10 Oct
2025
10 Oct
'25
3:16 p.m.
Hi all,
We have a date for FOSDEM 2026: January 31st to February 1st
This means we also have a date for Summit 28: January 29th - January 30th
As the person who has (co)organized the last two summits I would like
to start a discussion on the next summit by asking a few questions and
floating some ideas.
• How did you like the format of the last three summits? (Renting a
conference room in a hotel with lunch provided (in buffet style) by
the hotel)
• Do you have a concrete lead for some company or organization that
could provide us with a conference room for free in the city of
Brussels? I’m not asking for vague suggestions like "maybe someone
could try to reach out to xyz" I’m asking if you personally know
someone who has a key to a room.
• Do we want a 1 day or 2 day summit? Last year the 'official' part of
the summit was over after 1.2 days and had we known this we could have
probably managed to squeeze it all into one day.
• If we do a repeat of the last two (three) years (which i feel is
somewhat likely due to how difficult it is to find places that would
have us for free and because I’m under the impression that people like
the "fancy environment" with the snacks and the fancy bottles of
water) I feel somewhat strongly that we should switch to a model in
which every participant pays for their own seat (at per cost) and add
a fairly generous fee-waiver on top of it.
I’m very much in favor of keeping the Summit accessible.
(Socio)economicly speaking our community is very diverse. We have
people in our community who would not be able to come if they had to
pay the ~250 Euro the hotel charges us per person. But we also have
people in our community to whom this is a rounding error in the
overall travel+accommodation cost. (I have personally been on both
sides of this.)
The XSF notoriously doesn’t have a lot of money and efforts to change
this over the last 3 years haven’t been very successful. Switching to
a fee waiver model would allow board (or whoever) to set aside a fixed
amount and send x (where x=10 for example) applicants to the summit
for free.
cheers
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for taking the time to list the different possibilities available
for organizing the summit, and even more thanks for taking on the job of
(co)organizing it.
* I do enjoy the format of being together in a room that is both not too
cramped and not too big (one may argue that the thon rooms are a bit
big if we stay the same number). I do not care for the fanciness too
much (if I have to go to a water fountain to get water, I can live),
but having everyone get lunch at the same place, with enough options
to satisfy everyone.
* One day could feel too short in my opinion, we might involuntarily go
too fast on some topics if we feel rushed, which would be bad. I guess
having people hash out their list of topics before the event (and
completing it live) could provide a rough approximation of the
duration, but that requires even more planning, and it would feel
pretty bad to give up on a topic due to lack of time. There's no way
to predict the future though.
* Regarding the fee model, I can only speculate about other people’s
situation and behavior, but I fear it might make people hesitant to
go if it requires some administrative work to get a waiver, and of
course impostor’s syndrome might play a role. I myself am in the
middle of the scale: the total cost of going to Brussels is not a
rounding error on my budget, but if I can afford it, and having a
fee on top of that would make me hesitate¹; and I would rather not
rob the opportunity off someone who is in a worse financial
situation than me by requesting a waiver.
I do understand that there are constraints here that are out of our
control, particularly that sponsors are of course free to sponsor the
XSF or specific events at any time, which complicates organizing quite a
bit. Still, I am wary of the consequences such a decision could have on
attendance, which is already on a slightly downward trend if my memory
is correct.
Cheers,
Mathieu
¹: those are very different events, but having to pay the real cost of
the room per participant would make the summit just as (or more than)
expensive as, for example, the Chaos Communication Congress, for
reference (but shorter and without the flora).