
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet - doener
https://fosdem.org/2019/
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michaelanckaert
I’m there right now and it’s a wonderful event. Other conventions are
commercial, in your face events but Fosdem is a welcoming, open event. Over
600 talks and some 8000+ people present.

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seba_dos1
I'd say CCC is pretty similarly wonderful, although FOSDEM wins when it comes
to price :)

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pepijndevos
For me the atmosphere at CCC was much nicer. CCC: Bunch of crazy hackers and
makers FOSDEM: Your average software nerds

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ahartmetz
There are many more good technical talks at FOSDEM, though. The Congress is
really nice - so nice that it attracts many people who just want to
participate in a cool event.

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craigkerstiens
While the conference is actually close to wrapping up, there was a great setup
for live streaming this year. You may still be able to catch the last few hrs
of talks via the live stream:
[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/streaming/](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/streaming/)

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ksec
I just read there was Netflix presenting about their use of FreeBSD. And
likely many more interesting things to come.

[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/netflix_freebsd/attac...](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/netflix_freebsd/attachments/slides/3103/export/events/attachments/netflix_freebsd/slides/3103/FOSDEM_2019_Netflix_and_FreeBSD.pdf)

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BiggusDijkus
I'm at Fosdem, it's HUGE. I'm watching Scott Hanselman getting ready for his
talk at 1500CET

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edward
I presented at FOSDEM in the geospatial room:
[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/geo_osmwikidata/](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/geo_osmwikidata/)

Video should be available soon.

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rwmj
It's great, but it has to be said there were too many rooms with "Full" signs
and queues outside. To misquote Jaws, I think we're gonna need a bigger venue.

Edit: In retrospect this kind of sounds bad. ULB donates this huge campus for
free which is a wonderful thing. Perhaps there is a better way to allocate
speakers to rooms so that speakers with expected larger audiences are assigned
to the largest rooms. An application for AI maybe?

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ahartmetz
Just poll which talks the audience wants to see beforehand. Works fine for the
Chaos Communication Congress. The one room per track concept of FOSDEM doesn't
provide much of a practical benefit AFAICT.

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atq2119
I think it's worth keeping in mind that the devrooms are run very autonomously
by the corresponding communities. I actually spend full days in a single
devroom, and get the most out of FOSDEM that way. But I can also see how it's
different for many people.

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janco
My notes from Quantum Computing and Open Hardware tracks are here, if somebody
is interested: [https://j-marjanovic.io/notes-from-
fosdem-2019.html](https://j-marjanovic.io/notes-from-fosdem-2019.html)

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mgbmtl
I was at FOSDEM last year and really enjoyed. I was helping out at a booth,
which was fun.

Just curious: how do you meet at such events? If it were not for the booth,
I'm not sure I would have talked with many people.

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atq2119
You need to have some interests in common with some people, otherwise it's
very difficult.

To be fair though, this isn't very different from any other large conference
I've attended so far. Some commercial venues may have a useful conference
dinner or other socializing events, especially if they're smaller. FOSDEM does
have the beer event on Friday, but I've always attended that with people I
already knew (at least from online collaboration), so I have no idea how it
compares if you're on your own.

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bureado
If you attended FOSDEM 2019 and live anywhere in the Americas, I would love to
get in touch to see if we can organize an Americas FOSDEM Debrief with a
handful of people in the room plus live streaming. It'd be great to have
summaries per track. It'd be fantastic to have speakers join us, but I'm
mostly interested in attendees. I'm same username on Twitter, too.

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Tharkun
I stopped attending FOSDEM some years ago, as I felt it had gotten too big.
Too many people, not enough seats, not enough toilets. Has that changed?

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kmarc
This.

3 years ago I also decided not to come again, yet I did it this time; was a
mistake.

It is overcrowded, because it's free. Queues in front of the crappy
foodtrucks, coffee stands, rooms, everything, are there, because it is
overcrowded. The feeling of dirtiness comes from the unpleasant buildings with
tiny corridors, quickly applied concealing cardboards, ducktaped signs,
underplanned amount and positioning of trash cans and the lack of enough
cleaning staff.

We could explain for hours what other problems are stemming from the fact it
is a free conference. However...

The organizers' unprofessionalism regarding crowd control, speaker
introduction, moderation, maintaining the "OPEN/FULL" sign does not depend on
money. I would think it's common sense, but apparently the moderators do not
really care if in every 30 seconds there is someone sneaking in the room
through a squeaking door. Every. Freaking. 30. Seconds.

Talks were great. All of those I managed to fit in the room, were fun,
enjoyable, with a knowledgeable presenter. I felt extra bad for them trying to
answer questions at the end of the sessions when people started to switch
rooms because of tight schedules on scattered rooms.

Now I have an accountability buddy who would prevent me going to FOSDEM ever
again, unless they introduce a fee of 50 bucks or something.

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jononor
Pulling of a free, volunteer-ran conference for _many thousand_ attendees year
after year is incredibly impressive. I thanks all the volunteers making FOSDEM
happen for their hard work.

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kmarc
F in FOSDEM stands for free. In my eyes, one of FOSDEM's goals is to
legitimize FLOSS software for any software use-case.

Also in my eyes, lack of professionalism (or the intent of improve) undermines
legitimization efforts.

Thus, with all the respect to those who really care about the volunteering, I
don't think it's a legit excuse to repeat "but it's free!"

And don't forget, after all for us: It's not free. I, and many of the
attendees paid heavy €s to fly there, book accommodation, eat out, etc. I
don't mind to invest into going to conferences, networking, meetups, like
OpenStack summit, kubecon/dockercon, Google cloud summit, react confs etc.
However...

FOSDEM in it's current format is best consumed from your couch at home,
following the live online streams. And one of the reasons for this apparently
is that FOSDEM is unfortunately "free".

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jononor
In my eyes FOSDEM proves that the community-driven FLOSS model also works for
producing a conference (including the talks that we can enjoy from our
couches), not 'just' for producing software.

I think we are mostly beyond the need for legitimization of FLOSS these days.
But as you mention there is no shortage of professional events.

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newnewpdro
Climate change is spiraling out of control but let's all board planes to go
meet other developers anyways.

Sigh.

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xyabelian
[http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/) also covers FOSDEM.

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jamil7
You're violating the prime directive

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_ananos_
Well, I thought it was funny. A bit of (self-)sarcasm is not bad from time to
time.

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ianai
Prime detectives were made to be broken, per Picard.

