Fosdem:2010

FOSDEM 2010 will take place in Brussels, Belgium at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on 6/7 February, 2010.

What and Where is FOSDEM?

FOSDEM is probably the most developer-oriented European Free and Open Source conference. It is taking place in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February 2010. Apart from having many invited speakers, the conference offers developer rooms, stands and lightning talks to projects from the Free and Open Source community. More info...

FOSDEM will take place at the ULB Campus Solbosh.

ULB Campus Solbosh
Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 50
1050 Bruxelles
(see map)

Registration

All participants who receive an official invitation for sponsorship by Mozilla will be eligible for sponsorship. The invitation email will contain a link pointing to an online registration form. Invited participants who have not registered will not be sponsored.

Mozilla DevRoom

Every year Mozilla developers and contributors have a dedicated room (ie. Mozilla DevRoom) for the 2 days, in which to hold talks and sessions.

This year, Mozilla will have :

• room H.1301 on Sat 6th from 13:00 to 19:00 and on Sun 7th from 09:00 to 17:00,
• a video projector (with VGA cable)
• power (C/E plugs)
• wired (RJ-45) network with Internet access at the speaker's desk,
• best-effort shared wireless Internet access (a and b),
• publication of the schedule on the FOSDEM website, including speaker bios and talk abstracts.

Schedule

You can find the schedule grid here. If you have any questions about it, please contact one of the members of the programme committee, this year made up of Axel Hecht, Brian King, Gerv Markham and William Quiviger.

There is still some slots for lightning talks, so if you'd like to submit a talk proposal, you're more than welcome to! Just add your name and topic on the lightning talks page.

Mozilla Booth

There will be a booth manned by Mozilla volunteers in the main conference building. The goal is two-fold:
1) to evangelize and answer questions
2) distribute merchandise.

If you would like to volunteer to help man the booth, make sure to sign-up in the chart below. In general, if you notice that someone has been at the stand for a while, please don't hesitate to switch places with him/her!

Saturday

Hours	Name
10h00	William (Mozilla) - Tomcat (Mozilla)
11h00	Bogo (Mozilla Bulgaria) - Seth B. (Mozilla)
12h00	Tomcat (Mozilla) - Irina (Mozilla)
13h00	Patrick (Mozilla) - Seth B. (Mozilla)
14h00	Seth B. (Mozilla) - Gandalf (Mozilla)
15h00	Tomcat (Mozilla) - Gorjan (Mozilla Macedonia)
16h00	Tomcat (Mozilla) - Patrick (Mozilla)
17h00	Patrick (Mozilla) - Gorjan (Mozilla Macedonia)

Sunday

Hours	Name
09h00	Bogo (Mozilla Bulgaria)
10h00	Kerim (Mozilla Bosnia and Herzegovina)
11h00	Gorjan (Mozilla Macedonia)
12h00	Irina (Mozilla) - Gandalf (Mozilla)
13h00	Irina (Mozilla) - Kerim (Mozilla Bosnia and Herzegovina)
14h00	Seth B. (Mozilla)
15h00	Flore (Frenchmozilla)
16h00	Flore (Frenchmozilla)
17h00	Tim Babych (Mozilla Ukraine)

chewey - I haven't looked too closely at the talks schedule yet, but there certainly will be some slots where I'm free for the booth. Consider me QoS backup ;-)

Food, Beverages, and Saturday evening party

Breakfast will be served for all sponsored Mozilla participants who are staying in one of the two three hotels Mozilla has secured for the event.

Any other food or drink expenses (including room service and in-room minibar charges and lunch at FOSDEM) are at the expense of the attendee.

A dinner for Mozilla participants will be organized on Saturday, 6 February. the dinner will be followed by free bowling and laser-tag. The details of the event will be sent to all sponsored participants. NB: all sponsored Mozilla participants at FOSDEM 2010 are automatically signed up for the dinner and bowling/laser-tag but non-sponsored Mozillians can all sign-up to attend, provided there is still space. Room capacity = 120 people max.

Update, pleas sign up for bowling and laser tag if you are on the dinner list :
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fosdem:2010/Saturday_dinner/bowling_signup
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fosdem:2010/Saturday_dinner/lasertag_signup

Friday Beer Event

As every year, there will be a FOSDEM beer event on Friday night before FOSDEM.

http://fosdem.org/2010/beerevent

FOSDEM's site indicates that if stopped by security, you need to give the code: "FOSDEM3" to prove that you are for the reserved FOSDEM party (or even better, print their beer page).

Mozilla staff will be distributing FREE beer tokens to sponsored participants. You'll recognize them by the orange "I Support the Open Web" bracelets they'll be wearing on their right wrist.

Getting Around in Brussels (MAP)

All sponsored Mozilla participants will receive a 3-Day travel pass in their hotel welcome pack (subject to availability - it could be that we've run out of them when you ask for one). If you haven't received one, contact William to see if you can get one. Mozilla cannot guarantee that you will have one.

On the day of validation, this pass allows an unlimited number of journeys on the entire public transport network of the STIB (except for the NATO-Brussels Airport section of lines 11 and 12 and the Noctis night network).

A practical Google map is available with all the relevant spots for Mozillians during their stay in Brussels.

Traveling by air to Brussels

...the airport is less than 20 minutes from the city centre. From 6am till nearly midnight, the AIRPORT CITY EXPRESS train brings you to Midi, Central and North stations four times per hour. A one-way ticket costs 2,60 € second class and 3,90 € first class. The city express train is located in the basement (level -1) of the terminal building itself.

Traveling by train to Brussels

If you are traveling by train to Brussels, it is best for you to get off at the Central Station stop.

Hotels

Mozilla guests will normally be staying either at the Novotel Brussels Grand Place or the Novotel Toure Noire or the Hotel Atlas. Please note that sponsored Mozillians are asked to share rooms. If they wish to have a single room, they will be asked to pay for their room at the reception desk. For more info on room sharing, please contact William.

• Information how to reach your hotel from Central station is available here

Here are the hotel details :

Novotel Brussels Grand Place
120, rue du Marché Aux Herbes
1000 BRUSSELS
BELGIUM
Tel:  (+32)2/5143333
Fax :  (+32)2/5117723
E-mail:  H1030@accor.com
Nearest metro stop : Brussel Centraal
See website here

Novotel Brussels Centre Tour Noire
Rue de la Vierge Noire 32
1000 Bruxelles
Tel: +32.2.5055050
Fax: +32.2.5055000
Nearest metro stop : De Brouckere
See website here

Atlas Hotel
Rue du Vieux Marché aux Grains 30
1000 Bruxelles, Belgium
Tel: +32 2 502 60 06
Nearest metro: Bourse or Sainte-Catherine
See website here

Other accommodation options

For Mozillians who couldn't be sponsored, but will attend the event, there are local residents renting couches and private rooms for as little as $30. Also some have reviews.

WiFi

At Fosdem

At FOSDEM, a FREE WiFi network called "FOSDEM" will be very "strong" and there should not be any ambiguity about which network to use. Most 802.11 stacks will likely do the Right Thing[tm] automatically. :-)

At the NOVOTEL

For sponsored participants who are staying at a NOVOTEL hotel, WiFi access is available but it is very expensive.

If you ABSOLUTELY need WiFi access in your hotel room, please contact William (william at mozilla dot com) or at +33 6 26 05 17 84.

Getting from the Hotel to FOSDEM

It takes about 35 min from downtown Brussels to FOSDEM by public bus.

A detailed map of the ULB campus and of the FOSDEM entrance, can be found here : http://fosdem.org/2009/maps/campus

Detailed instructions on how to get there by public transportation can be found here : http://www.fosdem.org/2010/transportation

Leaving FOSDEM to leave Brussels

From Sunday afternoon till Sunday evening, FOSDEM will provide free transportation by bus from the conference site (ULB Campus Solbosch) to the Brussels-South railway station which has the best connections to Brussels Airport and neighboring countries.

More info soon...

Sponsorship for Travel and Accommodation

All travel and accommodation costs for participants who have received a personal email invitation by Mozilla Europe will be covered by Mozilla Europe. Please note that if you are sponsored by Mozilla, we strongly encourage you to share your room so that more Mozillians can be invited to participate at FOSDEM this year. If you do not wish to share your room, you will be asked to pay 50% of your room cost.

All invited participants will be staying at one of the above-mentionned hotels Mozilla has secured for the event. Emails containing detailed information on their hotel will be sent to all sponsored participants who have registered.

Sponsorship selection

All contributors of the Mozilla project are encouraged to attend FOSDEM, and many do. Mozilla would love to sponsor all of those who go. Unfortunately, our budget is limited. Therefore, a small group of Mozilla veterans run a selection process based on many criteria, including:

• proximity to Brussels (i.e. if you live very far from Brussels, you're more likely to be sponsored than if you live nearby)
• sponsorship for past Mozilla events (i.e. if you've never been sponsored to attend a Mozilla event before, you're more likely to be sponsored)
• whether you are speaking in the Mozilla devroom
• level of activity in the past 6 months

Of course, some Mozillians who might have been sponsored last year will be a little frustrated that they are not sponsored this year. But one way to look at it is that if you aren't sponsored this time, it's more likely that you'll be sponsored for the next large Mozilla community event :) At the end of the day, the aim is to try to be as fair and inclusive as possible with the limited space and resources Mozilla has. We hope you will understand.

Reimbursement Policy for Travel

Sponsored pariticipants traveling by train will be asked to purchase their own tickets.

If you are sponsored by Mozilla and have purchased your own travel, please fill in the Mozilla Europe expense form and send it to William Quiviger (william at mozilla dot com). Also, please make sure to send William a scanned copy of ALL receipts relevant to your expense form.

Once their expense form has been received and reviewed, participants will get full reimbursement via wire transfer.

Contact Persons

If ever you need anything during your stay in Brussels, or if you need more information, please don't hesitate to contact:

William
william at mozilla dot com
(+33) 626 051 784

or

Irina
isandu at mozilla dot com
(+33) 673 757 884

IRC

We will set up the #FOSDEM Channel on irc.mozilla.org !

Streaming

Partial streaming from the MozDev Room will be done by Gorjan. Check it out on: http://bit.ly/cp26N2