I'm off to GUADEC soon, probably visiting Karlsruhe tomorrow along the way. I'll arrive in Stuttgart early Saturday morning for the GNOME Foundation board meeting, then es geht los on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday,

This year's GUADEC has been stressful to organize, largely because we haven't communicated well enough together, and because we didn't get all the local support that we'd planned on. However, the Open Source Region Stuttgart and bwcon have helped us out with many details, in addition to providing the venue and generally dealing well with the amorphous social entity that is GNOME. I do think that this year has shown that most of the GUADEC preparation could be done by a distributed group of people all over the world, with just a few people on the ground, if you have a checklist and a pessimistic schedule.

Most of the infrastructure and organisation on the day is being done by Hanno Wagner and Jörg Hoh, plus the group of locals that they gathered together. They have shown great commitment, energy, and professionalism. It is absolutely verboten that they should ever have to buy their own drinks during GUADEC.

Their are sure to be some problems and irritations on the day, but you can be sure that the volunteers are doing their very best and that we know we are not perfect. The wiki should help you stay informed.

I always arrive at GUADEC stressed and I always leave uplifted. Careful or I might hug you.