After two long days of SmartCard printing, packing and mailing, the first 250 SmartCards are now in the mail, en-route to their Fellows. If you are one of the lucky bunch, your SmartCard should be with you sometime next week.

From now on, there will be weekly mailings of SmartCards to all fully activated Fellows.

If you have not signed up yet, you can do so now.

Here are some impressions from the day in the Hamburg office of FSFE

The first 250 SmartCards, personalised for the quickest Fellows

Packaging and stamping SmartCards

Putting them into boxes according to geographic region

These are rand-full with SmartCard letters

Finally, after weeks of preparation, procedures, scripting, shopping for material and printers, setting up computers in the new office, the Smart Card printing for the Fellowship has begun.

Here are some first-hand impressions:

FSFE intern Karsten Gerloff at the Smart Card printing station.

Karsten Gerloff with the Smart Card of Fellow No 1, Mario Fux from Switzerland.

All these are already fully customised for their Fellows.

Bereits am 02. April 2005 wurde das jährlich 'Anwandern' am Alpstein durchgeführt. Diese Wanderprobe verlief zwar klaglos, es lungerten aber noch Lawinen auf den Wegen herum. Diese Lawinen sollten inzwischen, trotz des schlechten Wetters der letzten Tag, weitergezogen sein. Fraglich bleibt allerdings, in wie weit es bis Ende Mai noch zu Steinschlägen infolge der Erwärmung des Gebirges kommen kann.

Softwareentwickler sollten die Gelegenheit nutzen, am Wochenende am Seealpsee einen Kaffe einzunehmen sowie davon auch ein paar digitale Bilder machen. Später kann man diese Bilder hier vielleicht zeigen und so beweisen, dass Entwickler nicht ausschliesslich vor der Kiste sitzen.

After arduous preparatory work, the mailing of the long-awaited Cryptocards will finally start next week. One of the coolest features of FSFE's Fellowship, the cards require quite a lot of work: This started with writing a driver for the card printer, and did not stop with the careful design of the safety procedures.

Most of this work is done now. The Fellowship team would like to thank all Fellows for their patience. We hope to soon reward it with a real-life, fully enjoyable Cryptocard.