This year again, the French Mozilla community (and a part of Russian one) attended to the 10th Libre Software Meeting ("Rencontres mondiales du logiciel libre" for its French title) which took place in Nantes. This is one of the biggest FOSS events in France which gathers altogether free software communities, enterprises and local or national government employees during five days, to share experiences.

There were lots of people this year, geeks and real life people and we had very interesting conversations. This was also the occasion to meet old acquaintance from the other communities. The last day, like every year, Richard Stallman gave a conference, and the boothes were moved to another place, downtown in Nantes, in the Isle of Beaulieu. This new location allowed more people to come as it was really in the center of the city. As a bonus, we were located just aside the Machines of the Isle of Nantes and we could attend to the walking of the Royal de Luxe Elephant.

Well, this was a busy and exciting week and we are looking forward next year, where the event will take place in Bordeaux.

See the whole set of photos.

Saturday 15th November took place the third edition of Mediterranean Day of Libre Software in Sophia Antipolis, in the South of France, near Nice.

This event was organized by Linux Azur, a local association and kindly hosted by Polytech'Nice Sophia an engineer school.

I was invited there, on behalf of the French Mozilla community, to hold a conference about Mozilla and a booth.

This event is targeted to a large audience with general level conferences and more technical ones, but also workshops (for instance: "GNU/Linux like for my mother" ) and association boothes.

The Mozilla booth was rather popular with many people interested in Mozilla plans and products, even with technical questions about Mozilla localization and accessibility, and also the goodies (by the way, we definitely need some kind of "Mozilla Goodies Bundle Pack" for local LUGs and associations).

The attendance was quite satisfactory for this kind of event with around two hundreds visitors, despite the fact that the event took place rather far away from the nearest town.

To sum up, it was a positive and nice event to which I will attend with great pleasure again next year.

Here are very few photos (I was stuck at the booth almost the time).

On the 6-7 september week-end, Mozilla Europe has been invited to hold a stand at the Grande Braderie de Lille by Chtinux, a Free Software user group in the Lille area (northern France). We were located on a nice little plaza, in a small "village" dedicated to FLOSS with other associations such as APRIL, AFUL, CLX, Ubuntu-fr, Fedora-Fr, FSF Europe, Wikimédia France and BSD France. Many Mozilla-related associations are based in France (FrenchMozilla, Geckozone, XULfr) and we came to Lille to represent all of them.

The Grande braderie de Lille is an enormous street market event, with 2 to 3 million visitors each year. This big event is a really good occasion to show Firefox and Thunderbird to many people.

I attended for the first time to the Libre Software Meeting which took place this year in Mont de Marsan, in Les Landes (South of France), from the 1st to the 5th of July.

Monday:

Departure from Nice at 6:00 am, arrival thirteen hours later in Mont de Marsan. I quickly find the gorgeous tiny hotel Paul Rouget found for us… where I meet Damiano Albani who arrived earlier. I drop my luggage in my room, freshen myself a bit and we walk with Damiano towards downtown to get something to eat. It is rather desert. We manage to find a little restaurant with a terrace alongside the Midouze River, where we achieve to bake in the setting sun eating a "salade de gésiers avec foie gras et Serrano". Then, a little walk in the town, it is very nice (no photo, I left my camera in my room). Back to the hotel.

Tuesday:

8:00 am, breakfast and heading towards the associative village to set up the Mozilla booth. A little visit in the village to greet the acquaintance. The heat becomes unbearable under the marquee (at least 40° C). Frequent exits from the marquee and fresh bottles of water help to bear this heat a little. France 3 Aquitaine (a local TV channel) ask us for an interview. Very brave and a little wily, I tell them: The boss will be there in 10 minutes (the boss, it was Paul ). Paul et Laurent Jouanneau join us around noon and Paul gives his interview. We walk downtown with Paul to buy some sandwiches and a bermuda for me who have the bad idea to attend the meeting in trousers... Back to the associative village. Laurent is interviewed by I don't remember who :-\ . Very few visitors for this first day. I am approached by representatives from the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology. They plan to localize more free software in Vietnamese, including Mozilla products. I give them some explanations and we exchange details. In the evening, restaurant then we go to the "Nocturnes" (the nightlies) in the Auberge landaise where all the geeks from the event gather to discuss while drinking some beer.

Wednesday:

Rude awakening. I arrive in the village around 10:00 am. It rained last night and the temperature is fine. Richard Stallman and Henri Emmanuelli (a local politician) visit the village and chat with people at the stands. A teenager class has been hanging there since yesterday and make a raid on the goodies from the stands (this will last until Friday...). We welcome the visitors, more numerous today. Some Debian guys come to see us and throw the troll: Firefox is not free software. It's damned irritating: we explain, but it's useless. Whatever, it was a quiet discussion. In the evening, restaurant under a heavy rain, then Nocturnes at the Auberge landaise. I meet there Marc Laporte, one of the main developers of TikiWiki, currently used for SUMO. We disagree on many things, but the discussion is constructive and Marc is a very nice guy. Besides, he will offer nothing less than 200 beers during the Nocturnes during all the event.

Thursday:

Late awakening, again . Arrival in the village, greetings to fellows and I head up to the Bugzilla talk animated by Emmanuel Seyman. Back to the Mozilla booth. Posters, stickers, Firefox and Don't hurt the Web badges are running short. David Marteau joined us. I'm hanging around from a stand to another, and surprise, I see a Mozilla developer teaching to a Webkit developer how to code (Sorry Julien :-p ) . End of the day. We go back to the hotel to drop our stuff and then head up to the Auberge landaise for the Repas du libre (Libre Meal). We are welcome in the park in front of the Auberge landaise by a banda (a local traditional music band). Then comes the dinner, very tasty . I meet there Konstantin Lepikhov, one of the Russian localizers for Mozilla products.

Friday:

Should I say it again? I wake up late . Back to the village. Holding the stand, talking with the visitors, …Paul and Julien Chaffraix are polishing up their common talk, Laurent is making his third talk. In the afternoon, interminable speech from Richard Stallman (3 hours) at the same time than the one from Paul and Julien. Laurent, David and Damiano attend their talk, I keep the stand. This allowed me to meet and talk a bit to Janina Sajka and the people with her about accessibility, and I quote her: Firefox rules!. In the evening, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry from Mont de Marsan offered us an evening buffet at the Auberge landaise, and then, the Skapsule concert began.

Saturday:

I wake up late, again . The other Mozillians left at 8:00 am and I stay alone on the stand. It smells like the end of the event, many stands are empty. Nothing more to say about this day, except that the people who were working during the week could finally come and that there are no goodies left. I put in order the stand and go to the station to catch my train at 6:30 pm.

I could meet many interesting and passionnate people during this event and put some faces on many nicks from the people from April.org who came numerous. Many kudos for the organizers of this Libre Software Meeting 2008 edition for the hard work they provided and the logistics to welcome more than 2000 attendees.

See you next year in Nantes for the 2009 edition from the 7th to the 11th of July.

The full photo album.