Recent fellowship meetings (Autumn 2008)

In the last two months, I've been to Fellowship meetings in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Ireland. These usually happen whenever I have another reason to go to a city. We organise a Fellowship meeting to make the trip it extra worthwhile.

One purpose is to get to know the interested people in an area: it's much easier to work with someone that've you've met face-to-face. They also provide another way to get feedback and for people to get in contact with FSFE. We also discussion specific topics such as planned upcoming campaigns or things that are happening in that country or region.

One thing I've heard at a few meetings is that there is a lack of awareness of who is active in each country. Sometimes a department would switch to free software, or a CD of free software would be given to every student, or a free software article would appear in a non-technical magazine, or a politician would acknowledge free software in a speech, but it's not clear who made this happen. (This was also mentioned by Rolf Camps in the last Fellowship interview.)

The next Fellowship meeting is planned for Brussels, Sunday November 9th. We always email the Fellows in a country about upcoming meetings, so being a Fellow is the most reliable way to know when something is happening in your country. We also usually mention them on one of our mailing lists and on our events page. These are all also good ways to know what's going on in your area. And there's also the general discussion mailing list.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship