Meet Perl at FOSDEM 2019 in Brussels, Belgium: booth, Saturday dinner

2019/01/29

Fosdem, Brussels, 02&03 February 2019

In the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is the biggest free, open, and non-commercial European event organized by and for the community. Its goal is to provide Free and Open Source developers a place to meet (see https://fosdem.org/2019/ ). Some 12,000 people will visit FOSDEM during the two days it is open. There will be 28 rooms and halls, each with its own track, in 5 different buildings (Janson, K, H, U, AW), so a lot to choose from ( https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/ ).

Three buildings (K, H, AW) have an expo with a total of 66 booths, ranging from open source organisations, programming language communities, operating system communities, database communities, magazines, browsers, publishers and much more (https://fosdem.org/2019/stands/).

Where?

Free University Brussels (ULB: Université Libre de Bruxelles), Campus du Solbosch, Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt 50: https://fosdem.org/2019/practical/transportation/

Brussels Low Emission Zone

The venue is within the Brussels Low Emission Zone. If you are going by car, or with a van or truck, make sure that vehicle is registered here. Really, if you don’t, they will fine the owner of the vehicle with €150 or more.

https://fosdem.org/2019/news/2019-01-25-low-emission-zone/

Perl at FOSDEM: booth but no devroom

This will be the first time, after nine years in a row, that the Perl-community has no devroom at FOSDEM. But we will have a booth!

The Perl-booth is in K-building, level 2, booth number 16, 1 big table (no, not 2 tables, just 1) covered with books, Camelia stuffed toy butterflies, brochures, stickers, buttons, tuits and more. Visit us and get a free hug! Perl-booth at FOSDEM 2019

You can bring Perl-swag and have it on the table, but only if there is still space available. We will not have room for laptops for demonstrations (really, just one table this year, and like previous years, even if we would have two tables, they would be packed anyway).

Liz and I will try to set up the booth on Friday afternoon, so that there will be no hassle, haste, sweat and chaos on Saturday. We will not bring the Perl book library, instead “just” the roll-up banners, the camel, and giant Camelia. We don’t know what time we will arrive (really!).

Perl-Dinner

As in previous years, we have organised dinner for a selected group (invitation only, so you have to ask me to get invited, so please ask) on Saturday of FOSDEM. The menu will not be a-la-carte, but a limited amount of items. Vegans and vegetarians will get good food too. Food for people with special dietary needs (for instance, allergies), if mentioned in advance, can be taken care of. Everybody pays for themselves, no sponsoring this year. Please contact Wendy beforehand, or during FOSDEM at the booth.

For Saturday, we have reserved the upper floor of Belgian-style restaurant La Porteuse d’Eau (Jean Volderslaan 48, Brussels) again, for 50 people, from 18:00 till as late as they will let us. If you are added to the list, just go on your own or with a group (Liz or I have to stay at the booth till K-building is locked), be at La Porteuse around 18:00 (you can be early there, or late, or exactly on time).

For Sunday I did not reserve anything, but we go to the same restaurant we went to several years: La Bécasse (Boondaalsesteenweg 476, Brussels. But if somebody wants to reserve this place, or something else, let me know.

Perl Talks

There are two talks about Perl at FOSDEM, both in K-building (same building we have our booth), so visit them and show Perl is awesome.

Andrew Shitov will talk about Perl 6 as a new tool for language compilers, at the Minimalistic Languages devroom, room K.4.201:

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/perl6newtool/

Will Braswell will talk about Perl 11 at the Performance Track, room K.1.105:

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/perl11/

Beer event

Please have fun at the Beer event at Delirium! We are not sure we can make it in time, but we will try to come anyway to have a couple of nice beers with you. If some of you want a Perl-table, come early (on or before 18:00) and occupy the table of your choice (in former years, I managed to get 2 tables on the first floor; the ground floor is way too busy and loud). Beware for coming in late: after 20:00 the alley and the bar are blocked by enormous crowds that want in, and something like this happens: for every 2 people leaving, 1 is allowed in.