Archives for posts with tag: openexpo

OpenExpo revisited

April 6, 09 //
6

You know it’s spring when travels to Berne, Switzerland, hit you again. Regardless of the weather of course. Although this time, it did feel like spring over there and on the day I left for Oslo again, it was really warm, too warm actually for my thick woolen jacket. On the other hand, the jacket was more than needed on my walk from the bus stop to my apartment in Oslo.

Ah well, back to the subject…

After my disastrous train trip South, in Bern itself all went rather smoothly. The hotel was easy to find and I fell into the bed right away. On Wednesday morning, we quickly set up our booth at the OpenExpo and started the day with strong coffee and Gipfeli (a.k.a. Croissants in the rest of the world). There was some confusion with the original hall layout but after some reshuffling, everybody was happy.

Exhibitions are always extremely tiring but also provide great ways of learning about new things and meet new people as well as those one hasn’t seen for a while.

I finally managed to find someone who could establish a contact to Scribus for me – Alessandro who staffed the booth for Libre Graphics – and had the pleasure to meet Liz who works on the OOo Project Renaissance. We had a nice conversation over coffee and I am looking forward to meeting her again next time.

It was the first time I gave a talk wearing my new Qt Software hat and I have to admit that it exactly felt like that. I guess it went rather well though and I didn’t make a complete fool out of myself. Wouldn’t it be boring if there was no room for improvements anyway?

I want to thank Eckhart and Luca for running the booth and patiently answering a zillion partly pretty tricky questions, the openSUSE crew for the DVDs, Fabian from Fedora for hosting Eckhart so uncomplicatedly, Pascal for good spirits and of course /ch/open for the great organization.

Sidenote 1: I had to run to the gate again although Luca and me arrived really early at the airport. Will I ever learn to estimate the time I need correctly?

Sidenote 2: I have to buy a proper camera. Sorry for the constantly blurry shots I take with my mobile phone. If you have a suggestion for a compact model, please be so kind to leave a comment.

On The Road Again

März 31, 09 //
Kommentare deaktiviert

Thanks to the German Bahn, I gained an hour offline in a train. All my tasks I could finish without the internet are done now, so I thought to myself I could as well blog something.

I squeezed myself into the ICE to Basel SBB with a incredibly heavy suitcase, a backpack, a cardboard roll holding posters and my handbag. A whole hour later than planned because of severe stupidness on my side. This turned out to be extra annoying when shortly before Siegburg the train stopped before a no longer working switch. We had to travel back nearly all the way to Cologne main station and slowly. Hence the gained hour.

I am on my way to attend the OpenExpo in Bern where I will give a presentation and back up Luca and Eckhart at the KDE booth. Claudia sent me the posters and some T-shirts and thanks to a quick reaction from Novell I now have 200 something openSUSE DVDs in my small suitcase. The latter gives me funny looks since a suitcase of that size is not expected to be heavy. Believe me – this one is!

I am looking forward to put on my KDE hat again and meet with all the nice Swiss FOSS folks in Bern tomorrow. But first I want food and a bed.

The initial train by the way actually never made it to Basel and my extra hour quickly evolved into one and a half hours but that’s another story.