A Beijing trip report [LWN.net]

A Beijing trip report

Posted Feb 28, 2008 21:28 UTC (Thu) by BackSeat (subscriber, #1886)
Parent article: A Beijing trip report

I feel that I should know, although I take some solace in the fact that Wikipedia is similarly ignorant. What's a "BOF session"?

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A Beijing trip report

Posted Feb 28, 2008 22:08 UTC (Thu) by DRBaldock (subscriber, #30881) [Link]

A Birds-Of-a-Feather Session.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_Feather_(computing)

"A BoF session, an informal meet-up at conferences, where the attendees group together based
on a shared interest and carry out discussions without any pre-planned agenda."

BOF

Posted Feb 29, 2008 1:39 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Wikipedia fails to explain why it's called that, and I think it's probably not obvious outside of English-speaking countries. There is a very old rhyming saying in English, "birds of a feather flock together." "birds of a feather" is an old poetic way of saying birds with the same kinds of feathers, i.e. birds that look the same, i.e. the birds of the same species. Apparently, if you watch birds a lot, you know that they congregate with their own kind. So people use the saying "birds of a feather flock together" to point out cases where people congregate with their own kind, such as at a BOF session at a conference.

BOF

Posted Feb 29, 2008 20:53 UTC (Fri) by ernest (subscriber, #2355) [Link]

Could you please copy your statement to the wikipedia site? 

little pieces of knowledge like that tend to get lost if not kept in a common place.

Ernest

A Beijing trip report

Posted Feb 28, 2008 22:09 UTC (Thu) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

"Birds of a Feather". I *think* it originated at the old USENIX confabs.