Practical information for Speakers
Dear FOSDEM speaker,
You receive this mail because you are scheduled to give a talk at FOSDEM 2009 in Brussels, 7 & 8 February 2009. This page contains some important practical info about the event.
Hotel booking
Here is the exact address of the hotel you will be sleeping at:
Novotel Brussels Off Grand' Place 120, rue du marché aux herbes B-1000 Brussels (Contact: Céline Snauwaert / Karin Stegeman) Tel: +32 2 500 3721If you encounter any issues at the hotel call Philip: +32 486 114 720
We will leave an envelope with more information at the hotel desk. When you arrive at the hotel, the receptionist should give it to you. If not, please ask for it.
The first thing to check is the hotel booking. The dates in the table below are the arrival and departure date & time to & from Novotel.
Most of you will be arriving at Novotel on the 6th and leave on the 9th of February. That means 3 nights have been booked (6->7 , 7->8, 8->9). Breakfast is included.
Extra reservations have also been made. You should get a separate mail if this is the case for you.
As a reminder, FOSDEM is reimbursing travel and hotel expenses for those 3 nights only.
Here is the list of the noted arrival dates and departure we have in our database
| name | arrival_date | departure_date | remark |
| Brion Vibber | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 09 | (null) |
| Steve Hardy | 2009 02 07 | 2009 02 08 | double room |
| Pieter Hintjens | No travel costs No hotel costs | ||
| Rob Savoye | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 09 | will be staying longer in belgium. They are taking care of their own hotel later |
| Martin Odersky | (null) | (null) | (null) |
| Max Spevack | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 08 | double room |
| Joe brockmeier | no hotel | ||
| bryan Ostergaard | (null) | (null) | (null) |
| H. Peter Anvin | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 09 | (null) |
| Theodore Ts'o | 2009 02 05 | 2009 02 10 | double room |
| Kris Kennaway | (null) | (null) | (null) |
| Leslie Hawthorn | 2009 02 04 | 2009 02 09 | double room |
| Bdale Garbee | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 09 | (null) |
| Mark Surman | Hotel with Mozillians | ||
| Simo Sorce | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 09 | (null) |
| Victor Stinner | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 08 | (null) |
| Matteo Meucci | (null) | (null) | (null) |
| Lenz Grimmer | 2009 02 06 | 2009 02 08 | |
| Scott James Remnant | no hotel booking and no travel costs | ||
| Matteo Meucci | 2009-02-07 | 2009-02-08 |
|
| Martin Odersky | 2009-02-06 |
2009-02-08 |
(null) means we don't have the information. An empty field means there is no need for a reservation.
Can you please confirm the booking is correct or let us know if it is not?
If you are not on the list, that means that no room has been booked for you!
Saturday evening dinner
We are organizing a dinner for FOSDEM speakers and staff and volunteers. There will be dishes that should please everyone, vegetarian or not. As a speaker you are allowed to bring a (single) friend but we will ask 25 EUR participation. Speakers and partners don't have to pay of course.
Please fill in this form to choose your meal: http://fosdem.org/speakers/dinner
Final deadline on 31 January
Schedule
The schedule has been published at http://fosdem.org/schedule If there is a problem, or a conflict, please let us know ASAP.
Transportation
How to get to the hotel by public transportation:
You have to take the train to "Bruxelles-Central" and walk to the hotel. It's just a one minute walk.
A map with the walk description.
How to get to the hotel by car:
There is no parking at the hotel, but there is a public parking next to the hotel. We will reimburse the parking cost of course, please keep all proofs of payments. The hotel address can be found at the top of this mail.
How to get from the hotel to FOSDEM:
We will arrange taxi cabs to bring you from the hotel to FOSDEM. Please ask the receptionist at the hotel to call the company "Taxi Verts" (they will have the number). In the envelope given to you at the time of arrival, you will find a taxi-cheque and detailed address information which you can give to the driver of the company "Taxi Verts" as payment.
Here is the address where FOSDEM is taking place:
Université Libre de Bruxelles Campus du Solbosch Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt 50 B-1050 Bruxelles
Practical information
Very important : we would like to maintain the schedule. There's nothing more annoying for speakers, visitors and organizers than a schedule that is not respected.
When arriving at the ULB/FOSDEM location please first go to the infodesk to announce you have arrived. It is important to keep track who is there or who is missing.
There will be a FOSDEM staff member in each room who will inform you when you only have 10 minutes left before your time is up. You have approximatively 50 minutes for the talk and Q&A. Each talk is followed by a 10 minute break to allow people to move from one room to another in order to attend another talk.
The beamers have a resolution of 1024x768, more not guaranteed. We might be able to test your laptop in combination with the beamer if you want (at lunch time for example), but please let us know at the Infodesk.
In case you encounter a problem, you can contact us by phone:
FOSDEM Infodesk : +32 (0)2 788 74 74
Finally, remember that this event is organized by volunteers, and is made possible thanks to the support of our sponsors, but also thanks to the numerous donators. We are doing our best to make of this event a success and we would like to thank you again for having accepted our invitation.
Thanks for coming!
The FOSDEM organization team.
The old mails
Bio
Could you please e-mail me :- Your bio (or a link to it)
- A picture of yourself (or a link to it)
- A short abstract of what you will talk about during FOSDEM
You should be able to find some more information about the event on our website: http://fosdem.org/2009/.
And for previous editions:
http://archive.fosdem.org/2008/ and
http://archive.fosdem.org/2007/
Travel/Plane/Visum
We are asking you to book your plane yourself. Don't forget that FOSDEM is a non-commercial and sponsored event, so please book your flights early in order to prevent too expensive flights.
Please keep your proof of payment. We will ask you to fax it to us after the event, as well as your bank account details, so that we can reimburse you.
If you're outside of Europe check the regulations concerning Visum for visiting Belgium. Contact us if you have problems or need some info
Hotel
We are managing the bookings of the hotel !
We are paying for bed and breakfast for up to three nights, ie Friday
night, Saturday night and Sunday night so that you can leave as late as
possible on Monday after a visit of Brussels. However, we absolutely
need you arrival and departure day and time. Without this information
we can't book the hotel for you.
If you already know this information you can already email it to us.
Here is the exact address of the hotel you will be sleeping at:
Novotel Brussels Off Grand' Place 120, rue du marché aux herbes B-1000 Brussels (Contact: Céline Snauwaert / Karin Stegeman) Tel: +32 2 500 3721If you encounter any issues at the hotel call Philip: +32 486 114 720
Talks and tutorials duration
Your talk will last 50 minutes, and will be followed by a 10 minutes break before the next talk in order to allow people to go to another room if they want to. We usually suggest 40 minutes talks, with 10 minutes of questions and answers.
All talks will be filmed and recorded under a Creative Commons License for later publishing on the internet. If you have any objection, please tell us before the event, so that we can take the appropriate action.
If you have not sent your abstract/picture/bio yet, please do not wait too long. This info will make your talk a lot more attractive to the visitors of our website.
Once we have a schedule we will inform you about this.
Interviews
Everyone of you will receive en e-mail asking to respond to a number of interview questions — you can expect it in the coming months.
We are asking you to answer those questions as soon
as you can. As you already know, FOSDEM is a sponsored event, and we do not conduct extensive marketing campaigns. FOSDEM is well-known thanks to the word-of-mouth, and interviews are a way for us to attract publicity.
Good quality interviews get published on various websites, helping spread the word about FOSDEM, but also about your project.
You will be notified when the interview is published, and you are encouraged to promote it on you project's website.
Slides
Many people are requesting the slides of the talks. Please mail us a URL pointing to the slides of your talk so that we can put them online after the event.
Sponsorship
If your company is sponsoring part of your trip (typically the plane and/or the hotel nights), please remind it to us in this e-mail.
Thank you again and don't hesitate to contact the staff during the event, or before it, if you have any questions.
You can contact Christophe Vandeplas by phone at +32 486 64 10 33, or e-mail us at any time if you have questions, or doubts.