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With eight people I know of who lost their baggage on the way to Kristiansand, six cancellations due to injuries or sickness, a couple of travel and visa snafus, as well as one briefly missing official, almost everyone has arrived in Norway for GUADEC V. There are some rather aggressive swans; sleek HP terminals and thin clients and at least one argument over whether the sun was setting or rising at 1 am. Nearly constant sunlight is something to be reckoned with. Some people tried Paddy's.

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For Midsummer's Night, Rolf took his boat out to the island bonfire celebrations. He handglides, too. The sort of Renaissance man that every detailed-pressed organizing committee wishes they could clone. More than once.

Program book designer Morty ponders how to layout the conference program with missing bios and logos, while Ann-Kristin estimates needed beer and sandwiches for the registered + unregistered.

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Mikael lives in Lillesand, a little wooden village on the Norwegian south coast that was a timber port in the early 17th century. In addition to coordinating the local GVADEC committee since December, he teaches at ICT (Centre for Information and Communication Techonology) at Agder University College where he is part of an Information Society research group.

Nils lives on a farm in Norway and his neighbor raises championship horses. He has invented a Linux based CNC mill, concrete loudspeakers and wooden puzzles. In addition to doing software development for companies like Ericsson, he also teaches at Høgskolen i Agder.

Nils and Mikael are developing the European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project for the the European Commission. There will be an eXpo poster about the project at GUADEC.

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One need not read Norwegian to know the boat is about to sail in Kristiansand.

While it is uncertain if there will be a KDE v. GNOME soccer game, there certainly will be plenty of waffles.

Ingebjørg's waffles

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Kristiansand was founded in 1641 by King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, with the famous words

"Here the town shall stand".

The center of Kristiansand, Wikipedia points out, is called Kvadraturen due to its square gridline of streets. Early arrivals in Kristiansand will have the opportunity to walk the grid on a complimentary tour of the town on June 27th, hosted by SØRLANDET Tourist Board.

The preliminary schedule for the Fifth Annual GNOME Users and Developers European Conference illustrates how hard this year's planning committee has been working. A trip to southern Norway this month will be educational and unforgettable.

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