FOSDEM 2021
FOSDEM 2021 (On-line)
I attended FOSDEM 2021 this year, which was for obvious COVID reasons was held entirely on-line!
It’s no surprise that conferences are being held on-line, but it’s surprising that FOSDEM decided to use completely FOSS software to run their on-line conference, which is no easy feat given organisations like the Linux Foundation turned to proprietary software.
I also managed to find authentic Belgian waffles at my local Londis, which did make the experience feel more “life like” :D.
Schedule
As usual the FOSDEM schedule was jam packed with really interesting talks, triggering the usual FOMO anxiety, of course you don’t have to worry abut seeing the “ROOM FULL” posters though.
Matrix/Jitsi
The FOSDEM team decided to use Matrix to host the chat/Q&A side of the event, whilst utilising Jitsi to host the video streaming side of things, apart from some scaling issues at the start of the event, everything ran extremely smoothly for me, with Matrix reporting over 8K active users at the peak of FOSDEM, what an amazing achievement!
What FOSDEM looked like for users this year:
It took me a while to get used to the UI of matrix, i still find it’s not the most intuitive UI to navigate, it took me a while to figure out that i need to search the fosdem.org matrix server for the rooms i wanted to join, then each time i joined a room i had to quickly turn off notifications so i didn’t get spammed.
However one big issue, was having to use the website to track the schedule of each room, which was also an issue when I attended the real world FOSDEM, but quickly the FOSS community came to save the day, by creating a Matrix plug-in mid conference that would track the schedule live for you in each room, so you could plan your next talks!
Talks
I attended many interesting talks as usual, so much information condensed into a few short hours, i won’t labour each talk, but i will just quickly list any interesting points i found or links/software I discovered.
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/handsoffapproachforterraform/
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/libresocproject/
- interesting concept about an architecture that could act as the CPU/GPU/VPU, speaker was quite arrogant/fast though
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/linux_from_scratch_on_risc_v/
- Just a follow along about building linux for RISC-V, the guy wore about 40 different t-shirts during the talk
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/safety_opensource_elisa_safety_critical/
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/toolchains_choice/
- A well made talk on the state of toolchains and how LLVM has become more usable for building a bootstrap in 2021
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/dep_as_strong_as_the_weakest_link/
- A really great speaker, discussing how solarwinds can exploit your software supply chain (best talk i attended)
- https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/putting_chaos_into_continuous_delivery/
I also recorded the safety in open source community discussion: https://youtu.be/N9aeVwAemkU
Networking
I found it really nice to be able to catch people in the Matrix chat, that i may not have had the chance or confidence to speak to face-to-face.
I got sent some really useful links to read over and also made a few new connections on Linkedin.
Overall
I found the event to be really well run/managed, lots of interesting talks/discussion as usual, just not enough time in the day to attend them all.
I think 2022 should hopefully be in person but have these same virtual presence along side for when the rooms eventually get full.