mtl3p

I went to Stallman’s presentation on Sunday. Hugh and Francois wrote about it. Omar sent an report about it to the Controverse list. I was really interested to watch how people socialized, seeing who knew who and speculating how they knew of each other.

Someone I had knew from the 2001 Quebec protest was there recording it(video not online yet but here’s their article) for CMAQ. He was also interviewing certain people/orgs to get their response to Bill C-60. I got the feeling like people from the open-source community were getting comfortable with the fact that their opinions mattered. There was very little of the awkward “what are we doing here” or “why is that guy doing interviews” feeling. And the socializing felt more - uh - natural. Less like Trekkies all fired up about being together for a yearly conference. It just felt normal that the room was full of media activists, LUGers -sorry GNU/LUGers, developpers, and community organizers. It wasn’t suprising to see the conference written up in the paper the next day. The whole thing felt very mainstream and un-deviant.

Then YulBlog yesterday night. It was Nicolas’s first time, so I saw it through his eyes a bit. I haven’t talked to him since, but I think he really enjoyed himself - after initially not knowing what to expect. 20 people very few of whom I would have ever met otherwise (different social groups / interests / etc).

It’s all feeling very normal - which is weird. Maybe these are completely personal feelings that have to do only with my relation to the scene. It’s hard to tell if I can generalize from my impressions. I guess I should ask people who’ve been involved in this scene longer and get their impression on how things are changing socially - or if they are.

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