The new year is off to an excellent start as we wrap up the 7th year of Google Code-in, ramp up for the 13th year of Google Summer of Code, and return from connecting with our compatriots in the open source community down under at Linux.conf.au. Next up? We’re headed to FOSDEM, Europe’s famed non-commercial and volunteer-organized open source conference.

FOSDEM logo licensed under CC BY.

FOSDEM is hosted in Brussels on the Université libre de Bruxelles campus and runs the weekend of February 4-5. It’s a unique event in the spirit of the free and open source software and is free to the public. This year they are expecting 8,000+ attendees.

We’re looking forward to talking face-to-face with some of the thousands of former students, mentors and organization administrators who have participated in our student programs. A few of them will even be giving talks about their recent Google Summer of Code experience.

If you’d like to say hello or chat about our programs, you’ll be sure to find a Googler or two at our table. You’ll also find a number of Googlers in the program schedule:

Saturday, February 4th

2:00pm    Bazel: How to build at Google scale by Klaus Aehlig
3:25pm    Copyleft in Commerce: How GPLv3 keeps Samba relevant in the marketplace by Jeremy Allison

Sunday, February 5th

10:40am  gRPC 101: Building fast and efficient microservices by Ray Tsang
10:50am  Is the GPL a copyright license or a contract under U.S. law? by Max Sills
12:45pm  The state of Go: What to expect in Go 1.8 by Francesc Campoy
1:00pm    Analyze terabytes of OS code with one query by Felipe Hoffa (more info)
2:50pm    Like the ants: Turn individuals into a large contributing community by Dan Franc

See you there!

By Josh Simmons, Open Source Programs Office