I Went to FOSDEM
leejo.github.io
leejo.github.io
> Don’t do it. Really, don’t do it. Anyone that has been giving tech talks for a while now knows not to do it. Don’t do it.
A few years ago, I found myself in San Francisco right on time to see Larry Wall give a talk announcing the release of Perl 6, and showing off some of its (abundant) features.
Larry Wall did the entire presentation in Vim, including live coding.
It's not that no one can pull this off, it's just that most of us aren't them :)
The issue is that live demos require INSANE amounts of prep.
You have to go over it. Then you go over it again. Then you go over it again with a stopwatch. Then you go over it again. Then you kill the network and go over it again. Then you go over it again with a stopwatch. Then you go over it with a friend with a stopwatch. Then you go over it again. Then you go over it with a friend but you use the stopwatch with no network. Then you go over it again. Repeat until you feel like you're in Groundhog Day. Then go over it one more time.
By the time you give the demo in front of people, you should be so damn bored with giving it that the only reason you want to give the talk is to see the audience reaction.
Having just done a talk at FOSDEM 2024 the main reason not to do a demo is that the slots in most devrooms are really short. In the monitoring devroom talks were in 30 minute slots, which included audio setup, talk, questions. Live demos can really enhance a presentation to developers but trying squeeze them into an already short slot can muddy the message. I would rather point the audience to examples they can run themselves.
On a related point, I find recorded demos pretty horrible. The pleasure in demos is seeing the presenter work fluently with technology and the audience at the same time: "the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!" as Gerard Manley Hopkins memorably phrased it. [0] It's showmanship and existence proof combined--and the most powerful rhetorical device to make technical points. The best ones are legend. [1]
[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44402/the-windhover
Nope, that's the way to do it: it's more expensive if you buy the ticket in advance. There are also dozens of billboards declaring that 'your bank card is your ticket', yet, strangely, only perhaps 1% of people use them.
When paying by bank card, a single journey is €2.10, with a maximum daily price of €7.50.
When purchasing a paper ticket, a single journey is €2.60, but the day ticket is a flat €8.00. Thus, you can commit in advance to buying the day pass, but it's not cheaper than the maximum daily fare with a bank card.
With a 'Brupass', you additionally have access to the wider network operated by De Lijn and TEC, as well as regional trains by SNCB/NMBS; effectively, this the 'outer zone' ticket for Brussels. You probably won't need these, because the STIB/MVIB zone alone is very large. The standard Brupass is €2.40 for a single journey and €8.40 for a day ticket. You'll also need to purchase an electronic MOBIB card separately, costing an additional €5.00. Brupass tickets do have discounts for bulk purchases (for instance, purchasing 100 single tickets in advance), but these aren't particularly big savings.
In conclusion, you will only save money by buying in advance if:
- you intend to use the wider Brussels transport network for the majority of days that you are in Brussels, or
- you are eligible for a residents', concessionary or employment offer - although if so, don't you already know about this? :) - and you load tickets onto your personal MOBIB card, or
- you are going to make close to a hundred journeys, either on STIB/MVIB or with a Brupass.
I think the message they are very strongly trying to make is: don't bother ;)
My funny story about that: the police and STIB/MIVB did a spot ticket inspection whilst I was on the tram after FOSDEM. When I showed the officer my VISA bank card, he stared at it for a second, then excitedly called down the tram to his colleague, saying something along the lines of "Pierre, come here! Quickly! We have a bank card!" - upon which, the one person carrying the special bank card validator came to check my fare. So there we have it - despite being the cheaper and less complicated option, a passenger paying by bank card is unusual enough to be the highlight of a Belgian police officer's day!
If you have people like bus drivers accepting cash manually hen it slows down boarding and you have additional security risks.
If you're asking from a privacy perspective, it's not a great situation :(
- Bank cards and personal MOBIB cards (registered with your postal address) can obviously be used to track your movements
- Anonymous MOBIB cards aren't specifically linked to your identity, but they could still be used to track you as an individual as you use the tickets you have stored on it
- Paper tickets are actually just disposable MOBIB cards which can't be reloaded. The only saving grace privacy-wise is that the longest validity ticket is one day, so you can't be tracked across different days - as long as you purchase the ticket with cash!
If you use a smartphone with Google Pay or Apple Pay, there might be an option to use a temporary VISA/Mastercard number. That probably throws STIB/MIVB off the scent, but then you have Google or Apple tracking you instead.
can those tickets be bought and loaded onto the card with cash?
i think this is pretty much the best tradeoff between anonymity and convenience. i used cards like that in many different cities.
the only thing on top of that would be to occasionally trade cards with other people so that the IDs on those cards get mixed up. but i don't know how much benefit that gives when it is easy to detect behavior changes. one would have to trade cards every other day.
No, it isn't possible to load money onto MOBIB cards, only specific tickets :/
> i think this is pretty much the best tradeoff between anonymity and convenience. i used cards like that in many different cities.
Interesting; the most similar thing I've used is the Oyster Card with Transport for London, but like with Brussels, they are also strongly promoting paying with bank cards. They are making it difficult to get an Oyster Card, and once you've finished with your card, you don't get back your £7 deposit any longer.
anyways, it seems less convenient than a stored value card unless there is only one kind of ticket anyways and you are just counting down rides.
Yes, the vending machines that issue tickets take cash (again, I believe this option is available only with the red vending machines, which you can just make out in this picture[1]).
> anyways, it seems less convenient than a stored value card unless there is only one kind of ticket anyways and you are just counting down rides.
Agreed, but see @zvr's comment further up the thread - it turns out the 10-journey Brupass option is cheaper than bank card payments, so would indeed make 'counting down rides' the best option unless you want to make many short journeys in a single day.
[1]: https://www.stib-mivb.be/irj/go/km/docs/WEBSITE_RES/Attachme...
You consume how many you want going to FOSDEM, fringe events, restaurants and back, and you leave and remember to bring the card (which still has a couple of tickets left inside) next year and repeat.
Every 10+ years or so, the card expires and you get a new one. This has served me well all these years (the first times, 24 years ago, there were no cards and we had to buy paper tickets).
This also means I'm astonished when people show up when I am speaking.
Most talks are just a slow rendition of something I could have read faster. The questions could have been emails or forum posts, with code examples.
Meeting people and exchanging ideas is nice in person, though and can often lead to fun, more spontaneous conversations.
> a) remove the card fees, and b) increase the likely hood of the customer leaving a tip.
c) to avoid taxes : )
I also wrote about my FOSDEM experience this year. In summary, it was a little hard connecting to people without already knowing someone there but I still had a nice time in general and learned about some nice stuff like Open Food Facts, PassBolt, and Vale.sh. Looking forward to going again next year. If I'm lucky maybe even give a talk about something, I've really been enjoying coolify this year and maybe the creator would welcome a guest speaker sharing it :)
Wait, isn't that that euronet quasi-scam, which they do with the complicity of local businesses?
The cost I shrugged off, the conversion was from CHF to EUR so it still cost half what an equivalent meal would have cost back home.
There was in fact one blockchain-related presentation at FOSDEM 2024, in the DNS devroom: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2198-the-...