Wow, it's been now nearly two weeks since I've first wanted to write this blog entry. I'm not really a blog addict, I guess.

FOSDEM is coming soon: it's on February 23-24. And of course, GNOME will be there. Last year, the GNOME presence at FOSDEM was really successful. Still, things were not perfect: there were not enough t-shirts and we had no stand, for example. Can we do better than last year? Well, we'll try :-)

Short story: if you want to talk in the GNOME devroom, if you want to help with a GNOME stand, or if you're interested in coming to say hello, please register on the wiki.

Registrations

We love to know who will attend the GNOME talks, and I guess people find it useful to know who they can meet at FOSDEM. That's why we ask people to register, but it's in no way mandatory. We'll provide nametags to registered people so you can know who you're talking to. Don't tell me it never happened to you to talk with someone you didn't know!

So far, 36 people have registered, which is already quite a lot considering that we didn't make a lot of noise.

GNOME Devroom

It's now a tradition: there will be a GNOME devroom at FOSDEM. We have six slots for talks on Saturday and nine slots on Sunday. The Sunday talks will be focused on topics that are of interest to GNOME and KDE people since this day will be dedicated to interaction between our two communities.

Right now, we have four proposals for talks, with two of them probably going to be on Sunday. This means we have still four empty slots for a talk. It's not too late! You can still propose a talk, and become a huge star at FOSDEM! See Christophe's mail to learn how to propose a talk.

GNOME Stand

Finally, we succeeded in getting a stand for GNOME. It'll be a good place to discuss about the desktop, the platform, the past, the future, and everything related (or not) to GNOME. The GNOME Events Box will be there, so we'll be able to showcase our favorite applications. There will also be goodies (t-shirts, badges, stickers, maybe more?) to sell or give. I don't know how it will turn out, but it might well be that it will be the second best place to be in FOSDEM (behind our devroom, of course).

But for this stand to be a real success, we need volunteers to animate it. So far, we have three volunteers, who are all from GNOME-NL. Come on, where are you, all Belgian, French and German GNOME lovers? Brussels is not far away, and we need you! We can't ask people to stay at our stand during the whole FOSDEM, so clearly more volunteers are welcome. If you want to help with the stand, register here!

We'll have badges, stickers and t-shirts. We'll have many badges and stickers yet (if you think you're good at guessing how many would be needed, please comment: right now, the plan is 1000 and 500), and we're aiming at 200 t-shirts. Badges and stickers will most probably be free and the t-shirts will be sold €5 for Foundation members and €10 for everybody else. Thanks to the Foundation for sponsoring all this! If we still have some badges, stickers or t-shirts at the end of FOSDEM, we'll probably give them to the local groups that are present to share the love with other countries.

If you can think of ideas to help have an even better stand, share them with us! People should feel free to bring some internet tablets, or other devices using GNOME Mobile, to . There are probably some cheap goodies that we could have too.

What else?

We're not satisfied with a devroom and a stand. We want more. But what is more? (I can hear people replying less...)

First, we'd love to have a small event on Saturday evening. Looking at the list of registered people, 14 persons would be interested in such an event. And I expect this number to grow. For this to happen, though, we need someone to find a good place to drink and to organize the event. It's not hard, really, but it requires knowing a bit Brussels :-) Please contact me if you're interested in helping here.

Also, if I don't forget about the needed material, there will be a love wall to have people leave comments about our project (it was great last year). On Saturday, there will also be a group photo (possibly with KDE people). And now I'm left wondering why we never have group photo in other events...

That's all for now. All ideas to improve our presence is welcome. Really. I'm pretty sure all of what I just described are only the basic things, and we can do much more interested things. With more people helping, it can only be better! So, go to the wiki page, discuss about all this, leave comments, send mails, blog about it. And come!

Je parle rarement de mon travail/mes études (déjà que j'écris peu de billets, alors bon, hein ;-)), mais s'il y a une occasion pour laquelle je dois le faire, c'est celle-ci : j'ai soutenu ma thèse mercredi dernier. Et voilà, ça y est, je suis maintenant un adulte^Wdocteur. Certains prétendent que cette étape ne change rien, mais ils ont tort : c'est fou comme cela change la vie, comme on se sent puissant, intelligent, beau, aimé, magnifique, fantastique et admirable lorsqu'on est docteur. Si si, je vous assure. D'ailleurs, maintenant, je reçois du courrier de fans, je signe des autographes dans la rue, et je dois porter des lunettes de soleil à cause de tous les flashes d'appareils photo. J'ai même engagé des gardes du corps.

La soutenance en elle-même s'est bien déroulée. Je dois avouer qu'il y a trois ans, les choses auraient probablement été bien différentes : donner des cours et faire quelques présentations dans différentes conférences aident un peu à désensibiliser en ce qui concerne le stress. Et puis le jury a été plutôt sympa, avec aucune question particulièrement vicieuse. Au final, le plus dur aura été la préparation du pot. C'est aussi le plus important car c'est ce dont les gens se souviennent après quelques jours :-) La table vide semblait immense et difficile à remplir, mais il s'est avéré que la quantité était bien calibrée. Une petite fondue au chocolat, et la réserve invidable de bouteilles apportée par mon père ont marqué au moins quelques esprits. Donc une journée un peu longue, mais qui a avancé toute seule, sans accrocs. Et j'étais bien content d'avoir autant d'amis présents pour cet évènement (j'allais dire ce non-évènement...), mais aussi plein de petits messages amicaux. Je vous ai déjà parlé des autographes, photos et tout et tout ?

Après ces quelques jours mouvementés, j'ai enfin pu reprendre une petite vie calme et tranquille. Certes, il y a un peu de paperasseries et quelques petites affaires à régler, mais pouvoir à nouveau prendre le temps de ne rien faire est un luxe que je peux à nouveau apprécier. Et puis mine de rien, il va commencer à être temps de réfléchir au futur, comme, par exemple, trouver un travail. Il parait que cela peut être utile dans la vie.

Pour les quelques fous que cela peut intéresser, le manuscrit est en ligne. Le service après-vente est fermé, donc je n'accepte plus les commentaires sur les fautes, erreurs, stupidités et autres idioties que ces pages peuvent contenir. Bon, évidemment, les compliments seront toujours les bienvenus ;-)