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Comment by fatih-erikli | Hacker News Reader

Looks like they are presented in a real venue. Is there anybody watching there offline?

Trying to watch it offline but it's a mistake honestly. First talk I wanted to go for this morning, couldn't find d.energy on the map where the talk was to be held. Turns out it's online only. I don't think there are viewing rooms anywhere (either on a screen or where you can use your own laptop) so good luck with that. Lots of other talks disappointing: project xyz about public transport routing sounds cool, but then you go to the talk and they show a few screenshots like we've never seen a transit app before and don't talk about anything technical. No overcome challenges, no tech stack, no algorithms. Another talk about Linux reliability for safety critical applications talks mainly about their project members and management structure. I'm interested in the project for its content, not its metadata. Finally, just now I left a 15-minute OSM talk 6 minutes early to make the Glidesort talk (the rooms here don't coordinate with each other, you'll have gaps of 30 minutes and then 3 consecutive talks that overlap 5-10 minutes), arrive 1 minute late, and nope not being let in anymore so I missed half the OSM talk for nothing. (The OSM talk was actually interesting, plus I was excited for this Glidesort talk. "Why can't we have neither?")

Might as well just look at everything online then, then it's easy to zap to another one if it's not as advertised and never issues with joining a room. Treat it as a day out or networking event, rather than going here if you care about the content here.

Afk now, gonna find a room somewhere at fosdem to watch fosdem talks online, as well as a clean toilet at some point...

Edit: nvm the talks aren't online yet https://video.fosdem.org/2023/ , so can't watch what I missed earlier. Will have to reserve the hours again another day.

FOSDEM is a networking and socializing event with some presentations on the side. And, yes, trying to attend a specific schedule of presentations in a bunch of different rooms is a recipe for frustration. The last couple of times I've gone I've done some combination of socializing and hanging out in one room for half the day.

> The last couple of times I've gone I've done some combination of socializing and hanging out in one room for half the day.

Same here. I pick one talk every day I "have to watch" and spend the entire day in the same room, considering the others talks as happy accidents but the best is the mix of people you meet.

I have used both strategies and yes, picking a track and staying there in the room has a much higher success than trying to run between talks. There is just too many people, and popular talks (those with famous projects as part of the title) has a tendency to create full rooms with long lines.

On the positive, there are around 20 parallel tracks going on. There are almost as many tracks as there are talks on other conferences.

Same here, I used to hang either on Java or X Windows rooms.

Also be close enough to the doors, so that in case to watch something else, to leave during Q&A for the next session.

Sounds like this might have been your first FOSDEM. Each room is managed differently, they don’t run coordinated tracks across rooms like other conferences. Usually the best bet for your first time is to camp a room where you are interested for a big project and use the opportunity to socialize and connect in the down times. There’s usually a big room for Linux kernel stuff as well as Mozilla, and both have good properly technical talks. The MySQL and PostgreSQL rooms are usually good too with talks from Percona, MySQL, Crunchy, etc people who contrib to the projects.

Going to random talks spread out across campus is the best way to end up frustrated.

> Each room is managed differently, they don’t run coordinated tracks

That's the problem I was pointing out

Makes life a lot easier for planners (reminds me of "the best firewall is not to have a connection"), but I'm not sure it makes sense for me to attend again, at least not for the talks. There were a few rooms with more than one interesting talk, but definitely not close to a whole/half day. And the angled narrow "desk" like things aren't suitable for a laptop, plus there is no power, so I can't "skip" gaps that way (and it's silly to occupy a spot like that also).

Maybe I can help with the VoD (assuming these are the right one)

The Glidesort talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0iVKIseDnw

The OSM talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5ZrSccJcU

(They seem to be coming online a lot quicker than previous years, though! I might not even need to record tomorrow =])

I presented about MOTIS Project. Happy to share with you all the all the algorithmic details, our tech stack, etc, if you're interested. In the talk I just wanted to give a broad overview of what is MOTIS. I think it's really hard to explain data model, tech stack, or algorithms in depth in the time I had for my talk (10min).

Massive queues at lunch, at least inside the uni. Train over from london yesterday full of people with beards and T-shirts. Feels really inspiring just being around developers, overhearing talk with technical terms in, etc

Great to be in person.

There are tons of nice restaurants in the residential streets around the University campus - we had a very nice ramen in the Menma restaurant nearby for example, but there are many more choices.

There are some good Italian, Korean, Thai and Japanese restaurants which are a 15min bus ride from the uni. All in about a 3km radius.

City centre not much futher. Lousie is about 20 minutes on the tram

I would know, I live here =)

Yes, I’m at FOSDEM and it is absolutely packed. Like pre-COVID.

Yes, maybe not the 2020 crush; but a lot of people.

My perspective is that there is more people today than in 2020, based on the welcome talk (it was full with people lining the walls) and just walking around. They have also opened up new rooms for this year.

Since there is no registration there isn't any hard numbers to go on.

True, it's very busy.

Usually they make an estimate of the number of visitors based on the number of connections to the fosdem wifi.

The main fosdem wifi is ipv6 only. Amazing how many services don’t work on it - Uber was just failing for example. There’s a dual stack one too.

For me it looks as busy as it ever was, although my last time there was in 2016.

FWIW, last time I was at FOSDEM before today was 10 years ago, and it's as packed as (if not more than) I remember.

In general, my observation is that events are, with some variation, back to close to pre-COVID levels in spite of lingering travel hesitancy and some company travel expense restrictions--the latter of which probably affects FOSDEM less than expensive conferences.

Yepp!

And it doesn't feel any different than previous.

Lots and lots of people

The (unofficial) Beer Event was also packed as always.

Yes, me (and several thousand other people).

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