
FOSDEM 2018 schedule - simon_acca
https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/
======
kasbah
This is the first year with a combined CAD and open hardware dev-room
organized by the folks from CERN.

[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware...](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/)

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robert_foss
I'm thoroughly looking forward to the KiCad talks.

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Kliment
Those and also the other free electronics CAD talks - there's two newcomers at
least that have some exciting ideas.

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adaxi
It seems that language rooms are less popular: Guile, Python, Ruby, Lua rooms
are not present compared to last year. Nevertheless there are bunch of talks
that seem interesting to me:

    
    
      - Automating Your Lights with Open Source
      - Using Cryptographic Hardware
      - Smart Cards in Linux and why you should care
      - Inside Monero
    

I will probably be there for both days.

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ensmotko
In my experience (I've been to FOSDEM 3 times) the language rooms were the
most difficult ones to get into as they were full 90% of the time.

It also looks like Python has a main track on Saturday.

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dom96
This is going to be the first year that Nim[1] received a stand at FOSDEM[2].
I'm super thankful to FOSDEM for accepting our request and can't wait to chat
to all the attendees.

Myself and the rest of the core Nim team will be there, so do swing by if
you've got some free time in between the brilliant talks.

1 - [https://nim-lang.org](https://nim-lang.org)

2 - [https://fosdem.org/2018/stands/](https://fosdem.org/2018/stands/)

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Buetol
For the people going to FOSDEM, there are many volunteering tasks available
at:
[https://volunteers.fosdem.org/tasks/](https://volunteers.fosdem.org/tasks/)

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elkos
Open source software and hardware talks this year too:
[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/space/](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/space/)

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MattJ100
FOSDEM is one of the most community-oriented conferences I attend, which is
quite an achievement considering its size nowadays.

A couple of us from the Prosody XMPP server project will be there in the
"realtime lounge" area. Feel free to come and say hi!

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janvdberg
Fosdem is great, I’ve been there many times. If you have the chance you should
definitely go. What I like is that is it very low-key/accessible. Over the
years I ‘met’ / talked with RMS, Robert Love, Tim O’Reilly, Wietse Venema,
Timo Sirainen and Larry Wall by just walking around on campus and bumping into
them.

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pjmlp
I have also been there a couple of times, but the last time it felt a bit
strange seeing so many people carrying around Apple devices on what is
supposed to be a FOSS conference.

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Tharkun
A lot of FreeBSD development is done on Apple devices these days.

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pjmlp
Might be, but the ones I noticed were happily using OS X, iPhones or iPads.

I use quite a few comercial software and spend most of my time on Windows, so
maybe I don't have any right to say anything.

It just felt strange seeing some people advocating a FOSS world, while their
devices weren't in sync with that message.

~~~
Tharkun
I was referring to Apple devices running OSX. Guess I should have made that a
bit more clear.

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avian
I'm excited to go to FOSDEM for the first time this year. I plan to be hanging
around Open hardware and Internet of things rooms.

> FOSDEM is free to attend. There is no registration. Just turn up!

I was quite surprised to see that. Even free to attend conferences usually
require registration so that they can plan ahead and prevent overcrowding. Did
FOSDEM not have this kind of problems in the past? Judging by the number of
people I know that regularly attend it, it's quite a well known event.

~~~
chrisseaton
> so that they can plan ahead and prevent overcrowding

They don’t do anything to prevent overcrowding, and so it is indeed painfully
overcrowded and you may not be able to get in to see any talks you planned to.
You basically have to pick one room, get there early, and then just camp out
all day.

~~~
belorn
Each talk can be overcrowded but the venue is very large and there are more
parallel talks going on than at any other conference that I know, so it's the
nature of the beast that people will not distribute themselves perfectly
equally for each of the maximum of 33 different ongoing talks at the same
time.

Each room is also not equal of size. The key note room is massive so there is
always a seat there, but some is just sized for 30-40 people. When a famous
project is talking in such a room it will fill up extremely fast, or in the
worst case, be already filled up from the previous talk and people will just
stay in their seats.

The common solution that other conferences do with this problem is giving out
tickets to each talk and have people register exactly what they are going to
see, but that in turn carries a equally massive issue in that there will
always be empty seats from people simply not showing up. This in turn can lead
to organizations trying to overbook in order to "fill the empty seats",
turning into arguments and fighting when the calculated probability of an
empty seat shows to be incorrect in reality.

I have been at FOSDEM for several years now and I never felt it to be
overcrowded. Some talks will have a poorly chosen room (often based on topic
genre than expected audience attendance), so a room designated for the IT
security track can have 18 talks where the average number of listeners is 25
but then during a single session the Tor project has a talk in that track with
an attractive title, and 100+ people are suddenly hoping to get into a room
which is intended for 30.

~~~
chrisseaton
I meant things like the food queues as well - they can get crazily long - and
even corridors can feel dangerously overcrowded to me the few years I’ve been
there. Then when it rains it also gets super humid from all the wet coats and
bags everyone carries. It’s a valuable conference definitely and I appreciate
the effort that goes into it but I don’t find it very pleasent. It’s a bit
more like a festival than a conventional conference.

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kashyapc
For those interested in Linux-based Virtualization (includes Xen, KVM, QEMU)
and IaaS topics:

[https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/virtualization_and_ia...](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/virtualization_and_iaas/)

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zserge
Sorry for an off-topic question, but does anyone know where to park a car not
far from the university overnight? It's our first year at FOSDEM, and we would
like to avoid driving to the center of the city only to leave the car there.
Thank you.

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andreano
Looking forward to the AV1 update.

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robert_foss
On which track will the AV1 update be?

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kierank
Open Media track

