I visited FOSDEM 2023

You might (not) have heared of it; FOSDEM is a conference on Free and Open Source software that takes place every year in Februari. The conference is located at the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) campus in Ixelles (a district in Brussels).

If you go to the conference for the first time you might be amazed that this is not like any other tech conference to already visited. It might feel a bit chaotic at first, but once you will immediately feel welcomed by the FOSDEM community, as FOSDEM has more of a family reunion vibe than a conference!

So what can you do at FOSDEM? A lot!

If you are not super technical, you could be charmed by the Keynote’s in the big aula. Keynotes are generally talks about the role of Open Source software in relation to the outside world. Think of how FOSS can help the environment, or enable accessible learning opportunities for students, or how the governement should treat FOSS.

If you are a passionate developer, you will have much fun in the developer rooms! This are smaller rooms where short practical talks are mixed with coding sessions. You can bring your laptop and try out the new ideas on the spot, while collaborating with other visitors.

If you don’t have much patience, make sure you go for some Lightning Talks. These are short talks about all sorts of subjects (Security, CI/CD, Databases,…) that are meant to inspire and inform you about a technique, a software package or something similar.

And if you are in a social mood, head over to the stands, where you can meet with representatives from every FOSS project imaginable; Ubuntu, PostgreSQL, Gitlab, Grafana, … All of them have a stand with merchandise (stickers and t-shirts), information leaflets about upcoming project and much more.

FOSDEM wouldn’t be such a great tech event, if it hadn’t such a great online presence too! All the talks are recorded, so if you missed one, you can rewatch them online. I will end this with the three talks I liked best this year:

• CI/CD Pipelines as Code
• IntelOwl
• Matrix 2.0

So if you didn’t go to FOSDEM in 2023, make sure you save the date for 2024, and maybe see you there ;-)!