FOSDEM2007: Switching Language Conflicts

Fosdem wasn't like any other events I've been. Perhaps because I speak both english and french ? At least alternating between english and french confused me and at the same time used a lot of my resources. :) Sometimes, I mixed english and french. But anyway, FOSDEM was different as it was more developer oriented. Visitors already knew what linux is and have a minimum knowledge of the different project present that weekened.

FOSDEM preparations are all described at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/FOSDEM2007

It was so crowded and the same time we were all busy I think.

Some (upstream) developers were roaming from booth to booth looking whether their own software (s) was/were included in the respective distributions.

We had the chance to meet some developers who wanted to make sure their product is being shipped by Fedora.

Among those I met personally were:
* gcompris
* kopete
* ProtoCAD

Some of Fedora Packagers did visit us at the booth, those I remember were:
* Niedermann, Hans Ulrich (terminus-font-*)
* Hans De Goede (we all know him)
* Johan Cwiklinski (kplash-moodin-engine)
* DenisLeroy
* TomTromey

Some of our visitors at the booth wanted to attend the presentations in our devroom, but simply couldn't for some reason or another. They requested that our slides be posted somewhere and handed me their email-addresses to contact them once I have the slides at a centralised place.

On Friday 23/02/2007, the journey started at 06:54 for me in Strasbourg. As usual, SNCF(french railway company) was on strike. Luckily the german train managed to leave Strasbourg with 10 minutes delay. GeroldKassube, JörgSimon, JensKühnel, AndreasRau and I had breakfast in Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe(Germany) is one of the beautiful city I've ever seen. I travelled with JörgSimon and the rest drove with GeroldKassube to Bruxelles(Belgium). JörgSimon and I chatted during the whole journey and happened to forget to play my audio cd :) Once we entered Bruxelles, DamienDurand sms'ed me saying that they were with MaxSpevack and others. We headed to where Francesco and I should sleep. Oh dear, it was awful. Afterwards we met the germans at their hotel and walked to the meeting place. Yes, we were late (one hour).

Once we all met in Le Roy. We discussed the usual Fedora Ambassador's status with MaxSpevack up till 17h00. TomCallaway was bored with our discussions :) DimitrisGlezos was just outstanding at that time pointing the actual facts and where we lack man power.


Afterwards we went to meet the Centos people with whom we had dinner. MaxSpevack, TomCallaway, DimitrisGlezos and his girlfriend weren't with us at that time. The Centos guys astonished me about their professional behaviour. They wanted to have technical chat with MaxSpevack and TomCallaway.

FOSDEM organizers were using Fedora on their machines for presenting the schedules of various presentations.

On Saturday 24/02/2007, the germans, DamienDurand, FrancescoUgolini and I started to prepare the booth as from 09h00.

MaxSpevack and others came with the dvds, t-shirts, flip-flops, pens and stickers. Those stickers didn't stay long on the table. Each fedora contributor present received one on the spot. The Froscon Organizer was presenting OLPC at the Fedora Booth, which attract a fair number of visitors who wanted:
* to see what it is.
* to try it.
* to ask more technical questions.
* ...

The Fedora French team brought some fedora flyers (in french). FOSDEM visitors spoke moslty german, english, dutch and french and those fedora flyers in french helped a lot.

At our booth, we had two or three papers sticked stating that Fedora Booth staffs spoke at least one of the following languages.
# English
# German
# French
# Dutch
# Italian
# Polish
# Slovak
# Czech

Visitors at the Fedora booths were asking and looking after their local fedora representatives to speak with them (him/her) in their native language. To what I noticed after any of such personal meetings, those visitors were ready : to
* donate a few euros,
* take a fedora dvd and
* willing to give Fedora a try.

This technique was a great marketing feature of the Fedora Ambassador Project which many visitors congratulated the effort and saw the localisation effort is even in the fedora distribution.

Another effective technique that we made use of at the booth was to keep only one item of each goodies on the table and the stock behind the booth. One DVD of each architecture were taped on the table so that when visitors wanted a DVD they had to request one from any booth staff and hence that particular booth staff would pinpoint to the donation box.

We (Fedora Booth Staffs) agreed not to put laptops at the booth but rather talked directly to people, visitors like this method since they wanted to know new features of fedora and what makes fedora so special.

Red Hat France brought couple of DVDs to our booth as well.

At 15h00, MaxSpevack and I did our presentation on "Introduction on Fedora". The complete schedule of Fedora talks/presentations is listed on the fedora wiki.


JensKühnel had his presentation on "Fedora Directory Server" at 17h00.

I have missed all other presentations on other projects. I met the OpenSuse folks with whom we scheduled a meeting (fedora-opensuse) at 12h00 on Sunday. Centos guys had also scheduled a meeting with Max and Tom on Sunday.

I also met some LUG of Strasbourg members whom I introduced them to MaxSpevack. We chatted a couple of minutes.

Saturday night, Fedora booth staffs headed to a local french restaurant. I know MaxSpevack has already described the night in his blog:)

Other blog posts on our activities that Saturday:
* Live From Fosdem
* FOSDEM 2007 KickOff & Pictures

On Sunday 25/02/2007, at 09h00 when we were setting the booth, I noticed that there were no fedora flip-flops left. Wow. MaxSpevack had his talk at 11h00 and it was hard to find any Fedora Booth staffs willing to stay at the booth at the time. Luckily TomCallaway stood up :)

At 12h00, we had our meeting with OpenSuse as planned. The main topics were Fedora HardWare databases and Packaging Guidelines. I couldn't wait till the end since ThomasCanniot needed my laptop for his presentation on "Introduction to the local organisation of Fedora French Users".

For some reason, the name DianaFong came in during his presentation:

I'm sure it's for her outstanding work. Likewise, names like MairinDuffy, BillNottingham and other hard working fedora contributors during some particular conversations were congratulated.

Many visitors congratulated the professional work at Fedora Booth. Among the key factors were:
* Polo-Shirts wore by many fedora ambassadors
* different languages spoken
* more in conversations than behind a screen
* well-decorated booth
* womens at the fedora booth

On sunday, my main task was to set up the "Fedora European Infrastructure". Compared to North America, here in Europe, each country has its own language. And it's hard to communicate to someone when it's not your language and english is not the language of both parties.

Initially, this barrier formed peer groups(french groups and others).

To overcome this barrier, I had to talk to each peer group separately in an appropriate language (english or french) and engaging talks on the "Fedora European Infrastructure". I listened to all groups.

DimitrisGlezos, BartCouvreur, DamienDurand and ThomasCanniot pointed during those discussions that fedora translations and documentation needs love. We managed to schedule a meeting with Max where they could talk in more details about their thoughts.

Unfortunately, I couldn't schedule a meeting with DamienDurand and PaulNasrat on the pending system-config-* bugs (RFE). PaulNasrat was also busy on his end.

Since JoergSimon(only one who didn't understand french in the room) assisted the Fedora French presentation of ThomasCanniot which ended to be entirely in French , however he engaged himself in breaking that barrier. We have now a group of european ambassadors more open and communicating.

I see this as a start for europe, but also this showed that having such meetings in real life ends in good relations, especially for the Fedora project.

The last FAD is a very good example and the result was this FOSDEM event(Hatrick #1), hence the above communication. I think Max and those present would agree with me.

The only sad story I could say about FOSDEM, I think is my fault during the FOSDEM event preparation was to put more importance on having Fedora Internals talks (like FAD) rather than having presentations only. My last talk on Fedora European which was for 30 minutes before BrynReeves could take over with SystemTap, showed how much Fedora Contributors present were ready to engage in serious discussions for the sole intention, get the job done!

With MirjamWaeckerlin's help, we have now a draft for our "Fedora European Infrastructure"

Centos and Fedora Booth staffs had great moments during FOSDEM and they are looking forward to work together again. OpenSuse Booth staffs were satisfied with our meeting and will be working with Fedora on certain fields. I wish that those fields would be transparent so that people will see that cooperation between distributions leads to progress.