Last week, I left Paris for the first ever FSFE coordinators meeting. So-called “coordinators” who came to this meeting are FSFE activists, usually volunteers, organising activities and campaigns with other FSFE fellows and free software activists in their local area. They also usually hold FSFE fellowship meetings to prepare such activities, discuss Free Software, attend and organise talks, etc.¹ These coordinators are amongst the most important volunteers within FSFE. Some of the groups they coordinate were started around 2005 when the Free Software Foundation Europe launched the Fellowship programme, which is the primary way free software activists can identify with the FSFE and support it work.

(BTW, there’s now a very simple way to show us your support, and that’s to sign-up as a supporter: https://fsfe.org/support.)

As former fellowship representative, I attended 2 General Assemblies for FSFE, and thus had the chance to visit 2 European cities I’ve never been to, and connect to free software users and developers in the area of Ljubljana and Lisbon (in 2 weeks, it will be Vienna!)

However, I’ve expressed on these occasions that there should be other face-to-face meetings within the FSFE, because they’re important for our personal relations and they’re motivation-boosters. Aside from that, the meetings themselves can also be very productive.

So the mere fact that this first FSFE coordinators meeting has happened is already great, and I’m sure looking forward to the next one! I think we should take the chance that most of us will be at FOSDEM, as usual, to organise something in addition to FOSDEM (like one day before).

Thanks to everyone who joined!