That seems like a good idea. I'm not sure staff have the bandwidth (or expertise!) for tagging all talks well, so I assume you're thinking submitters self-tag? (with suggestions on previous tags)

It'd be challenging to implement across the large range of topics and quantity of talks but the content exploration UIs you could build on it would certainly add value to visitors. I imagine the most practical route would be processing the penta XML or iCal and essentially tacking on the tag info, then surfacing it in a simple way. Like a list of URLs to the fosdem.org pages of the talks in each tag. We'll happily link back to it from the bottom of the programme page, warning that it's experimental. Going "3rd party" on it means you avoid the twin problems of figuring out how to do it in the actual FOSDEM systems (penta + website) and staff's limited time - I don't think any of us can implement this for this year. Plus the data you'd need to enhance with tags is already available (or will be when the talks are up for this year's edition).

If I can do it quickly, I may also try to write down tags that come to mind while reviewing talks this year. Perhaps some very general topics are taggable by staff.

Cheers,

Emanuil