Fudcon is over…

This is now the time to pack our stuff and go back. My flight was cancelled because I was connecting in Chicago but I was lucky enough to call Air Canada and got a flight the same day, connecting in Toronto!

My luggages are completely full : 50lbs for my check-in and 20lbs for my carry-on! A big thank you to everyone that made it possible for me to bring back swags, media and the two beautiful vertical banners back for the Canadian Event Box. I will post pictures of them soon.

I had a very good time in the past 4 days at Fudcon. Meeting so many great people and talking about what passionate us is a dream come true. It will be hard to go back on talking on IRC and mailing list but at the same time, I think it will make the understanding easier. I was at the dinner with Jared (yes, it was me the French-Canadian ;)) and what he said is true, the need of meeting face-to-face is really important.

Seeing such a huge amount of passionate people gave me a big motivation push to continue my work on the Ambassadors and Packaging teams. What I hope is to distribute this motivation back during the following year to encourage more people to start contributing to the Fedora Project.

So, thanks to the Fedora Project for giving me the opportunity to meet a part of the community and the chance to make my own contribution! See you at the next Fudcon!

OLPC deployment in Gabon

Pass saturday, I met with the team that will go to Libreville in Gabon, Africa this month to deploy 110 XO laptops in a school. You can have more details about the project here : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCorps_LavalUniversity_Gabon.

The team launch a call for help to the local LUG for helping them be sure that everything is alright before they got there. They want to confirm that all the hardwares, softwares, procedures, etc are good and without error. The project team did a really good job and I think they are ready to go there but a validation before leaving is a great initiative.

What impress me is the answer they got from the community. In a short time, all the aspect of the project was covered! The project is heavily based on wireless architecture so a local group (http://www.zapquebec.org) jump in and offer their help to validate this part of the setup. For the software part (School Server, XO install, etc) and procedures, Rene and me will do the validation.

I was really impressed that many groups joined their efforts and gave their free time to help such a good project. I also like the impression we gave of our community to the project team. We often hear that the free softwares community is a place where people help each other. I am happy to have seen this in action and do my part.

Here is some photos of the school that will receive the XO :