Hi,

Comments inline below. It might be lengthy, bear with me.

On 04/02/2025 08.22, Daniel Gultsch wrote:

Hi Guus,

thank you for bringing this up.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 3:32 PM Guus der Kinderen
<guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:

If the term "XMPP" attracts such attention from the FOSDEM crowd, we should consider using it more explicitly during FOSDEM. Specifically, I'd like us to consider renaming the name of our stand "the Realtime Lounge" into something that contains the letters "XMPP". I believe that this would help a lot for recognition with the public.

People that now look through the list of stands on FOSDEM's website, or on the printed maps at the venue itself, do not see "XMPP" anywhere. I believe it would be helpful if they would. For the years that I've visited, I cannot recall having a non-XMPP presence in our stand, so I don't think that we would be excluding projects or people by implementing a rename (but please do correct me if I'm wrong).

I agree. The booth should be called: (Jabber) XMPP Standards Foundation
or something close that ideally contains both the words Jabber as well as XMPP.

This is both for discoverability for people that want to find us as
well as for just raising awareness that XMPP is still a thing. I
believe that even if people don’t decide to come by our stand just
reading the name in the booklet or the listing on the website can have
positive effects.

A bit of history. After Edwin and I had organized the Jabber / XMPP booth for many years, in 2011 the community discussed the concept of a sort of Lounge for realtime technologies, at and around the &yet confererence titled the "The Keeping it Realtime Conference". This resulted in a conversation with the FOSDEM organizing team to find a location with more room than a regular stand (we used to be able to get two tables back then), where we could have a relaxed atmosphere and show off realtime projects. The intent was having proper demos alongside the cushions and tables, etc.

As FOSDEM would be using the new K building for the first time in 2012, we had the opportunity to work with them to pick a location, which ended up being the place have been ever since. But initially it was just us, then a few years together with Jitsi, and then various setups after that. For a long time we also brought our own lighting and the printed bean bags came in 2014.

I see the point of the branding. One of the reasons why we've used Realtime Lounge, rather than XMPP Standards Foundation or XMPP / Jabber, is that with the enormous increase in popularity and size of the event, and the decline of XMPP in the public eye, we weren't sure that we'd get accepted that way. And while I am not convinced that it has really hurt our cause, I agree that we could totally name it something like "Realtime Lounge by XMPP Standards Foundation" or something, just like NLNet did. I am not sure if the name Jabber brings us anything significantly, until (if ever), we will actively start using that name in our community again. I say the latter with sadness.

A secondary, but to me separate, change that we might consider is moving away from the "lounge" concept. Although it's nice to have a place to chill out, those bean bags also take up a lot of space. From what I've seen in the past few years, the lounge is almost exclusively used by people manning the stands (myself included), and not so much by visitors. I don't believe it's doing much these days to help us engage in conversations with FOSDEM visitors. Maybe we can find a better use for that space in future editions of FOSDEM.

Please share your thoughts on this. I'm conscious that much of what we do is rooted in tradition and history, and I certainly don't want to trample on that - but if there is generic consensus that some changes may be desirable, it's something that we can consider for 2026.

I haven’t been at our FOSDEM stand in a while but last time I have I
made similar observations as Guus. No guest ever comes into the
"lounge" part.

Unfortunately, the concept of doing various demos was mostly lost, because we have not been great at planning ahead. I think the concept would still work if we would put some time into it. And yes, they would probably still all be XMPP-based anyway, but I'd very much love to see collaborations with other projects, too.

In some years the area was planned with too many other projects for the lounge to work as intended. However, we've always had common visitors in the lounge area, including this year, and I have personally discussed realtime technologies with them, as did others. 2024 was particularly great because for the first time in a long time, we had the whole area to ourselves and many more visitors hung out there. Also, discussions between us are of value.

I am not happy about how we had 4 projects in this year's event, and I tried fixing that with the organizers beforehand. The broken lighting didn't help either, although that affected the other projects much more than us. When we still brought our own lights, we actually disconnected the fluorescent tubes to make it more loungy.

But the thing I want to point out is this: having the Lounge is a privilege born out of our long-term presence at the event, as well as good standing with the FOSDEM organizers. No other project has something like it, or is likely to gain that opportunity. Even if we don't do much with the seating area right now, it provides us with way more room for our booth (even with 3 other projects) than any other project. Imagine the XMPP booth being a single table between FOSSAsia and VideoLan. Also consider that we may not be accepted that way, given that demand for a booth is much higher than supply.

I don't particularly care if it is tradition that we do it like this every year. The concept probably can use some fresh ideas and effort. I am looking forward to suggestions and actual help for making them work out. I'd love to make us talk of the town (again).

Also note that I have talked to the person currently responsible for all the stands. They are “scouting an interesting option for FOSDEM 2026”, so I hope to follow-up with them on that. Whether that would be better is to be seen, but let's not throw away the opportunity to do something more than just a one-table stand.

Let's consider what we want to get out of (being at) FOSDEM. For me, it is not just telling people about XMPP or accepting donations to give out swag. It is also to spend more time with people in our community.

In the early days, we've also "bracketed" FOSDEM, by doing a hackathon on Friday and the Summit on Monday, to make it a true 4-day event. If I remember correctly, we've moved away from that because not everybody wanted to be at FOSDEM. We used to have a full day of XMPP presentations in the devroom, but here too there is a lot of competition. So this year we only had half a day, with just one presentation on XMPP. I think we can do better there, too.

In any case, I'm happy to continue hauling our gear and do many things, but if we want change, I need somebody to step up and organize that.

--

Cheers,

ralphm