I recently had the opportunity to travel as the Leader of the Panamanian team at the International Mathematical Olympiads held in The Netherlands from July 12th to July 24th. I wanted to take the opportunity to do face-to-face meetings with important members of the FLOSS Community living there. I first tried contacting Joost Ruis, maintainer of Sabayon‘s Entropy Tree but he told me he’d be on family holidays that week. Yet, he did recommend I visit Jos Poortvliet, Novell’s Community Manager for OpenSuse and an important member of the KDE community.
Jos’ original plan was actually making a BBQ on Jul 10th, but an error in buying my plane ticket made me miss my own reception party at Utrecht xD Nevertheless, I payed Jos a visit on Jul 11th where we still had a mini-BBQ with Camila and other friends. We chatted about many things: food, language, cultures, etc. We also had plenty of time to discuss some KDE-specific ideas like finding out the correct strategy to finally set up a KDE Panama community, and I also had a chance to introduce the BST project to Jos who was very excited about it and pointed me at some people that might be able to help us organize a collaboration with KDE in the near future.
Later that week, while I was at Eindhoven, Joost found me on Sabayon’s IRC channel and told me he had actually returned earlier from the family holidays because of the rainy weather (which I actually loved while I was there) so I had a chance to pay him a visit too at his house in Liesthout.
During the visit I had a chance to check the lab where the Entropy maintenance happens: a room with many computers where to test stuff in different hardware. He gave me a quick overview of what’s the workflow to update and package new software from the Portage tree into Entropy. We also had chance to discuss about the relationship between Sabayon and Gentoo and how was the former benefited from the contact with the Gentoo council, mainly through events like FOSDEM. Finally, he told me about the future plans for the Sabayon distribution and where I could help. The visit was short, yet very productive… and I also got to see the amazing transportation technology these people have in The Netherlands which includes (but is not limited to) Android applications to get the schedule of buses.
Now back at Panama, I’m starting to catch up with the stuff I left hanging before leaving, and once I’m done with those, I’ll surely be moving stuff related to what I discussed and learned during my visit, so expect a lot from this blog in the next couple of months. I’d finally like to thank Jos, Camila, Joost and all of the people I met there at The Netherlands for all their hospitality and I really hope to see them soon!