Been at FSCONS 2014
I’ve been in Gothenborg, Sweden from Oct. 30th to Nov. 4th 2014. During my stay I got to know Sweden and Gothenborg to some extend.
I really had a nice time there, wandered the city and harbour a lot, got addicted to Fika (coffee with kanelbulle (cinnamon rolls)), talked to locals using my still minor swedish skills and had time to clear my mind, get inspired and rest. The city, yet undeniable hit by gentrification, seems still quite diverse. The number of children is astonishing high and people seem to be quite relaxed and very nice. One guy even tried to force me under his umbrella when I just enjoyed looking at the heavy rain. 🙂
But I didn’t go to Sweden just to hang around, my journey had a deeper purpose. This was FSCONS, the annual Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit. My plan was to run a booth for FSFE, giving out material and selling merchandise.
Unfortunally this didn’t work out, because the postal service managed to delay both independendly sent parcels from Berlin and Dusseldorf until the week AFTER FSCONs. So FSFE’s booth didn’t happen at all.
Our last hope faded when lunch time had passed on Saturday, so I switched into attendee mode and enjoyed the great conference. Yet I’m very sad that all the time and money spent for sending the parcels was wasted and even some event on the next weekend was sabotaged by this. My own time of course was spent perfectly well, so absolutely no need for me to complain.
During the conference I met a lot of new faces as well as Lucile, Stephan and Sam who attended FSCONs as speakers. It was a great atmosphere and I really liked it there.
I won’t go into any further detail about the talks as they hopefully will be available as video soon. I just want to highlight, that the conferences coverage of social aspects was much more intensive than for example FOSDEM. So there was a full track on Commons, digital and physical. The (vegan) food was very tasty and plenty.
To still bring in my own tiny share into the conference schedule, I recycled my GHM talk on Munich into a lightning talk and held it on Sunday evening.
After six days in Schweden I was totally happy to get back to my family, bringing them swedish books, jigsaw puzzles and crispbread.
Because FSCONS unintendedly turned into my personal happening I have decided to not request any financial support from FSFE. I hope I will be able to get there next year again, then with some stuff to sell. And since there is a whole track of child play I might even bring my loved ones.