About : FOSDEM-2017
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.
Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. This was my 4th time attending FOSDEM — this time sponsored as one of the speakers.
Mozilla had a dedicated devroom on Saturday and a booth in both days. The talks in the devroom were organized as a real conference — with an open call for papers to all mozillians and supporters, and then a selection. From 18 speakers/17 talks I am proud to say that half of them are volunteers! For me it really shows the commitment of Mozilla’s community on pushing the mission forward. All talks had great audience, most of them with more than 300 attendees. The schedule can be consulted here.
One of my contribution area in Mozilla is WebCompat where I report issues I find online on different websites, and some times I try to help with others steps too — triage or contact the platforms. As my experiences, and so my issues reported, are from mobile side, I did want to emphasize this side so this talk arose as topic based on this — (Mobile) Web Compatibility ftw! It was about WebCompat — more on why it is important, how to check if a product is compatible with other browsers too, how to report issues and how to contribute, etc. Slides are available here and video here. If you attended the talk or watched it online (sorry for the crappy audio) please let me know your opinion here. Also gathered some impressions about my talk from twitterland in a storify entry.
I do recommend you to dig into the schedule and try to watch the recordings. I’ve attended them all and tried to tweet about them too. I am proud all talks got good audience, people were into the topics and asked questions or gave feedback. I would say it was one of the best year for our devroom — at least from ones I have attended.
I do not want to mix politics with the conferences’ world but I did want to send my support at home, to my friends and fellow citizens that were protesting against corruption. #REZIST
After we finished with the DevRoom, I separated myself from the Mozilla Group and I had a dinner invitation from Facebook to theirs Thought Leaders — Facebook Speakers Dinner. I did not know what to expect to be honest but I went open minded and curious. I was happy that it turned out as a chill dinner and talks, no product placements nor presentations, just networking and really nice people. And I got some swag..
After the craziness of Saturday I decided to take it easily on Sunday. As you might know, I love running (follow me on Strava) so I have decided to explore a bit Brussels in the morning. As I did not have much time — I went for a quickie in the center.
Around noon I went to FOSDEM and decided to check the booths as I did not see any on Saturday. I am always curious to see what’s new and test new things. The booth I liked the most this year was the OpenQA one from OpenSuse — I loved the visualization of the tests, the easiness to spot the issues, etc. But nevertheless I visited others too.. Check Cissy making friends..
Overall, there were two full days of awesomeness! And i am not trying to amplify the facts! My main take away was the interactions with the great people present there. There is no chance to get to all the talks you want so I went prepared — no disappointments if a room was full already nor if u get stuck in line for food or beverages — you meet amazing people along the way and I was happy about that. I only attended one session about building communities, but met old and new friends so I’ve made peace with my expectations. Big shout out to Claire, I missed her so much in Mozland and hope to keep in touch and another shout out for Kohsuke Kawaguchi a dear OSOM friend.
I am definitely going next year too, and If I love Free and Open Source — my only advice to you would be to come along too.
