Thank you, FOSDEM 2019

This year was my fifth at FOSDEM, and it was peculiarly different from other years. Foremost, because it was the first time I ever presented something there. And I was selected to present two talks (of unrelated content), which was amazing.

It was also the first year I took a free day to do some tourism the day before, so I went to Brugge, which I liked even though it was freezing :)

I wished I had received more feedback than I did. However, it’s true that we didn’t provide any easily accessible feedback-gathering interface.

But for “Watching them watching us” we did not want to provide a Google Forms, so here is a Framaforms for giving feedback on Watching Them Watching Us.

Since I was already at Framafroms, here is a form for giving feedback on ESCOVA too.

I learnt some things this year at FOSDEM which I was not as much aware of last years:

  • Many people finish their slides on the last minute/hour/day. Seen a couple of presenters with their laptops giving the finishing touches to many talks :)

  • It is useful to have some cards with contact information, but people is cool with just putting your email in their phone and emailing you right away (which I think is even better).

  • Giving talks is surprisingly an interesting way of getting asked to do more talks.

  • Hoodies do not last very much; T-shirts vary.

  • Every year the Decentralized Internet and Privacy Devroom gets bigger and every gear it gets more people inside. Great to see so many people concerned about these issues.

I’ll probably update this list with more stuff, when it comes to my mind again :)

@FOSDEM: Great organization, and thank you so much for staying there all these years.

By the way, next year is FOSDEM’s 20th aniversary, so let’s all mark that weekend on our agendas already!

Hope to see you next year!

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