Between the 10th and the 14th May, 2010, I hit up the lovely country of Belgium to attend the Ubuntu Developers Summit for the Maverick Meerkat release. I was one of 60 lucky people from the community to be sponsored for the trip, which is a fantastic honour and I thank Canonical for giving me the opportunity!
I started writing an article about the trip but that ended up being rather boring, giving a blow-by-blow account of what I did for the entire week. I got rid of that. Instead, I present ten things I learnt from UDS! (In no particular order)
- Qantas runs Red Hat Linux on their in-flight entertainment system, which they had to reboot twice after I took off from Sydney in the Airbus A380.
- Jorge Castro loves singing Celine Dion. Jono Bacon is also just as cheerful and talkative in real life as he is on the internet!
- Delirium Tremens, a 20% Belgium beer, really takes its toll on you after a few glasses.
- Ask for a medium steak, get a rare steak. Ask for a rare steak, get a live cow.
- Alex Chiang very much enjoys taking his pants off in the lobby of hotels around the world.
- I didn’t have enough time to attend sessions in three tracks, film a UDS video, report on news for omgubuntu.co.uk, do crew duty AND socialize at the same time.
- There’s a lot of graffiti in Europe in general, and the taxi drivers are incredibly good at multitasking while driving in the rain at night.
- Brussels is known for a guy taking a leak. No kidding, all the souvenirs at the airport were of a dude urinating! I even got a T Shirt.
- Drinking beer out of a 1 litre glass boot is the coolest feeling in the world, but don’t trust the airport baggage handlers to keep it intact on your way home.
- The people at UDS absolutely ROCK! It was awesome meeting all the people I have been working with, and then so many more from other departments.
You can see some of the photos I took in my Facebook album. (One day I’ll get around to uploading them to Flickr!)