FUDCon day 3

The third (and last) day of the Berlin FUDCon was dedicated to a hackfest, with everyone working on whatever they liked:

There was also a presentation of the Electronic Lab spin by Chitlesh:


The atmosphere was pretty relaxed:


And the people attending where not that many, with some already leaving before the day started and some other leaving at various moments of the day:


Some were creating "patches" for the group photo:


I managed to take a photo of the third girl present at the event, so the ratio was about 1 woman in 50 men, yeah, this sounds pretty much like Fedora (and don't blame me again for this):


For a little while we had a nice sun and warm weather outside, so a few guys moved in the park next to our building:


Of course I couldn't miss the opportunity to take a few flower macros (come on guys, with such beauty near us, why are we staying in the inside?):


And also play with the lights and reflections:


A bit of disappointment was people not using their freedom to write names, thoughts, locations on the big board prepared for that (I did my part, how about you?):


Oh, the time is passing, not much remaining until I have to board the plane so I'll end this for now (a bit more to come later about how we spent the evening) with a photo of the deserted hall. FUDCon ended.

FUDCon crazy nights

I teased before about some fun adventures after the second FUDCon day, so it's the time to deliver my promise: in the front of the hotel there it was a large crowd from which were standing out a lot of nice looking girls dressed like for a fancy event. No way that would be related to FUDCon or LinuxTag, they were attending some kind of reception and we had to mix with them on the route to our rooms:

Learning it was a high school party, so part of them were potentially underage was not the real stopper, but the bad light and my shyness (being shy is my main flaw as a photographer, where the rule for taking photos of people is like: go as close to them as so feel comfortable and then take two more steps closer). So I didn't feel like lighting my flash and shooting left and right, but with the help of my long lens and most importantly with some support from Franceso, with whom I stroke a deal to ask the girls to pose with him, I managed to grab a few:
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Then I went with a group of people to the eastern part of the city for a dinner, and learnet a lesson: don't go to eat to a place called Habana, the advice is even stronger if you are hungry:


No matter how nice the waitress is, or how fruitier the fancy drinks are


It does not matter if the food is good or bad, no matter the free shots at the end as an excuse, no matter they don't charge for the appetizers they forgot to bring to the table for over an hour, if it takes that long to get the food (I think it was about two hours), then it does not matter anymore.


Oh, and forgot about the waitresses, hookers, high school girls and stuff, we decided what was the sexiest thing at this conference: our mighty leader. The sunglasses are definitely the final touch:

Constantine

This is already public knowledge: the code name for Fedora 12 is going to be Constantine. If you voted for it thinking about the Keanu's movie, I have some bad news for you: the F12 theme will not be based on that, it will not gonna happen.

My first reaction is to go straight to the source: Constantine the Great, the famous Roman emperor, which was "first" for some things, had some "features" and also provided some "freedom". And for me that Constantine equals Byzantine culture, best represented by Byzantine mosaics, something like:

see more; photos by Gauis Caecilius
published under a CC-BY-ND license

The real trick is to take out the religious implications (which are bad) and leave in the cultural references (which are good). And I think there is potential in a visual conflict in a contrast of old mosaic style and modern imagery (4 F's?), everything with a shade of blue.

FUDCon day 2

The second day of FUDCon was dedicated to the BarCamp:

Some of us were more energetic, some a bit less:


I attended a few talks, which were more or less formal and more or less interesting:



And, of course, as at any respectable BarCamp, people also gathered spontaneously to do their stuff:


Myself, I didn't got much stuff done, I mostly cheered-up Mo for her getting stuff done.

When arriving at the hotel we had a big surprise: there was a large party with a lot of (mostly) nice looking high school German girls dressed up in fashionable outfitts, but I will talk more about this in a later post:

Panda story or getting stuff done

First it should be mentioned no human is responsible for all those thing, it was the panda who got drunk early in the morning ans started impersonating Mo, so it wasn't her and I was not involved in any way.

panda getting drunk

So the first move of the drunk panda, Mo impersonator, was to inkscape a FUDCon poster (he also invented the verb "to inkscape"):

the poster

To have the madness complete, Hello Kitty joined the party:

Hello Kitty popping in

And the next move was a making-of video of the poster creation (complete with title and credit screen and catchy soundtrack):

the video

You know a panda has fingers? Of course he has, so he can get carried away and show them in reply to wise-ass comments (so be warned):

panda fingers

Of course all this was possible with the valuable contribution of a lot of nice chevaliers, ready to jump at any moment and help a panda in distress:

panda helpers

Disclaimer: this post was fuelled only by cranberry juice provided by the hotel's breakfast service.

FUDCon day 1 + FUDPub

I am moody at times, like yesterday, when I was tired a bit, frustrated a bit, so got pretty demotivated and took a smaller than usual amount of photos (and maybe not that great). But they are still quite a few.

This morning I am somewhat more optimistic: not enough for a big blog post with a story wrapped around the photos, but enough for a large photo dump. So here was the first FUDCon day seen trough my lenses (again, there are more on my photostream:

The FUDCon day ended with a big group photo but it continued late into the night with FUDPub, the social event consisting of beers, fancy drinks and free pizzas (BTW, does anyone liked the seafood pizza? it was like everybody was running away from it):

FUDCon BarCamp

Next on FUDCon's agenda is the BarCamp day, those are the people who enlisted yesterday to keep talks:

We are Fedora!

The photo didn't came the best (is rotated a bit), as I didn't have a real tripod with me, but it captures the spirit of our community ant this is all that matter - happy Fedora contributors at the Berlin FUDCon in 2009.

If you want to play a bit with it in GIMP, print a poster or whatever (I tried to put it online ASAP, at least a FUDCon logo could be added) a large version is available (CC-BY-SA).