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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Here are two FOSDEM guides, I found interesting when researching my trip.

https://petersouter.xyz/fosdem-survival-guide/

https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/09/07/my-guide-to-fosdem-eu...

It will be the first time at FOSDEM for me, so I cannot confirm or deny much, but I've definitely heard from multiple sources that it is very crowded. If want to attend a certain talk you absolutely have to arrive early.

I have not booked a hotel yet, so if you know a good place to stay, especially near the venue, pointers would be appreciated. My contacts are in my profile.

Finally a shoutout to the Rust crowd, links to the track and the Dev Room:

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/rust/

https://rust-fosdem.github.io/

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I've been to FOSDEM since around 2011. My advice to you is to not try to over optimize your schedule and the tracks you want to attend.

Overall the format of 1h makes for rather lightweight presentations, nothing really goes in depth, so watching the videos is good enough.

You should rather see it as a way to have social interactions with the maintainers of libraries you like, go to dev rooms, hangout in the cafeteria, have a good time with nerd friends, etc.

I agree and disagree.

In general, I find conference presentations are useful in a "This is interesting. I should dig into more." sort of way. I actually favor shorter presentations for the most part.

I agree more broadly. Trying to flit from room to room at FOSDEM is an exercise in frustration. I usually hang out in a devroom that has people/content I'm interested in, get together with people, etc.

So much is on video these days that there's less reason than ever to attend an event for breakout presentations.

> I have not booked a hotel yet, so if you know a good place to stay, especially near the venue, pointers would be appreciated.

The venue (a university) is outside the center. It is has very good public transport connections so I always take a hotel in the center, preferably near a tram stop going directly to the university. The center is a better place for the evenings ;)

It's walkable from the CBD of Brussels if you don't mind a proper walk (about an hour).

It looks like the trams now accept contactless, which makes things easier.

Yep. Stay near city center (in the general vicinity of Place Royale) and longish walk/take transit. I don't know what hotels are around the university but you don't really want to stay there because it's a good ways from where you want to be in the evening.

> If want to attend a certain talk you absolutely have to arrive early.

For popular tracks the trick used to be to arrive for an earlier less popular talk. Does not really work anymore, past 10 you'll probably never enter the PG or Rust tracks unless you spend more than 1 hour waiting outside.

Good news is streaming is really good so a fallback is to stay at the cafetaria and just stream. Lightning rooms usually have some space too :).

Edit: disclaimer my last Fosdem was in 2020 ^^

It's really comical not being able to fit into a devroom for a talk and noticing that people inside weren't actually paying attention but rather just holding a chair for another talk coming later...

Thankfully the hallway is then full of people interested in that subject!

Yeah :(; and streaming might have made it worse since you can now just stay in the same track all day and follow other talk.

You could try to force people to leave after each talk in popular tracks but it would probably take too much time and you would have people leaving early to go back to the queue ...

Last year I took headphones + power bank and watched presentations live on my phone while waiting in a queue at another auditorium or commuting. Worked well.

I have been to well-organized conferences that had the foresight to put popular sessions in larger auditoriums, and it largely eliminated lines and the unhappiness of not being able to get into a session that you wanted to attend.

I would say that FOSDEM is well-organized but they just can't create auditorium.

There is like probably at least 4 ultra-popular tracks and only one Janson ...

I haven't been for a while but there are basically too many people for the space. But it's a free conference and the space is what the space is. I basically don't stress getting into specific sessions or otherwise overly optimize sessions generally. I mean there's video after the fact if you really care.

There's another campus of the ULB and one of the VUB a 20min walk away so getting more auditoria isn't completely out of the question.

Having been there last year I can attest to that it's crowded however that's only a problem the first few talks of the day when motivation is still high. I've got a seat on the greater majority of the talks.

Only two regrets from last FOSDEM'22 were not having some large water bottle with me and not having cash on person. There's no (were no) ATMs nearby and not everyone takes cards.

There are ATMs about a 10-15min walk from the university in the "Cimetière d'Ixelles", I'm a bit surprised about people not taking cards, maybe not VISA? It's often possible to pay with a bank app or your phone as well though.

Expect hotels to book up substantially in advance, roughly in order of increasing radius from the venue. Airbnb used to be a good fallback.

Public transport is fine but moderately confusing, Uber is likely to be oversubscribed. Hotel within walking distance (ymmv) is better.

There are many busses and trams going to the university, you can be as close as 20min away and be in a decent place that won't be as expensive as being next to the uni (there aren't that many hotels there anyway).

Hostel Bruegel is affordable and full of FOSDEM crowd.

Is fossdem Kids friendly ? Is there somebody who came with a 8 year old child to fossdem ?

It's not kids unfriendly, but it is large and very very crowded. There's also a relative lack of facilities, like food is limited, you definitely can't drive there, queues for some of the toilets, so those things might be concerns. Would you take your kid to a large, slightly disorganized music festival? If yes then you should be alright.

Great, thanks. I think that should work :)

They seem to have kids track this year, never seen that before.

Haven't seen any kids so far.

I think it's doable but not a lot of fun. You will have to walk from one lecture to another outside, lots of crowding in plenty of spots.

Public transport is also full.

But there are two bigger rooms (one old one new) with good talks you can always go to

I have seen a couple of kids there who themselves were super interested in FOSS. Admittedly, I'm guessing they were at least 12 years old (I'm pretty bad at guessing ages), but definitely one of the highlights of my attending last year.

Fosdem sounds very bare bones and not appealing to visit.

You go there for the diversity of talks, all the open source spirit, great food and beer.

While it's definitely bare, and the weather was often shit, it's my most favorite conference

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