoyed their week-end. We're making our best to make FOSDEM 2003 better.
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[ 24-10-2002 ]
The tutorial sessions
For the third edition, we introduce something new : the tutorial sessions.
As you might guess, great speakers will come to make demonstration of their projects, explain the way to use it to have the best results, how to do and why.
There will be different kind of tutorials on various topics, like Gimp with Jakub 'Jimmac' Steiner and GnomeMeeting with Damien Sandras ... many others are planned, so stay tuned for more information.
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