Finally someone else wrote about EuroBSDCon, Dru Lavigne.
The most interesting paragraph of her review critizes the BSD Developers as antisocial:
My attempts at conversation fizzled out shortly after "hello". During the talks, noone would sit in my row and the seats immediately ahead of and behind me were embarrassingly empty. I was starting to wonder if I was suffering from a bad case of BO.
I have to admit, neither did I attend her talk nor did i talk to her :-(.
But I also noticed that this EuroBSDcon was a bit antisocial.
Some Examples:
- At normal geek events there is a keysigning party (well party is an euphemism but it is at least a start for getting to know everyone). In Karlsruhe people just exchanged keys with people they already knew.
- There was no list of all attendants, so you couldn't find out whom you forgot to talk to.
- grog complains in his diary, that we had to pay for the drinks at the social event. The social-event suited in a hangar-like hall was too cold to socialize.
That's rather sad. If people can't even socialize at events specifically catered to a common interest, there's a real problem.
I must admit however that I too have become somewhat more distant at these kind of events because I find other parts of my social life come more naturally and sometimes consider that there really is no free software community but rather a lot of free software developers that happen to make friends in that profession with some - and not with others.
There are still many people I'd like to meet and I continue to love to meet actual friends I've made, but usually at events (LinuxTag, Kastle, FOSDEM) I find myself to be the only one or one of the few really interested in socializing outside of any scheduled arrangements. I perceived this as slightly more natural at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, but that might be due to the fact that the event was small and included several developers I am good friends with.