FOSDEM

Day 21 in the #vDM30in30 I’ve written about my trips to FOSDEM, but I thought it’d be good to have a general survival guide, as it’s a massive event and I encourage everyone to come to it at least once. So here’s my breakdown of tips: It’s super, super busy FOSDEM has no entry-free or registration process, you simply turn up. This, combined with the fact it’s the largest open-source event in Europe means that things get a little crowded sometimes. I’ve heard estimates are about 40-50k people over the two days. ...

Man, nothing excites and/or terrifies me more than speaking in public. Speaking at FOSDEM has been a goal of mine, ever since I learned of its existence in 2014. Such a huge event, so many people, so many awesome talks to hear. When I got accepted this year, I got the familiar feeling: joy of being accepted, the nagging dread of the upcoming event. I learnt the hard way that speaking at FOSDEM is very different than just visiting. I ended up missing out a lot of the first day because I was panicking in my hotel room doing some last minute changes to slides after talking to a few people the night before. ...

So, my I may have slightly miscalculated how early I needed to get to the airport for my flight to Brussels for FOSDEM 2014… I try to get to the airport super early, as I’ve managed to never miss a flight, I’m normally before checkin even opens. So, I look at my ticket and I mentally add in 2 hours before I need to get there and book a taxi. Somewhere along the line, I’d managed to do this 2 hour calculation twice. So I stayed up all night and got a lift from my friends place to Heathrow. ...