FOSDEM 2012

= Introduction = FOSDEM 2012 (the Free and Open Source Software Developers' Europe Meeting) will take place on Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium.

This year, as in previous years, the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) will have both a devroom and a promotional booth. Previous FOSDEM meetings have provided us with a good platform for raising the profile of XMPP and spreading knowledge of XMPP projects and initiatives throughout the open source community.

FOSDEM 2012 will be bracketed by Summit 11 on Friday, February 3 and Monday, February 6. This year, the Summit will be taking place just outside of Brussels at facilities kindly provided by Cisco. Head over to the Summit 11 page for more details.

= Getting involved in FOSDEM 2012 = The XSF needs your help to make FOSDEM a success. You can get involved in three ways:

Give a Devroom Talk
From 11:00 to 19:00 on Saturday (the 5th February) we'll have access to a devroom to host tutorials, demonstrations, presentations and "lightning talks". The XMPP devroom is usually very popular, attracting a large, technically literate audience (so no marketing fluff allowed!)...

If you want to see the sort of talks we've seen in the past, then head over the the pages for Summit 10/FOSDEM 2011, Summit 8/FOSDEM 2010 and Summit 6/FOSDEM 2009.

If you're interested in giving a talk, please introduce yourself on the summit mailing list.

As talk subjects are accepted they'll be inserted into the table below.

Help at the Real Time Lounge
This year, we have an enormous stand that needs filling with people! We're aiming to showcase exciting and inventive XMPP-based projects, and we need your help both to provide things to demo, and hang out answering questions from the crowd.

Also, please sign up for a shift at the lounge so that our hardworking volunteers can do things like eat lunch or catch some talks at the devroom! The lounge hours are 10:00-19:00 on Saturday and 10:00-17:00 on Sunday.

Demos
Here is a list of demo ideas:


 * « Salut à Toi »: multi-frontends XMPP Client. About, contact: Jérôme Poisson aka Goffi (email: [mailto:goffi@goffi.org goffi@goffi.org], jid: [xmpp:goffi@jabber.fr goffi@jabber.fr]). Note: I will be present at FOSDEM.


 * Real-time encrypted video between the Lounge and the Jitsi booth.


 * buddycloud: buddycloud is an open social network based on XMPP. We will be demoing the whole weekend and offering an install-a-thon on sunday. We will be hang out in the real time lounge the whole time, so just come by if you are interested or [mailto:frontdesk@buddycloud.com send us an email]


 * OpenOV In the past months we have integrated the Dutch Railways API into a PubSub. This resulted in a component (Python/SleekXMPP) where users can subscribe on and automatically receive events once there are changes on the track. For demonstration purposes we have build an HTTP frontend, so people could also use service discovery and getItems using REST if they prefer so. One of the webapps that was created was 42transit.com using BOSH and anonymous SASL login (eJabberd). More apps are being created, and the rail-only pubsub is now transformed in a multimodal, realtime transit API over XMPP. Contact: Stefan de Konink.


 * Plastique is a proof of concept web browser that exposes a set of simple primitives to the running web application via a simple JavaScript API, including concepts such as a federated identity based on your jid, "web presence", and notifications that can survive the tab being closed - or even a different browser being used on a different machine. Contact is [mailto:dave@cridland.net Dave Cridland], or [xmpp:dwd@dave.cridland.net Dave Cridland].


 * webinos is building a multi-device application platform for running and utilizing resources across a range of connected devices. Contact: Victor Klos.

Sponsor
It is traditional for the XSF to hold its annual dinner one evening after FOSDEM. This year, we've moved from Sunday to Saturday, and we'll have a bus leave from FOSDEM to take us. We always aim to make the dinner - including drinks - free to XSF members. Sponsorship from individuals or organisations to help reduce the costs to attendees is always appreciated. As sponsors step forward they'll be listed below.

If you or the organisations you work for would like to sponsor the dinner (no donation too small), then please contact XSF Board Member (and dinner organiser) Florian Jensen.

The location of the XSF Dinner is the usual place. Spaces are limited, so if you think you might be attending, please inform Florian Jensen as soon as possible.