My friend and colleague Donna Metzlar pointed me to the /ETC which is happening next week in Amsterdam. For folk who aren’t going to OpenExpo in Karlsruhe or are missing LinuxTag in Berlin it might be a good alternative alternative destination. Donna’s been organizing this event for years. Here’s the spiel on the evening programme:

The seventh Eclectic Tech Carnival is taking place in the Plantage Dok (Plantagedoklaan 8-12) in Amsterdam from Sunday May the 25 until Saturday May the 31st 2008. The /ETC is an event where women interested in technology meet each other to exchange experiences in a fun and educational manner. It is a combination of a female hack meeting and skill-share.

The evening programme is free and open to the public. Men and women of all ages and backgrounds are welcome, so join in!

This kind of event is important for spreading Free Culture and technology, so I’m happy it’s there. All of these events ought to be on the KDE events calendar (also syndicated to the dot, which is convenient). Many thanks to Lydia P. who coordinates that calendar.

It’s cold and overcast in Nijmegen right now so it is hard to think of camping, but there’s a Free Software Campground eth-0 scheduled to happen in the beginning of July. The 5th to 11th. Sunshine and nerds and campgrounds, oh my.

Finally, and this is sort of a “wouldn’t it be cool if …” there’s about a half-dozen KDE developers active in the Netherlands that I know of. Plus a dozen or so translators. That might just be a big enough group to have some kind of semi-regular get-together for coffee, hacking and beer. In a sense Nijmegen alone would be big enough: then Sebas, Simon and myself can sit around one table at the local coffee joint and do some hacking. Many activities are more fun in threes, eh. The idea would be low-pressure socializing and reserving an hour or two for doing some KDE work and coordinating whatever we happen to be doing (although, to be fair, Python + Plasma + Solaris don’t have a huge overlap or interaction, if we limit us to what happens in Nijmegen). Something like the friday-morning piss-up at Sirius, only in .nl and outside of work hours – because we’re serious.

The Wayback Machine ⏲ does not archive everything. Broken links are marked with a 💔.