FOSDEM 2007

I was at FOSDEM last weekend and I liked it. There were loads of interesting talks in over a dozen tracks. Dev rooms, hacker's corner, booths with funny gadgets and interesting software, you name it :). A huge thank you to all the people that made this happen!

In hindsight, we should probably have announced some sort of informal freenode meeting so people would have been aware that some of us went there. It is a pity that we did not think of that beforehand, but I will try to make sure we let people know well in advance next time!

Still, a few of us staffers got together and did something unusual: Talk with our mouths, not with our hands. It was pretty neat to sit in front of people and talk to them :).

I met quite a few people which I have known for years but never seen before. By chance, I even slept in the same room as one of them. One thing I did was to more or less systematically was to ask people about their opinion of freenode. I have gotten lots of feedback, some good, some great, some bad, some worse. While it is always nice to hear that we are doing good and helping people do what they like to do, I have to admit that I was mainly interested in the negative things people had to say. I spent quite a bit of time clearing up a few misunderstandings and minor issues, which was a really good experience for everyone involved.

One thing which stood out a little bit, and which also is sadly true for this blog, is that, sometimes, people will complain, but not to us. Unless you talk to us, we can not help you fix your problems! So please, do use any means of communication you want and tell us what ails you.

I will write a tiny blog post right after this one, feel free to use it to get back to us :).