I can't believe it's been almost 4 years since I last bumped into Mark Pratt (entry from November 2003 about OpenSourceXperts). A chance IM conversation today let me know that he is now based out of Barcelona, but my trip to attend DrupalCon Barcelona means that I'm just going to miss him while he makes a trip to the US.

Mark is a Zope expert, open source business model experimenter, and more. He told me he's now got a great consulting firm, Vanguardistas, that are doing "amazing things with Zope3". I admit to knowing very little about the cool stuff going on in Zope3, so it will be interesting to hear more. And of course, we're all partners in waving the flag of open source goodness, especially in Europe.

I'll be missing Mark in Barcelona, but he's connected me to some of his colleagues at Vanguardistas, and told me that La Bombeta is where I'll have to go for delicious, cheap food. I'm really looking forward to this trip...I really have to make plans to be in Europe more regularly: there are so many great people and projects to get connected to, never mind the side benefits like great food :P

My buddy chrys pinged me about a sponsorship opportunity in Europe. The 2007 Europe Photoblogger Meetup is happening in Berlin, September 7th to 9th, and the organizers are still looking for sponsors. Paging Yahoo Europe, or perhaps most especially the fine folks at Flickr, you might want to jump on this one.

I won't be making it to this, but I am looking forward to DrupalCon Barcelona, which takes place later in September. I have some ideas brewing on putting together an Enterprise Lounge concept to talk about Drupal...

Flat rate mobile broadband? 3 Group in the UK just announced their "X-Series" -- flat-rate broadband Internet access on their mobile phones, with interesting tie ins with everyone from Google to Sling boxes to Orb.

I saw this a couple of different places, and agree with Troy -- I also hope that this "will drive a chain reaction and like the Berlin wall, this would cause flat-rate pricing and open gardens to flourish across the planet, creating a massive open platform upon which innovation would explode across the 2 billion phones currently on the planet."

At the same time, I spent some time today looking at a mobile service that still includes WAP and really simple services. This is a huge addressable market, but it doesn't seem as interesting as some of the "next step" smart platforms that we're seeing. 

Of course, my recent trip to the US saw me paying 95¢ per minute for roaming charges. Due to my grandfathered Fido plan, my data services the whole way were free. In what universe does this make sense? 

So I kind of stealth launched the concept of BarCamp Brussels in some posts wrapping up FOSDEM 2006, slated for around September 2006 to coincide with EuroOSCON.

I just found out about BarCamp Brussels ForTheImpatient -- for April/May! Boy, those Europeans sure are impatient :P Being organized by Peter Forret.

Hey, Ton, I'm hoping you and your crew will be interested in one or both camps. What do you think? (and yes, I still "owe" you a post on the 4 jobs meme...it might end up being a podcast or something suitably different).

Sounds like fun...wish I could attend lots more European events, but I have to ration out my travel a bit. Hopefully the ForTheImpatient crew will be able to figure out some good areas and set things up nicely for a bigger (or at least...more international?) attendance in September. I'll be watching it with interest.

A little more personal pointer to the people at FOSDEM. It was nice to see O'Reilly as the major sponsor. The bookstore was hot, with people agonizing over just how many dozens of books they should buy. In many ways (as indicated by the full name -- Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting), the attendees are the core audience for O'Reily's books. OSCON, on the other hand, tends to be priced out of reach of the mainly grassroots, non-commercial hacker culture in Europe (aside from being accepted as a speaker).

Some of the usual European suspects were there -- Ralph and Edwin (wow -- Edwin did some Englsh blog posts Day 0/1, Day 2), and I did see Gerv off in the distance although I didn't end up talking to him directly. I also met Christ, who came with Ralph and Edwin (and yes, that name will be funny to native English speakers).

Geo Dan came along to experience the uniquely European hacker experience that is FOSDEM, along with the infamous Ivan with whom I had many great talks about architecture and culture as well as a fantastic dining experience. Andy brought an Amsterdam crew (Gijs, Marco, Nadya) and talked about Flock and I stole the wonderful Nadya's scarf.