Last weekend the 9th Fosdem conference took place in Brussels. Fosdem is an annual free and non-commercial event for Free Software and Open Source developers. It traditionally gets started with the 'Beer Event' on Friday night. In a small alley of Brussels center all geeks come together to enjoy one of the 25 draft beers in the Delirium Cafe. After dropping the luggage at our hotel Guido Jansen, Marieke van der Tuin, Marijke Stuivenberg and Sander Potjer of JoomlaCommunity.eu went towards the bar to join the other Joomla folks, Alex Kempkens, Antonie de Wilde and Peter Martin. In a fully packed bar we finally succeeded to find them. After linking the usernames to our 'real' names nice Joomla stories were told, while drinking one of the good Belgian beers. It is always nice to met Joomla people in real life.

Saturday @ FOSDEM

After the good start on Friday night we had to set up the Joomla stand on Saturday morning at 9 o'clock, for some of us a bit early. In one of the corridors of the campus building we found the 'Joomla table' and pretty soon the Joomla banner was standing and the first laptops were running. We wouldn't have any internet connection before afternoon, so a number of local Joomla demo-sites were set up. The first few hours were fairly quiet, due to the keynote talks at that time. After the keynote talks it soon became busier in the corridors and more people with questions about Joomla showed up at the Joomla stand. These were quite variable, from the very basic "What is Joomla?" question to specific technical questions about the framework. 

Because of our large group, each of us could regularly visit one of the many lectures or dev rooms. The lectures are quite diverse, from real 'sales' talks to very technical explanation of open source projects. The "Lightning Talks" were also nice, a talk of max. 15 minutes on various topics, so you are able to see many projects in a short amount of time.

Around 7pm the first Fosdem day came to an end, and Damià Verger from Spain joined the group as-well. Thanks to a good tip Alex received we ended up in an great Italian restaurant near the hotel, so a very pleasant way to finish the day while eating pizzas, drinking beers and telling great stories.

Sunday @ FOSDEM

On Sunday the day started at 9am again. Today Drupal had one of the 'Dev Room' where lectures were held on this other well-known CMS. Dries Buytaert started this morning with a presentation about the new features in Drupal 7. Meanwhile the Joomla stand was less busier than on Saturday, so there was plenty of time for fun and thinking about the Dutch Joomla Days for example. 

Walking around the stands you noticed that the main focus of Fosdem is clearly on the open source operating systems and less on the open source software like Joomla. One of the ideas for next year is to see if several open source software projects could have a 'Dev Room' together, since the projects are too small for an own 'Dev Room'.

Around 5pm, the Fosdem weekend came to an end with a Keynote lecture of Leslie Hawthorn, with an enormous speed and enthusiasm she talked about 'Google Summer of Code: A Behind the Scenes Look at large Scale Community Management'. Great talk, especially for Marieke, she participated in the GHOP program in 2007. At the end Antonie, Marieke and Marijke have had dinner with Leslie. Guido, Peter and Sander received a lift of Laurens (Joomla community rocks!) to the railway station. A very nice and pleasant weekend came to an end. 

It was very nice to support the Joomla project in this way, and to met other Joomla users. Certainly join a Joomla event near your hometown if there is a possibility! Finally, I would like to thank Alex for organizing this great weekend.

Photos of Fosdem can be found on the flickr pages of Joomla http://www.flickr.com/groups/joomla/, the JoomlaCommunity.eu, Peter Martin and Alex Kempens.