FOSDEM 2008: Day one

Day one of FOSDEM 2008 has now ended, and almost everything seems to have gone fine from my end. Note, "fine" is not "perfect"; there were some issues.

  • Unfortunately, Lars fell ill, and couldn't make it. Shame; I was actually looking forward to meeting him again. Fortunately, Frans Pop offered to hold a replacement talk, and that talk went well, given the low amount of time he had to prepare it.
  • The Debian developer's room is now really too small. Last year, we were having issues with the room being too full to accomodate new attendees, but this was very much dependent on the actual talk going on; the room couldn't accomodate the audience for all the most popular talks, but in general there were no issues. In contrast, this year around I haven't yet seen the room not being too small.
  • The security staff sucks. Again, they kicked us out of the DevRoom before the agreed-upon time of 19:00. I'll need to remember that for next year, and not try to assign talks until the very last moment; perhaps stop by 18:45 or so...
  • The idea to let my hair grow to prove to Nattie that it's ugly that way seems to have failed to meet its purpose. Darn. This is the last time I'll come up with such a lousy excuse for allowing my hair to grow.
  • I've been slacking with things, and not following up on stuff people sent me mails about. As a result, I needed to fix some things at the last minute while the event was already underway. Silly me. Most things worked out nicely, however; and the booth—I think I shouldn't bother to make up a schedule anymore next year.

Nothing spectacularly problematic; and as for the last item, that can be easily fixed by introducing fresh blood in organizing the Debian side of FOSDEM next year. Not that I want to stop being involved, but at least not being the only one responsible might be sensible.

Other than that, no real issues, really. Well, except for one; I was so backlogged with everything that I had to postpone finishing my slides 'till the very last moment—half an hour ago. Ugh.

But, well. Great FOSDEM!