The realtime track at FOSDEM 2013 was by far the best conference track I've ever attended. It's a shame FOSDEM organizers didn't recognize how influential it was. -lee On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.com.au> wrote:
Hi,
I just heard about he lack of any dedicated VoIP and XMPP devroom at FOSDEM 2014
I don't want to criticize the FOSDEM organisers or their decision, it is a huge task to manage such an event and all the projects that participate are very commendable. I have enjoyed attending FOSDEM for many years and I hope to do so again in 2014. However, for the wider community of real-time communications developers, there are some important points that I would like to raise:
- In 2013, like previous years, both the XMPP and Telephony devrooms were a huge success, thanks to the efforts of all those who participated, especially the speakers and devroom managers, of whom all did substantially more than myself.
- Telephony and XMPP groups have traditionally had dinners and other side events at FOSDEM every year, many people see it as an excellent place to meet and engage with the wider community and each other.
- Interest in free and open real-time communications (RTC) technology is at an all time high. The reason for this hardly needs to be mentioned. I would like to think it was due to FOSDEM 2013 running a panel on the topic in the main track. My own free communications software web sites all saw a spike in activity after FOSDEM - but since the media took an interest in this topic in June, many websites like Lumicall have been constantly running hot. It is an area of demand that the free software community would do well to tap into.
- The community of free and open communications software developers need to be particularly pro-active to ensure interoperability between free software solutions. Face-to-face (and beer-to-beer) communications is a crucial part of this.
One thing that comes to mind is the possibility of organising a follow-up to the 2013 panel in the main track. We posed the question "can we replace Skype in 2013?" and I regularly receive emails asking me whether it was a promise. There has been progress and there are several great speakers who could potentially come and talk about that, it could be any one of those individuals or another panel.
Another possibility is that we can look to expand off-site in 2014, especially if free real-time communications developers can find a local business or other venue that is willing to let us use some kind of meeting room. There is nothing to prevent people doing that, but it would be interesting to have some feedback from FOSDEM organisers as well, for example, could the schedule include events organised in a satellite venue? Given that FOSDEM rooms often have to turn people away due to the event's immense popularity, a DIY expansion may be the ideal solution, not just for this topic.
For those who are interested, the FSF Europe Free-RTC mailing list might be a good place to discuss such possibilities: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc and I would invite people to join us there.
Thanks again to the FOSDEM team for your efforts for 2014
Regards,
Daniel
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