The FOSDEM 2013 was a huge success and especially the Free Java room was a very interesting place to be. A report and pictures can be found in this blog.

FOSDEM needs you! Every year, the FOSDEM team is assisted by an enthusiastic team of volunteers to help out with various tasks and make the event a fun and safe place for all our visitors. Although we’ve become pretty good at organising a large conference, we’re a small team and can not be everywhere at once. Which is why we enlist volunteers from among our visitors every year.

Extra hands are especially welcome during buildup on Friday, starting at noon, and more so during cleanup on Sunday evening. In case you’re worried about missing lunch, free pizza will be provided for volunteers so nobody will have to go hungry.

A short overview of the tasks:

• Setting up the venue on Friday: this mostly involves carrying tables to their destination and setting them up, putting up signage, covering the walls in brown paper, …
• Deploying the network on Friday: rolling out, neatly securing and crimping UTP cables. People with experience crimping cables are very welcome to help out!
• Manning the infodesk: help out fellow visitors who have questions, sell T-shirts, … Must be a good English speaker, but if you know other languages besides that it certainly won’t hurt.
• Moderation: make sure all talks end on time by giving speakers cues near the end of their time slot. Keep an eye out on room security and report potential issues such as overcrowded rooms before it becomes an issue.
• Safety: keep an eye out for potentially hazardous situations such as patches of ice that could trip people up, overcrowded rooms, … This also involves barring entrance to rooms that are at full capacity so we can keep the conference safe for everyone. This can be combined with moderation.
• Teardown and cleanup on Sunday evening: collecting beer bottles, tear down the network, pull brown paper off the walls, take down the signage, stack the rental tables in neat heaps, broom the floors, …

If you would like to help out and give back to the community, please come join the ranks. You can do so by subscribing to the volunteers mailing list. This is where we will coordinate tasks so the event can run smoothly. We promise it’ll be fun!

In addition to general volunteer work, we are also looking for volunteers specifically to help out with video-related work. This involves:

• Operating a camera in one of the five rooms which will be recorded by the FOSDEM video team;
• Regulating the audio in one of the rooms;
• or operating the DVswitch station.

While A/V experience is of course always welcome, all that’s really needed is that you’re interested; on-the-job training will be provided.

People interested in helping out with the video team should subscribe to the video team mailing list before the event where important announcements will be made, and be prepared to join us on IRC during the event.

Note that it’s perfectly okay to subscribe (and volunteer) to both; just make sure to let the respective coordinators know when necessary.

https://fosdem.org/2013/news/2013-01-14-call-for-volunteers/

Coming Up – FOSDEM 2013 – http://fosdem.org – Don’t miss it!

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event that offers open source communities a place to meet, share ideas and collaborate. It is renowned for being highly developer-oriented and brings together 5000+ geeks from all over the world.
FOSDEM will take place in Brussels, Belgium on the 2nd and 3rd of February 2013.

We invite proposals for devrooms and main track talks:

Main Track Talks

The main tracks host high-quality seminars for a broad and technical audience. Every track is organized around a theme (security, kernel, collaboration, …). They are held in the two biggest auditoria and last 50 minutes. Each of the talks is given by a speaker who gets their travel and accommodation costs reimbursed.

To apply for a FOSDEM Main Track talk, visit call for main speakers.

To suggest a main track speaker that we should invite, mail program<>fosdem.org.

Devrooms

A devroom is a ‘developer room’ in which open source communities can organize their own schedule, made of presentations, brainstorming and hacking sessions. Our goal is to stimulate developer collaboration and cross-pollination between projects.

Each year we receive more requests than we can host. To better achieve our goals, preference will be given to *proposals involving multiple, collaborating projects*. Projects with similar goals/domains that make separate requests will be asked to co-organize a devroom under their common theme.

To propose organizing a devroom, visit call for devrooms.

Note! Linux distributions should apply to the dedicated distribution mini-conference.

Key Dates

• 1 October: deadline for devroom proposals
• mid October: devroom announcements
• 1 November: deadline main track proposals
• mid November: main track announcements
• 2 and 3 February: FOSDEM 2013

We would like to invite you to our next event on Thu, February 2nd 2012, 18:30 to 21:30 in Brussels, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Building Hermes, 4th floor, Room 4219. As usual, the session is in English and the entry is free (limited seats, please register). Give-aways: 2 Structure-Licenses.

This time, we have two very famous speakers with us, coming from the UK, right for you (and the FOSDEM ;):  Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg

All details about the session, speakers and the topic: http://wiki.brussels-jug.be/doku.php?id=events2:2012_02_session1

All this is possible due to our official JUG sponsors: CTS, Oracle, TRASYS Group, Megabanner.be and Structure 101.

The date of the FOSDEM 2012 edition has been announced: 4th and 5th of February 2012. As usual, the call for paper, lightning talks and dev rooms will be proclaimed soon, and will be over soon as well. Stay tuned on http://fosdem.org.

For this special event, two well know Java people will come to Brussels one day earlier to speak for us: Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg. So we have a long WE in perspective: JUG evening, FOSDEM beer event, FOSDEM conference :-)

More on this wave soon….

fosdem 2k11 – A film about FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting, by Jakub Szypulka.

The Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use of Free and Open Source software. FOSDEM is the biggest free and non-commercial event organized by and for the community. Its goal is to provide Free and Open Source developers a place to meet. No registration necessary. Participation and attendance is totally free, though the organization gratefully accepts donations and sponsorships.

The next edition takes place in Brussels, the 5th and 6th February 2011. Call for devroom and lightning talks still is open. And don’t forget, they need volunteers to run the event. So if you live in Brussels or nearby and you want to experience a great geeky weekend, join the troops :)

http://www.fosdem.org/2011/

The FOSDEM conference in Brussels was hold in February 2010, but as usual “Past the conference is ahead the conference”. Consequently: don’t forget to reserve a place in your calendar for the next FOSDEM (probably) in February 2011!

For all people wanting to get a retrospect of the FOSDEM 2010 conference, take a look at this:

Videos

• The official Youtube-Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fosdemtalks
• The official download page: http://video.fosdem.org/
• FOSDEM dance: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/02/the-fosdem-dance/
• Non-relational data persistence in Java using MongoDB: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOP3w-9Q6lU
• NoSQL Track on Parleys: http://www.parleys.com/#st=4&id=102745
• The 3D printer in action (not filmed at FOSDEM): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flTVtZ4wFvY
• NOSQL devroom, nr. 6: Benoît Chesnau: http://outerthought.org/blog/news/blog/357-OTC.html
• Android und der Linux-Kernel: http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Video-Android-und-der-Linux-Kernel
• FOSDEM 2010 Video – Women in Open Source: http://crashopensource.blogspot.com/2010/02/fosdem-2010-women-in-open-source-and.html
• A lot of impressions in one video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcb9rIfGD64

Photos

• http://picasaweb.google.com/ziade.tarek/Fosdem2010#
• http://picasaweb.google.com/outerthought/nosqldevroom#
• http://www.asipto.com/gallery/v/fosdem2010/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/45838639@N04/sets/72157623238657843/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/lfoppiano/sets/72157623426101136/

Blogs

• Small FOSDEM 2010 round up: http://pilhuhn.blogspot.com/2010/02/small-fosdem-2010-round-up-with-pics.html
• FOSDEM X: http://jimpurbrick.com/2010/02/10/fosdem-x/
• First impressions of a free software event in Brussels: http://ileriseviye.org/blog/?p=2884
• NoSQL and content management: http://blog.technologyofcontent.com/2010/02/nosql-and-content-management/
• Report from FOSDEM 2010: http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2010/02/fosdem_2010.html
• Womoz (Women & Mozilla) at FOSDEM 2010: http://www.womoz.org/blog/?p=287
• A small Fosdem wrapup: http://blog.worldofcoding.com/2010/02/small-fosdem-wrapup.html
• Impressions: http://nxadm.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/fosdem-2010-impressions/
• Vitrivi-Mente: Part I – Let’s Dance
• Vitrivi-Mente: Part II – Impressions
• Vitrivi-Mente: Part III – The two days
• Vitrivi-Mente: Retour d’un visiteur anonyme