FOSDEM

The way FOSDEM works is a little different from other conferences. Here's a list of good-to-knows:

• Entrance is free, but donations are welcome
• There is no subscription, just come to the campus and enjoy the conference
• It's a technical conference, don't expect marketing/sponsored-talks
• It's not a bad idea to make a list of must-see lectures beforehand. Check out the Main Tracks, Developer Rooms, Lightning Talks and Stands
• If you arrive on friday, check out our Beer Event
• When you arrive on the campus check out our infodesk. You'll get a free bag with some goodies and our information/schedule brochure with maps and other info

There are a lot more things to see during the conference like keysigning, LPI exams, food, drinks,... check out the links in the left menu.

We here over at FOSDEM headquarters can almost sense the typical atmosphere of a new fresh conference in the air around Brussels.

In the mean time, let's try to keep up with the main track speakers that we'll meet in exactly seven days.

Are you keeping up?

• Lenz Grimmer (MySQL High Availability Solutions)
• Scott James Remnant (Upstart)
• Mark Surman (freedom, openness and participation)

We hope you're hungry for more...

Because here are some more speaker interviews:

• Leslie Hawthorn (Google Summer of Code)
• Brion Vibber (MediaWiki)
• Lenz Grimmer (MySQL High Availability Solutions)

Enjoy!

Another novelty for the FOSDEM 2009 edition: A free attended cloakroom (coatroom , coat checks)

From Sunday afternoon till Sunday evening, FOSDEM will provide free transportation by bus from the conference site (ULB Campus Solbosch) to the Brussels-South railway station which has the best connections to Brussels Airport and neighboring countries.

If you want to participate in the FOSDEM 2009 PGP Key Signing Party, you must submit your public key before Thursday evening 2009-01-29 20:00 UTC.

See here and here for further details and how to submit your key.

We're a bit later than last year to announce it, but just like previous editions we have collected a list of interesting interviews with our main track speakers.

To get up to speed with the various topics discussed in the main track talks, you can start with the following articles:

• Rob Savoye (Gnash)
• Martin Odersky (Scala)
• Pieter Hintjens (OpenAMQ)
• Victor Stinner (Fusil)
• Simo Sorce (FreeIPA v2)
• Max Spevack (Fedora)

UPDATE 27/01/2009: Sorry, the maximum number of people has been reached. The 'Bring your partner' experiment has been way more successful than anticipated. We'll certainly try to offer more capacity next year.
The register form is now disabled.

Spouses/partners: enjoy a free guided tour of Brussels while your favourite geek attends FOSDEM!

FOSDEM hires professional guides for both afternoons of FOSDEM. One afternoon to show the well-known sights, and one afternoon to give an overview of the neighbourhoods of the city. The free tours start and end on the campus, and we make sure the sunday tour is back at 4pm.
SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE NOW CLOSED

Finally, all the Developer Room schedules have been sent and transposed to our site. Those schedules are defined, managed and held by FOSS projects themselves, with FOSDEM providing the infrastructure.

All in all, we're now at a whopping score of 263 talks (not counting welcome talks nor LPI exam sessions) that are being scheduled over the weekend, in 20 rooms (in parallel), with 258 speakers.

In addition to the Main Tracks, the Lightning Talks and the LPI exams, head over to the Developer Room schedules to take your pick !

Note that, in order to make those difficult decisions somewhat easier, the individual session pages in the schedule now also provide a list of other sessions that are being held at the same time.

Less than 2 weeks until FOSDEM, time flies indeed. This year we'll have over 200 lectures and more than 5000 geeks, which means quite a lot of work.

That's why we're calling on you, our visitors, to lend a hand during the event and help us in making this edition another success. Even if you only have a couple of spare hours in between talks, don't be shy to grab this chance to become part of the team that "makes it happen".