Hi,
now it is the time of the year again where to ask your bosses, spouses,
yourselves whether you can come to Brussels in February 2011 to attend
FOSDEM!

FYI: I applied for an OpenEmbedded stand at 2011's FOSDEM. This
particular event, which is growing in size and importance every year,
will hopefully again be a nice place for bringing OE contributors and
those that are interested in the project together.

I tried hard to justify the need for a 2nd table this year. IMO the
description I gave them explains both the problems with to little and
reasons for extra space in a good way. We'll get notification about our
acceptance in the second week in december and I'll let the list know how
it worked out.
:)

*** a call to our downstream projects ****

I explicitly ask our many downstream projects to get in contact with us
if they won't be at the conference itself but still want to be present
through OE and our stand. I ask those who can reach the respective
persons from the downstream projects to forward this message (putting me
on CC would be nice).

For the records here is what I wrote into the forms of the stand request:

project description:
OpenEmbedded provides are build environment for cross-compiling,
packaging and creation of images for Linux-based embedded systems. The
project gained a foot-hold in the commercial embedded Linux industry but
is itself completely community- and volunteer-based. Popular projects
that use OpenEmbedded at its core are the yocto project, gumstix, Always
Innovating TouchBook, poky as well as Beagleboard/Pandaboard.

OpenEmbedded supports building software from a wide category of sections
and includes various popular programming languages such as C, C++, Perl,
Python, Java, Vala and more.

The project's technical advancement is governed by its Technical
Steering Commitee. The 'OpenEmbedded e.V.' represents the projects in
the legal field and allows easy communication with companies, other
legal bodies. Every OpenEmbedded contributor can become a member of the
foundation.

stand description:
The OpenEmbedded stand is manned by several long-term contributors of
the project. We will show the latest advancements in soft- and hardware
in the embedded Linux field that people working on the project have done
in spare time and/or work-time projects. The stand gives interested
individuals the possibilities to have good talks about all things
embedded, Linux and, of course, the OpenEmbedded project as well.

comments/remarks:
The OpenEmbedded project would be pleased to have the possibility to use
two tables this year. Attendances in the past years, to which we are
very grateful that we could be there, have shown, that having only one
table for all the delicate embedded devices (and their cabling) gives
nearly no room for leaflets, posters etc. Usually a bunch of people
gather around the devices leaving other no space to reach the table.
Being an important event, FOSDEM is often well attended by OpenEmbedded
contributors, so that we always have way more than 2 people being close
to the stands.
If the room and table situation permits we would kindly ask the FOSDEM
organisers for a seconds table this year.

Regards,
Robert Schuster