Seriously, I have no clue why everyone feels like February and March are the *perfect* months for holding a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. Not only does it make it extremely difficult to choose which ones to attend, it leaves the rest of the year (all the way to the end, when FOSS.IN happens) uncovered, and perfect hunting grounds for companies who are not exactly known to be sending the FOSS world greeting cards at Christmas…
So anyway, I thought I’d give everyone a heads-up about the more prominent FOSS community events (there are some other prominent events, but they have nothing to do with the FOSS community). My apologies to community events that I don’t mention here – maybe you forgot to let me know about your event? 
Since this piece is likely to get a bit long, I am going to force you to read it on my website, so that it doesn’t clutter up everyone’s RSS readers and planets.