Palfrey's life

I'm at FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend (as previously mentioned), and it's turning out to be an interesting experience. The "day 0" was people meeting up for a 'little' pre-conference drinkies, which basically means about 100 geeks taking over the top half of a large bar. I didn't know anyone in there to start with, but that rapidly changed. Talking to various others - an Australian who's living in Den Haag, various clusters of germans, more random PhD students than I care to count, including a bunch of fairly excitable Cambridge people. One of which now seems to want me to do a talk on my work to their group at some point. I thought I'd have to become a Professor at least before a woman got as interested (as in bouncing, "oh my god! that's so cool" repeated multiply, etc) in my work, but hey I ain't complaining. There's a certain amount of irony in this, because Cambridge wouldn't have looked at me twice 5 years ago, and now I'm being invited to tell them things. A bunch of us eventually ended up in this weird arty bar with a bunch of people musically collaborating (random instruments being produced and played, various singers, etc) in the front of it. This appeared to be just a random group of people who felt like doing something fun. That was day 0.

I awoke, hungover (so would you if you'd drank the quantities I did last night), navigated my way out of Vilvoorde (I have a bad history of picking cheap hotels that are cheap because they're not actually in the same damn town.... next time I'm turning up and finding crash space, as I had several offers of such last night) and finally actually got to FOSDEM. The directions were luckily easy to follow, but I made the mistake of getting on a train going the wrong way to start with, and ended up missing the Wikipedia talk this morning. Got there in time to hear the infamous Richard Stallman speaking on various ideas re: reforming the copyright system. I actually recorded most of it, so if that turns out ok on my media player, then I may post it later. Actually got an opportunity to speak to him briefly afterwards (I had a question re: certain categories in his proposed new copyright system), which rocks somewhat.

Now, I've got some more talks to go to, and possibly locate some decent coffee. Photos are being taken, and will be placed up at some point!