FOSDEM was unbelievably exhausting this year. Being in charge of the OpenMoko application framework (which I had to talk about and attend way too many “business” meetings) and one of the founders of OpenEmbedded (which had a booth this year), my schedule just completely broke down: Of the 10 talks I wanted to see, I ended up in seeing just one and a half.

Then again, I met a whole lot of interesting people this year: The OpenEZX guys Stefan, Jan, and Daniel, Carl ‘Cairo’ Worth, David ‘OpenWengo’ Neary, Pedro, the Maemo team, OpenedHand, the tinymail author, Philippe De Swert, Lorn Potter, Knuth Irvin, Wim Delvaux, Liam Girdwood, Graeme Gregory,… to just name a few.

Unfortunately though I find myself returning with a severe headache and a cold — which makes me being sick at a frequency of three out of three times (=100%) after returning from a FOSDEM I’m afraid all the project and thesis defence pressure over the last couple of months starts to manifest. The good thing is if I manage to recover until Saturday, then I’m going to Austria for a one week vacation. And although I have some work to do, I’m sure I can relax a bit.

Anyway, back to FOSDEM, I’m looking forward to be there next year, however I really think they need to find a way to allocate more space. OpenEmbedded needs to get a larger booth (or perhaps a developer room), we need to get a larger room for the OpenMoko talk, and considering the Friday beer event, the upper floor at the Roy D’Espagne is no longer a viable option for so many people.