"I spent most of last week attending CONSOL 2003 in Mexico City. It was a lovely conference, heavy on technical and advocacy discussion and light on marketing hype. It reminded me of U.S. Linux gatherings back in 1997 and 1998. Indeed, the Open Source movement in Mexico in general seems to be five or six years behind the U.S. right now, but it's catching up fast.
"This was the second CONSOL. About 500 people were there, up from approximately 300 who attended the first version in 2002. It was held at (and partially sponsored by) the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. There were over 120 different roundtable workshops, discussions and speeches (including one by this reporter) over the course of four days (Feb 5 - 8), starting at 9 a.m. and running to 9 p.m. daily. Organizing all of this was a gargantuan task, much of which fell on the shoulders of Gunnar Wolf, a sysadmin at the nearby Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which graciously gave him a month's paid leave to help organize the conference..."
