So, it is done, fini and almost over. I'm sitting here in the cantine/aula of the Nayer institute where at max 20 people are drinking cola to get some last hacking work done before they are about to leave back home. While some of the spanish speaking hackers are playing 'ping pong' (not sure if it is called ping-pong) I can safely say that the amount of people dropped down from ~300 to max. 100 at the whole campus site. This is my first Akademy experience and so far it has been a great and seriously fantastic experience. Outside of Akademy I'm involved in the organization of a other project and have been involved in some projects in the past. Since the roots of the initial organizers, Bart & Wendy, is very (with that I mean, VERY :P ) Belgium they've chosen there very romantic, sweet and beautiful hometown of Mechelen as the location of the event. From a very early start on, Bart and Wendy tried to contact lots of people and sponsors to get a plan for 'Akademy 2008' out in the wild. From that point on they have been poking the e.V., sponsors, The Nayer Institute, the municipality of Mechelen, formed a local team responsible for all facilities and the rest of the community to get everything realized the way they did. As I said, I do know a few things about organizing and even more, I know how much a hell of a job it can be to get such a thing running. In organizing events you have to deal with people promising things they eventually don't have the time for, unresponsive organizations, governemental institutes and volunteers in general, money and budget calculation and last but not least, getting press coverage done. For that I decided to put out a public hit-list containing all the people involved in the organization of Akademy 2008 that really, really deserve a good bunch of kisses and flowers, simply because they are great. I am aware of the fact that people are missing below, so please mail me ASAP to get them on the hit-list as well (niels A.T. shodan D-o-T nL). Go and find the bastards!
- Bart Cerneels
- Wendy van Craen
- Claudia Rauch
- Lydia Pintscher
- Kenny Duffus
- Pieter van de Wyngaerde
- Bart Coppens
- Andy Goossens
- Wesley Stessens
- Pieter Verledens
- Marijn Kruisselbrink
I've had a short chat with one of the guys involved in the joint conference next year, which is about to take place in Gran Canaria. Though that is all in a very early stage I've already heard some good things about it. Besides, I would love to get the Gnome and XFCE guys over there to go into a full week of hacking all together to go out for world domination. Because, no matter the project, toolkit or package manager, we still are a relatively small part of the market but we are delivering very high quality products that most of the times beat out products resulting from that other business model. My point, we simply all rock!