On Friday I attended the second BelFOSS conference. I’d spoken about my involvement with Debian at the conference last year, which seemed to be well received. This year I’d planned to just be a normal attendee, but ended up roped in at a late stage to be part of a panel discussing various licensing issues. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day - there were many great speakers, and plenty of opportunity for interesting chats with other attendees.

The conference largely happens through the tireless efforts of Jonny McCullagh, though of course many people are involved in bringing it together. It’s a low budget single day conference which has still managed to fill its single track attendee capacity both years, and attract more than enough speakers. Last year Red Hat and LPI turned up, this year Matt Curry from Allstate’s Arizona office appeared, but in general it’s local speakers talking to a local audience. This is really good to see - I don’t think Jonny would object at all if he managed to score a `big name’ speaker, but one of his aims is to get students interested and aware of Free Software, and I think it helps a lot that the conference allows them to see that it’s actively in use in lots of aspects of the industry here in Northern Ireland.

Here’s hoping that BelFOSS becomes an annual fixture in the NI tech calendar!