One of the best organized Open Source conference that I’ve ever attended (I won’t said that it was “the best” to not annoy my friends from FISL and Latinoware, OK:) ).

Despite the number of participants (over 8,000) and speakers (over 250), they had an organization that had really left me open-mouthed. One of the things I found most interesting and perhaps serve as an example for our events here in Brazil was the number of volunteers (at least four buses full of those folks), which helped the whole time, organizing queues (rare and very efficient) and directing the participants and speakers.

One of the things I liked most in the event was the example of success mentioned on several presentations all the time: Brazil.

I enjoyed see our country being presented as a case of success in the adoption and use of Free Software and Open Standards. At the same time, I believe that it doubles the weight on our backs: The world observes what we’re doing, who’s helping us and especially who are those that are trying to confuse things here.

In some moments of the event, especially in relax moments, someone always asked me something about the OpenXML war at ISO and as soon as I started to tell the stories, a large circle of people was formed to hear them (I felt like a WWII veteran). It was very rewarding to share this information and experiences with that folks, complementing parts of the story that they didn’t knew about and listening from them the pieces that I was completely unaware (I confess that now most things makes sense to me, as the apparent unity of Europe for approval of OpenXML in ISO). Maybe one day I write a book with all the details (or pieces) that I know …

I made a presentation about the past, present and future of ODF, and attended some very interesting presentations (including the Brazilian friends ones, as Deivi - adoption of open standards and free software, and Corinto - Brazilian Public Software). Also from Brazil, Marcos Mazoni gave an excelent presentation (at the same time that Deivi’s one) and Marcelo Branco coordinated a very interesting panel. In short, we presented a little of what we did here in Brazil and about our future plans, and we also spend all our Portuñol (the mix between Portuguese and Spanhish. Deivi presented that idiom at the opening of his speech as: The language of the future !!!).

Speaking about Deivi, during the OpenXML BRM (in Geneva) he always laugh from me because I and a portuguese friend,  Joao Neves, insisted on havin our conversations in English, even when we were talking to each other. This time, it was Deivi that insisted several times starting chats with me talking in English (guess one of the tries was in Spanish, but I didn’t understand it very well ).

On two days I’ll fly to Foz do Iguacu to participate at Latinoware 2008, and in the next week I’ll be in Santiago (Chile) to do an ODF presentation on a Free Software event (and the marathon will be over).

During recent travels, I have kept my Twitter and Flickr updated. If you want to know how was my participation at a Free Software event on Belem, take a look at my blog at ITWeb website (Portuguese only).