Flock 2014 has been over for almost a week now and I’ve caught up a bit on sleep and had a bit of time to ponder on the conference, so I thought I would share a wrap up post with those thoughts.
The venue and organization were great! My only minor nit pick at all would be that the talks on the last few days were in classrooms that were a bit too small for the audiences we had. Otherwise from my point of view everything was very very smooth. Many thanks again to the organizers, I know it’s a ton of work and full of stress. I really like the idea of alternating flock between North America and Europe. It’s wonderful to see so many talks I know on line in person, and it’s only fair to let them have the short travel once in a while. 🙂
There was a lot of positive energy. Everyone was very upbeat in general and wanting to learn and make things better. There were definitely pointed questions in various talks, but all of them I heard were done from a viewpoint of learning or suggesting improvements. I think partially this had to do with that we have committed to a path with Fedora.next and everyone is focusing on how to make that happen and succeed. Next years flock will be interesting as we should know how well Fedora 21 went by then. 😉
As usual there were too many interesting things going on to take them all in at once. I was very happy all the talks were being recorded, so I was able to go back and watch a few things that I didn’t get a chance to get to later.
It will of course depend on the venue next year, but I’d love to see a large room with lots of chairs and tables we could move around for a open hacking room. That way groups could get together to work on something, but allow quick questions between groups and would allow folks just wandering around to see what each group was doing by just hanging out in the room for a bit. Many of us are introverts, so I wonder also if some kind of game or badge quest might be nice to get people talking to each other that normally wouldn’t. Something like a badge for gathering a token from all fesco members or other groups. Something to ponder for next year.
Finally, this flock was a bit bittersweet, because my Friend, co-worker and community member Toshio is moving on to do some other things for a while. He will be dearly missed, and I hope we see him back in a while, richer for his travels, Â but only time will tell. Safe travels Toshio.