FOSDEM 2017 Schedule

Sort of my feeling as well. I'm usually over in London for another event the week before and I used to take the train over to FOSDEM (and Config Management Camp) afterwards. But as it became more crowded, I basically lost interest. Even the Delirium Cafe event became just too mobbed to be interesting.

I wouldn't really discourage anyone from attending but it just stopped working for me a couple years back.

Same here, as Brussels is a short hop from where I am in Germany.

The last years, it seems that one has to commit to a specific room, or risking not being able to enter anywhere else for one hour if switching rooms, which happens frequently.

Still this year appears to have quite a few interesting talks.

> The Delerium Cafe event

I'm not much of a bar fly, but I've never seen a three-person-deep wall of people for drinks at the bar before that event. Or a line that long for the bathroom... Fun place :)

Sold out though now isnt it?

The lightning talks are good for generalists. Otherwise just pick some things that you think sound interesting and try them out...

Yes this is definitely true. FOSDEM provides a way for FOSS developers with very niche interests to split into their separate "devrooms" and have their own mini events.

I would recommend to stick to the keynotes and main tracks and glance over everything else and see what you fancy.

That is exactly why I consider fosdem as a very interesting conf: I am myself somewhat generalist, and attending a room almost "at random" leads to very interesting discoveries. Last year I saw a talk about the internals of the jvm. It lead us to drastic performance improvements in the last year. Two years ago, a talk about measuring time lead me to dive into theoritical physics in my spare time.

Alongside these discoveries, I will attend devrooms directly in line with our technological stack.

In short we will learn stuff, aligned with our core needs, learn to think outside the box and finally meet great people in a great city, Brussels.

There's PGDay as well.

https://2017.fosdempgday.org

Been there the last 5 years. Here a few small tips:

- Plan your interesting talks before (via iOS / Android-App)

- Be early in the rooms (some rooms are _really_ crowded, e.g. when an engineer of Youtube presents something in the Go devroom -> Popular speaker, popular topics / technology)

- If you want to meet people there for a chat / beer / coffee, get in touch with them before via twitter, slack, you name it

- Want to make the best out of it and come from abroad? Events before FOSDEM: GRIMOIRECON EU 2017 (https://grimoirelab.github.io/con/) and Git Merge (http://git-merge.com/) and after: Config Management Camp (http://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/)

- Get a hotel near by or with a tram station near by. Location is quite good reachable by tram.

- If you join by car and want to drive to FOSDEM directly be early every day. Parking spots on the campus are very limited. There are some near parking spots at the street here: https://goo.gl/maps/4gf2Ag2YktA2 (dont park on spots reserved for goverment persons)

- If you love books, get some money with you, i think O'Reilly has a big booth there and sell books for lower prices

- If you love to met new people (FOSS, tech people) and don`t fear crowdy places and drink beer, join the Friday beer event in the city: https://fosdem.org/2017/beerevent/. But be aware: If you don`t feel well joining crowded places (i mean really crowded like a music festival in front of a stage), don`t join. Personally i love the event. Every year i meet know people. Last year some people from the VLC project. The year before some people who running big public accessible networks in a private college from Scotland with support from the goverment, and so on. Nice chats

- If you are part of a technology / community / project that is represented there (e.g. Go, MySQL, Jenkins, etc.), get in touch with them before on the mailinglist or slack and ask who is there. Often those groups are going for dinner on friday, saturday or sunday evening to meet people they know often from internet only. Most of these groups are open to join, just ask before

- According to your behaviours on breakfast: There will be a small booth where you can buy belgium breakfast (mostly crossaints). If you more like bread, buns with cheese or sausages or whatever, have breakfast before you join the event in the morning. Do it in a bakery, hotel, or in a rush on your way.

- According to your behaviours on lunch: There are small foodtrucks there who sell food like sandwiched, fries, noodles, etc. Mostly fast food related things. If you a more used to salad and eat in a calm location, go outside (you have to leave the campus for this)

- Get your notebook charger: There are hacking rooms available

- Hold a few bucks / euros back to buy a FOSDEM shirt and support the organizers.

These are a few tips that comes into my mind. If you have dedicated questions, feel free to ask them. I do my best to answer them.

PS: I will be joining this year again. Starting with a car from Düsseldorf, Germany. ~2h ride.

// Edit: Only formatting

I'll emphasize a comment made elsewhere in the thread -- be versatile in your expectations. As andygrunwald suggests, map out the talks you want to see. If there's one that's likely to be very popular, consider going to the talk in that same room just before it (though this wasn't working well for me, even back in 2013).

Same problem, different angle -- map out your second, third, and even fourth preferences for each time slot.

Also take into account the geography of the place when planning your schedule. I think it was 2011 that they started using a new building a good walk away (building K perhaps?) and it confounded everyone's plans. There may well be even more rooms now, given the growth of the event. Prior to 2011 it was (mostly) feasible to get from any room to any other, in the time between talks.

I found going to talks about things I knew well wasn't very satisfying -- it was the talks about things I was only tangentially aware of that often turned out to be most interesting.

Oh, and +1 to the recommendation to support the organisers and buy a t-shirt.

Take plenty of Euros, or exchange a lot at the local Western Union. I've been twice, and I have located a grand total of 2 ATMs in the entire city.

On the plus side, one of them is located within the university.

EDIT: I should say, 2 locations with ATMs. There are several in the Midi train station.

The current situation?