Each time around the end of January, Brussels turns into a hotspot for Free and Open Source developers. Starting in 2001, FOSDEM has brought together communities from all over the world to teach, learn and hack together. This year, the Tiki community had the pleasure to organise its presence for the fifth time in a row, sharing a booth with XWiki and DokuWiki.

It all informally started last Friday night in the city centre alongside the traditional Beer Event - the members of the Tiki community that already arrived gathered to embrace a busy weekend. As the opening keynote on Saturday morning happened, we prepared for over 5000 attendees by setting up our booth, which involved setting up a screen, a monumental banner and of course stickers. Visitors could buy a t-shirt and see a slide show showing off the different faces of Tiki. Upon request, live demos of features were given, especially on the modularity of Tiki and its feature management.

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One thing that specifically impressed people was the well-groomed back-end for site administrators. Flyers were handed out and popular amongst those who were getting around in a rush to get the most of FOSDEM. After all, there were 52 different tracks you could follow in this rather limited time.

The second day was just as successful, as a special treat we gave out the t-shirts for free in return for a tweet or a like on our Facebook page.

Tweeting for glory and tshirts #tikiwiki @TikiWiki pic.twitter.com/zmTeEjvPv2

— Alex Lakatos (@lakatos88) January 31, 2016

Between attending different talks and socialising, our community members took turns in taking care of the booth. By the end of the last day, all eight of them convinced several users to take a closer look at Tiki and perhaps try it for themselves. But even though FOSDEM was over at this point, the evening at the TikiHouse was just as productive with a wrap-up and preparations for the TikiFest, where the upcoming Tiki 15 release will be planned.

We'll keep you updated on our discussions there with a blog post that is going to be published soon. In the meantime, we'd like to thank everyone who came to our booth and made this weekend outstanding again. See you next year!

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