Last week-end, I was in Prague for FOSSCAMP, a Canonical-sponsor event aiming at bringing together people from various Free Software projects. Such an event is a very good idea, especially after the openssl debacle, where we saw how difficult it is to build good relationships with other Free Software projects.

The event was organized in a rather interesting way: the attendees make up the schedule as the event happens, by adding sessions to the timetable using marker pens on a whiteboard (see picture, hi Jorge!). If we have a spare BOF room at Debconf, it would be great to do the same thing: I always find it frustrating that many important discussions at Debconf happen outside BOFs/lectures, and are so easy to miss, simply because you submit talk proposals months before Debconf, so you can’t know yet what will be the hot stuff when Debconf finally arrives :-)

It was also interesting to see all the different ways people organized BOFs. It might be interesting to write a list of DOes and DON’T about BOFs (not that the sessions weren’t of good quality!). Does anyone know if such a list already exist?

And finally, as usual, it was great to meet all those people from this nice community again. If you still believe that some projects are fighting with each other, you need to attend such an event. And special thanks go to Ondřej Čertík for guiding me through a visit of Prague!