Thanks to the dedicated efforts of some of our ardent fans and friends in the Fedora community in the great nation of Canada, we are heading across the border for the next North American Fedora Users and
Developers Conference (FUDCon)!  The next FUDCon will happen December 5-7, 2009, in Toronto, Canada at the Seneca @York campus.

Over the next few days planners will be setting up more information at the event wiki page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Toronto_2009

As you may know, FUDCon travels around the globe during the year.  In the summer we had not just one but *two* separate FUDCon events.  One was held in Latin America around the world-famous FISL conference. The other occurred around the equally important LinuxTag event in Berlin, Germany.  We have held many North American FUDCons of the past in Boston, Massachusetts, and we wanted to try a different location for this event.

Now you might be asking yourself, why are we going north in the winter?  Well, as some of you know -- especially people who talk with me and Max Spevack, the Red Hat manager of community architecture --
FUDCon planning is an enormous undertaking for one person.  We look at FUDCon partly as something Red Hat can give back to the community a few times a year, beyond resources or people.  But we also need to be realize when we need assistance to get FUDCon planned and executed, so we can continue to scale our event efforts.

Key community members in the Toronto area had been asking us for some time about holding a FUDCon in Toronto.  They were able to provide an ideal location, in terms of size, space, layout, flexibility, and
network infrastructure.  They also know of our penchant for bringing wifi to its knees anywhere we travel, and planning accordingly! Furthermore, since there's a Red Hat office in Toronto, we can look
forward to a core of engineers who will bring their experience and subject matter expertise to FUDCon. Because many of them have not attended a FUDCon before, there should be many fascinating new talks and hackfests happening at this event.

There will be more details about FUDCon Toronto 2009 over the next few days -- we will be trying some new things this time out, to make this event as inclusive and appealing as possible.  More on that later.

For now, I encourage everyone in the US and elsewhere who plans to attend to make sure that you have your passports or other travel documentation ready to go!  For those of you in the US, you can find
passport information here:

http://travel.state.gov/passport/