Lately I seem to be blogging with an off by one error for conferences… This time I thought I’d blog about FISL 15 before taking my flight for Akademy 2014. ;-)
It’s been 7 years since I was last in Brazil, and it was for FISL as well. This year, I was very privileged to be an invited speaker. Since the conference was only two months away from our KDE Frameworks 5.0 release (I should blog about that too…), it looked like a perfect topic for the audience.
I won’t cover in great length the talk itself. As you might have noticed I’m not comfortable bragging… So again I’ll put the spotlight on the event and the people.
What I love about FISL is the energy you get from it. It puts you in a mood to push Free Software even further. If you ever end up in doubts regarding the progresses made by the Free Software community, I highly recommend you to go there, you’ll come back home motivated again.
This high level of motivation and enthusiasm shows in the people attending, in the behavior of the organizers and of course in the talks. I didn’t go for many of the talks as most were in portuguese (obviously). That said, if you look at the program the non technical tracks are mostly long streams of success stories in South America!
It is in particular just amazing to see how much the civil society is involved in the Free Software successes on that continent. One such stories celebrated during the conference was the sanction of the Marco Civil. It is a perfect example of very democratic actions. Those countries are not perfect of course (none are anyway), but as far as Free Software activism is concerned, we can learn a lot, we ought to look there for inspiration.
It is then no surprise to see activists like Jérémie Zimmermann or Sascha Meinrath at this event. They were both speakers, so I had the pleasure to spend time with both of them. I also could spend time with the organizers, Roberto Troian in particular who I probably annoyed a bit with my lost luggage (sorry!).
For me those moments immersed with such brillant and interesting people were the high point of the conference. Different cultures, different customs to the one I experience usually through Qt or KDE related events. It is always a good thing to be open to those. Also, a lot of singing was involved… definitely something we need more around KDE. :-)
Of course, I also got to spend some time with our local KDE team. They have interesting things to say too! For me the proofs were in the discussions over lunch and at least one of the talks from them that I attended. I hope to see more of the KDE Brazil crew at Akademy this year!