[Dfey-nw-discuss] address@hidden 2009

[Tim Dobson]

Hi there,
The dates for FOSDEM 2009, probably the biggest free software conference 
in Europe, have been announced.
By all accounts this is a good event and, though I think this may clash 
with me being abroad somewhere else, I am going to do my best to go to it.

The last time I looked, it was possible to get Ryanair flights from 
Manchester to Brussels for about 30-40 pounds return. Attendance of the 
conference itself is gratis (provided you register beforehand) and 
therefore I think it is entirely affordable for an event of such calibre.

Ideally, I guess booking flights needs to be done ASAP.

Tim.

-- Original Message--

Call for FOSDEM'09 participation


FOSDEM is probably the most developer-oriented Free and Opensource
conference, taking place in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8
February 2009. Apart from having many invited speakers, the conference
offers developer rooms, stands and lightning talks to projects from the
Free and Opensource community.
We hereby welcome proposals from projects to participate in organizing a
devroom, manning a stand or holding a lightning talk.

As every year, we have only a limited number of rooms, space for stands
and lightning talk slots. Since we always receive more requests than we
can host, a committee within the FOSDEM organizing team will review all
proposals. Selection will be based on possible impact, our experience of
previous editions and diversity in the offerings.


Devrooms

We offer large projects a devroom during the conference. A devroom is a
room in which projects can organize their own schedule made of
presentations, brainstorming and hacking sessions. Our goal is to
stimulate developer collaboration and cross-pollination between
projects, and as such we strongly favor projects with similar goals and
domains to host a devroom together.
See http://fosdem.org/2009/call_for_devrooms_and_stands

Stands

We offer stands to projects that want to present themselves to the
visitors in a more personal fashion. Stands can be used to share
information, demo software, sell merchandizing or give away goodies.
See http://fosdem.org/2009/call_for_devrooms_and_stands

Lightning talks

We offer lightning talks to all other projects that want to present
themselves. A lightning talk is a short talk in which a project can
introduce itself, talk about recent developments, or share exciting new
directions.
See http://fosdem.org/2009/call_for_lightningtalks


FOSDEM 2009 will be the 9th edition of the event, which has been
steadily growing every year in importance and in the number of visitors.
Our goal is to provide a platform to Free and Opensource projects to
meet, discuss, present their current and future developments, both to
their own developer  and user community as to other projects that are
present. Given the large amount of active contributors from many
different projects present during the conference, it is an exceptionally
well suited occasion to share goals and ideas with people from other
communities, which is something we strongly encourage and do our best to
support. Of course, the event only lives through the projects that take
part in it, and through the many FOSS contributors who attend. We merely
do our best to provide the best possible service to the FOSS community
at large.


Key dates:
2008-11-22: Deadline for devroom & stand requests
2008-11-24: Devroom & stand acceptance notification
2008-12-26: Deadline for lightning talk requests
2009-12-29: Lightning talk acceptance notification
2009-01-09: Deadline for final devroom & lightning talk schedules
2009-02-07 to 2009-02-08: FOSDEM 2009


For more information, visit http://fosdem.org/

Feel free to forward, kind regards,
The FOSDEM Team