Less than 24 hours ago, we arrived home from a great weekend in Brussels at FOSDEM (see the photos).
FOSDEM is an annual 2-day conference for free and open source software developers (or users, in many cases) in Brussels, Belgium. The conference programme describes the event as:

 4000+  GEEKS
  200+  LECTURES
     2  DAYS
     0  €

Yep, 0 €. That’s free and gratis! Which is rather impressive for such a big event.

My other half has been to FOSDEM a few times but this was only my second experience of Brussels geekery. Last year, I remember enjoying the weekend (we went with a lovely group of people) but apart from some specific talks (inc Jim Gettys on the OLPC, and a talk about the KDE documentation project), I wasn’t so blown away by the conference itself; my general memory is of being cold and tired.

So I wasn’t sure about going this year but in the end I did – if nothing else, it’d be a weekend in Brussels (which is a really lovely city) and good food and company. Which it was. *And* I enjoyed the conference itself!

As ever, I’m planning to write up some of the talks that I went to. As ever, I probably won’t (though I will try!). In the meantime, here’s what I saw:

• Tux with Shades, Linux in Hollywood
• How a large scale OSS project works
• Status updates on Software Patents
• OLPC Europe Kickstart Meeting
• Drupal theming
• Usability and Drupal
• Amazon WS with Drupal
• Free software in education
• Debian accessibility
• The long road to Debian Edu in main

As Tony says, none of the keynotes were that great; the Tux in Shades one, which I thought would be interesting, was particularly disappointing (though the guy seemed to know his stuff).

So, what was cool and uncool for me?

Cool	Not so cool
Knut Yrvin, who did the OSS in Education talk in the CrossDesktop developer room. Best presenter I saw.	Having two presenters for the Linux in Hollywood keynote. Unnecessary, pointless, and annoying.
Lots of OLPC laptops around!	Mine’s not arrived yet.
The green OLPC hand-crank.	Not being able to find the guy to get a closer look at the green hand-crank.
Good presentation on accessibility issues (Debian and accessibility talk) with explanation of how Braille output works.	Developers who don’t realise thatCommand Line != GUI with your eyes closed.
Yummy dinner and beer in the evenings.	Yucky burger and crappy coffee during the day.
Chatting to lovely Josette at the O’Reilly stand.	Impulse buying at the O’Reilly stand – as usual!
Tony’s phone worked abroad!	Vodafone website not updating my unbilled usage for 72 hours – still don’t know what it’s cost me!
Getting there and back in a group of about 12 people and losing only 1 of them.	Arguing over directions – as usual.