The first Sugar Camp took place yesterday in Paris. It was an joint effort by OLPC France and Sugar Labs. I was very happy to have been there!

The venue, La Cantine, is a large bar/conference area: informal, with a fast wireless internet connection, presentation facilities and a small, but more orderly, office space upstairs. It's located in the heart of Paris, just off crowded shopping streets and traffic.

My initial impressions were disheartening. It all looked chaotic - I likened it to the archetypal 'bazaar' (from Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"), but somehow even more so... Shortly after I arrived - very late! - the meeting got under way, with introductions from attendees and a schedule drawn up rapidly on a blackboard. This was accompanied by an invitation to change or add anything at whim. A small camera crew (accompanied by long trailing cables!) recorded key events.

(This fluidity of organisation continued throughout the day: scheduled events morphed between the organised and chaotic, forming around persons or people, shifting and reforming as interests 'forked' in the best open source tradition.)

Yet it was only when I mingled and interacted that I realised the genuine atmosphere of dynamism and purpose. Here was passion, diversity and knowledge, driven forward by a common OLPC/Sugar vision.

Lunch time punctuated proceedings with unlimited free pizza and drinks (sincere thanks to the organisers!), followed by an interview with Sugar's Walter Bender.

Caroline Meeks talked about Sugar-on-a-stick: the Sugar operating system on a USB flash drive, which enables a stock PC to boot directly into a Sugar environment. Walter Bender, in between coding and demonstrating, discussed the Sugar interface with some fascinated individuals. The developer in charge of the XO school Server led a session. A group of Sugar developers clustered together to try to coax an Intel Classmate to full functionality. Elsewhere there was a workshop on an OLPC project in Madagascar, and another with the GCompris developer, and further myriad 'mini' workshops and demonstrations. Scattered around were XO laptops, and an equivalent number of 'netbooks'.

So was it worth the long, early morning train journey from London? Sure it was! How else would I have met such wonderful people as Caroline Meeks, Walter Bender, Giulia D'Amico, Adam Holt and many others...?