I am just back from UDS in Brussels, and it has been a crazy week! A huge thank you to the organizers and to Canonical for sponsoring me to come over and be part of such an amazing event.
It was a very new experience for me, this being my first participation in such an event, and it has been intense from the moment I set foot in the hotel of the venue (and was greeted by a crowd of Ubuntu developers and members of the community, beers in hand) until the final wrap-up after which I had to leave to the airport. Unfortunately I missed the final party and the jam session, I will make sure not to make the same planning mistake next time.
My main interests lied in the desktop, design, user experience and foundations tracks, so that is where I could be seen hanging around most of the time, when I was not enjoying a discussion with all the cool folks I got to meet there. So many renowned hackers and community members gathered together during a full week to brainstorm and discuss ideas and plans for the upcoming 10.10 version of Ubuntu, but above all so many nice people committed to making the world better through what they do best, Free Software.
I particularly enjoyed meeting in person the software-center crowd, Michael, Gary, Matthew, and others, it was very rewarding to get to know the people who I have been collaborating with in the past months, and who invited me to come over and share insights and ideas on the future of this project.
Some very exciting news were unveiled, and a lot of important decisions were made, it looks like it has been a productive week, watch out for the Maverick Meerkat, scheduled to be released on a very special date, it is going to kick ass!