• fosdem
• event-recap

FOSDEM 2025 Recap

Published on February 6th, 2025, 1314 words, 5 minutes to read

If I had to summarize my first FOSDEM in one word:

Overwhelming.

Positively overwhelming and also just in general. FOSDEM is absolutely massive.

For those who don't know FOSDEM, let's take a step back. FOSDEM is an annual FOSS event at ULB Solbosch Campus in Brussels, Belgium. Almost the entire campus area is used for a multitude of tracks on various topics. In total, there were 1,104 events across 79 tracks.

Preparing for FOSDEM, I already knew that apps like FOSDEM.app exist, and I used them to plan at least a little bit of my schedule ahead of time. I quickly realized that this little was not enough, though, and when I arrived at ULB, I was overwhelmed by where to go first. There were so many things to do.

Let's take a small step back first.

Arrival Day

My journey started one day ahead of FOSDEM, as I went by train from Rosenheim to Brussels. I debated if I should fly first, but after finding a route with only a single transfer in Frankfurt and a ride length of about 8 hours (which is fine for me), I decided to roll with that. My trip to Brussels passed without issues, and I arrived at 5:30 PM. I stayed in a Motel One (my hotel of choice for new cities that I visit, a safe bet) and quickly jumped because there already were plans for the evening. A group of Fedi friends that organized in a Matrix group chat had dinner nearby, and I managed to join them. Tasty vegan burgers at Kitsune Burgers!

Afterward, I met another friend, and we hung out in Delirium Village, where I also met people I previously saw at Revision and the like.

Day One

The first day started with taking the train to ULB Campus Solbosch, where the first FOSDEM session, "Human Compression in Public Transport," was held.

Let me tell you something, though: I absolutely adore Brussels public transit. The system in which you can use your bank/credit card as your ticket is absolutely amazing—at least to me, a German, with the cursed public transport systems that are different in each city or county or worse. Whenever I'm outside Germany, I'm baffled at what cool systems others have. I want that, too.

As mentioned above, when I arrived at the campus, the first thing that I felt was overwhelmed. There are so many things to do and little idea of what to do first. More fedi friends were here, so I went out and met them first. We decided to attend our first session "Where have the women of tech history gone? 2.0" together. There, I also met some more people.

We had lunch, and I wanted to go to my next session. I quickly learned a lesson: I should be there early if I really want to get in somewhere. FOSDEM was packed with people (the estimation of visitors for last year was about 8,000), and every session was packed, without exception.

I attended some more talks, and in the afternoon, I was messaged by fellow TYPO3 members who were also at FOSDEM. We made plans for the evening and went to dinner together.

Here's a list of talks that I attended on day one:

• Where have the women of tech history gone? 2.0 (Keynotes)
• 14 Years of systemd (Keynotes)
• Fediscovery: Improving Search and Discovery on the Fediverse (Social Web)
• Today's fediverse: a good start, but there's more to do (Social Web)
• Manyfold: Federating 3d models (Social Web)
• Show and Tell: Federation at Forgejo (Social Web)

Day Two

Starting with another session on "How many people fit into a single bus?" I made my way to the campus again. I mostly did the same as the day before; I met new and old friends and watched some talks.

I also went around the buildings and talked to people at their stands, like the Mastodon stand (at which I even bought some merch!) and the Homebrew stand. Meeting and talking to the people who build software I use daily is fantastic, especially giving them the praise they deserve!

I joined the same group from the arrival day again for dinner, this time going for The Judgy Vegan where I had some tasty lasagna (can't wait for all the "Garfield" comments on this).

The talks that I attended on day two:

• Demystifying Temporal: A Deep Dive into JavaScript New Temporal API (JavaScript)
• 25 years of JavaScript (JavaScript)
• Matrix State of the Union (Matrix.org Foundation and Community)
• Piracy, and Open Source: Reimagining Creativity (Open Source Design)
• Create A Custom Linux Init in Python (Python)

Return Day

There was no bus ride to ULB anymore; instead, I walked back to Brussels North Station and took my train back to Frankfurt. My trip already started off with a 15-minute delay, which extended to an hour after we passed Cologne. With that, I was stuck in Frankfurt for almost two hours as I missed my connection. I arrived home at around 8 PM with an hour of delays and was quite done for the day.

Verdict

FOSDEM was great. It's been a lot, and I definitely need to plan a bit more the next time I attend to watch all the things I want to watch, but even just meeting my friends has been worth it.

Thanks to the organizers, speakers, and projects present, which made FOSDEM as cool as possible. I enjoyed meeting all of you there, and I will return next year!

Some fitness-related stats of the weekend: I walked about 40,000 steps and climbed 40 floors over the entire weekend.