Due to the pandemic this year I could not make my yearly pilgrimage to Brussels, but I was still able to attend FOSDEM as it mutated to an online conference for the first time. It has not been the same, but it is still an experience I cannot miss.

Disclaimer: Out of necessity, this entry will be shorter than I would like and in Spanish, despite most of my readers (according to Google Analytics) do not have Spanish as their main language.

It has been almost a month since I returned from another intense and thought-provoking weekend in Brussels, although it still feels like it was just yesterday. I couldn’t write this before, as I have been quite busy both at work and at home.

A few days ago I had the opportunity and the privilege to deliver three different talks, in three consecutive days, in two international events: Big Things Conference 2019 and Commit Conf 2019. This crazy coincidence forces me to write one single post to summarize my experience in both events, including an overview of my three talks.

If you are reading this you probably know already that I am a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, to the point that I joined the Spanish Tolkien Society (Sociedad Tolkien Española) almost 20 years ago and I usually don’t miss any of their events.

This week I could attend another fantastic Greach Conference, an international conference that in previous years was focused on the Apache Groovy language and ecosystem (Grails, Gradle, etc.) but this year has expanded the scope to other technologies related to the JVM like Micronaut, GraalVM, Spring Boot, Kotlin, Android, …

My Saturday finished having a great dinner with friends and lots of laughs in one of our favorite restaurants in Brussels.

It has been a week since I returned from another intense and thought-provoking weekend in Brussels, although it still feels like it was just yesterday. This year, apart from attending FOSDEM (as I intend to do every year) I took a very early flight on Friday to visit new (for me) places in the city. In just one day I visited the European Parliament Hemicycle, the House of European History, the Parlamentarium and the Museum of Natural Sciences. My most productive Friday in months, for sure.

Some days ago I attended as usual to the fantastic Greach Conference, an international conference about the Apache Groovy language and ecosystem: Groovy, Grails, Gradle and a lot other things. Greach is held each year in Madrid but everything is in English, and nowadays it’s surely one of the Top worldwide events about this technologies.

After an interesting Saturday, finished with a great dinner with some friends in one of our favorite restaurants in Brussels, my Sunday at FOSDEM started again very early.