FOSDEM

Going there with Dodji this week-end, I will do a talk on libxml2/libxslt in the Gnome room, and a speed talk on Gamin. The conference was already large last year but I'm hearing lot of people saying they are coming, I wonder how huge it is gonna be, I feel something absolutely crazy coming...

World Domination ?

In correlation with the growing size of FOSDEM I find interesting to see that the Gnome World map seems to balance heavilly toward Europe, while people used to oppose KDE/GNOME as being Europe/USA. But I must admit I feel frustrated seeing noone from the whole African continent, nor anybody from the China area (except William "bill" Brack which registered with his Hong-Kong coordinates.)

Is the European GNOME growth a side effect of GUADEC the main GNOME conference being done in Europe years after years ? What would it take to make conferences in China (volunteers, time and money :-\). How much companies beneficiting from Open Source are ready to spend to raise awareness of our projects in Asia and Africa. I wonder what would be the result of a few dedicated people doing in Beijing what the FOSDEM team did in Belgium for a few years. Probably something massive and an incredible return on a relatively low investment, who has the time, vision and money for this ?

Never underestimate the amount of work needed to build one of those conferences too, congratulations to all involved worldwide !