It is very possible that this was the case, because I honestly had nothing to wine from being mean to people.
I do not remember, but most people I met did not speak english, so I typically talked in slow spanish, and they talked back to me in portuguese, portuguese with spanish or english.
I have to say, I loved the conference. It was a very community-oriented conference of *users*, so unlike a trade show, everyone in the conference behaved like they were old friends.
In one hand: the conference was very large (I do not know the numbers), but they had multiple tracks, and the place was huge, and everywhere you went, it was crowded. And they had a section for community sites, that was fascinating: local groups sharing code, sharing ideas, sharing jokes.
Part of what made this conference awesome was that Marcelo (the organizer) has tried to make not only a conference about free software, but has worked to get other social movements involved, so there was a strong presence from other activist groups that might benefit from free software.
So unlike other conferences, I would say that the "spirirt" of the World Social Forum (which was held for three years in Porto Alegre) was present in the conference. Ideas revolving not only around technology, but around social change, and the motto of "Another world is possible" being transpired everywhere.
The kind of energy I witnessed here is hard to find in trade shows today; The LinuxExpo in Paris and the HispaLinux congress in Madrid are probably the closest to the community feeling they got here. But as I said, the organizers had a people-networking mindset, which was absolutely awesome.
Love,
Miguel.
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