Hi,

I come from Russia and I can share a bit of experience from the other side, i.e. what is needed when applying for a visa.

A letter of invitation serves one or two purposes of the ones listed below:

1) Support that this person is indeed invited to a given event. A consulate may request further proof of person's involvement in the industry.
If he or she is a, let's say, a bus driver (not taht I want to offend any bus drivers), a consulate would probably have further questions.
If you are inviting - you should probably ask a couple of questions as well why this person wants to go to an OSS conference.
In a way, yes, you guarantee this person has a solid reason to attend. In light of all recent tragic events in Europe that is a bit more than formality now.

2) Identify the means of travel. In case of FOSDEM it should be clearly stated that the person is paying himself all travel expenses. That would mean the person
needs to present at the consulate a hotel booking, airline or whatever tickets booking and may even need to present a credit card or a monthly statement from a bank to support a claim that he/she have sufficient funds to travel. The invitation should say that the cost of attending the conference is 0.

hth,

Ivan


On 21/12/2015 19:42, Emanuil Tolev wrote:
+1 to all of Daniel's questions. I'd also like to help our international attendees (and willing to spend some time doing that). The FOSDEM FAQ makes it sound like there's a legal or moral obligation that prevents FOSDEM from inviting any random attendee, so they have to be a conference speaker to get a letter from the FOSDEM org itself. If so, it'd be useful to know the details of this for other people who want to help invite non-EU attendees.

On 21 December 2015 at 16:28, Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> wrote:

Some refer to a requirement for a guarantor who is resident in Belgium.
 Does that mean invitation letters also have to come from organizations
with an address in Belgium?

I personally don't think the embassies themselves know European law all that well on this point. They keep referring to it as a Schengen visa, which, if so, might well mean that any citizen of a Schengen country can invite the person to apply for the visa.


Does every invitation letter have to be a letter of guarantee as well,
or can invitation letters be issued without specifying any guarantor?

If anybody has information (and especially experience) on the responsibilities of guarantors that would be quite helpful as well. It'd make the decision to issue such a letter from e.g. my company much easier.
 
Could this even be done on a self-serve basis with a web-form in future?

Not sure the government would like that very much, but I suppose if we're going to be making one without question for everybody who asks, it does make sense.

Greetings,
Emanuil 

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