FUDCon “F minus 3.”

I just got back from my slightly extended Thanksgiving vacation yesterday, and there’s so much to talk about!

Most importantly, this coming Saturday marks the start of FUDCon Toronto 2009. As everything is starting to settle into place, we’re having a planning wrap-up meeting this afternoon on IRC Freenode at #fudcon-planning at 2100 UTC (4:00pm US/Eastern). Thanks to the superb efforts of people like Steven Parrish, Andrew Overholt, Mel Chua, and the inimitable Chris Tyler, we have updated information on the wiki, and even ride sharing information for people coming into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport (YYZ — thanks Steven!).

Have you looked at the list of people and content lately? The pre-registration table now shows almost 180 people coming, and if this FUDCon is anything like others, there will be people showing up out of the blue as well. And that’s not at all a bad thing — FUDCon is, after all, free and open to anyone to attend! There’s a huge list of technical sessions already suggested. Some of these have been pre-selected for two user tracks, so some of the new contributors attending FUDCon for the first time can get the most out of their Fedora systems. (I call this putting the U back in FUDCon!) At the same time, there will be a boatload of sessions aimed at developers, maintainers, and contributors of all sorts — and those who are becoming one or more of the above.

There’s also about a dozen and a half hackfests listed, with something for virtually everyone who’s willing to roll up sleeves and work on something Fedora-related. Speaking only for myself, I want to spend a bit of time on the Fedora Insight (Zikula) work that will help us get a true content management system into production. Eventually we’ll be able to use that not just for marketing material, but for documentation, media, and other goodies.

Finally, there’s a very useful and concise list of things you should bring with you!

It’s going to be a great FUDCon, and I look forward to seeing everyone there. If you have lingering questions about FUDCon that you don’t find answered on the wiki page, please feel free to email the planners, fudcon-planning at lists fedoraproject org, or come by the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net, #fudcon-planning)!