One model you may consider is mapping the "physical" layout of FOSDEM to the organization of spaces where people would normally attend events and hang out. Dragon Con, one of the largest sci-fi fan conferences in the US, applied this model to the Discord server used in the 2020 virtual event. Even though the video content was live streamed on three different "channels", Discord was setup to mirror the layout of the five hotels that usually host the event. Each hotel had a "lobby" (general chat area) and a "room" for each track hosted in that hotel (real-time chat with people watching live or pre-recorded events). There was even a "food court" general chat space, which I guess would be food trucks for FOSDEM. The Discord server opened several weeks prior to the event and included a "scavenger hunt" style process where users had to "register" and unlock parts of the server. Background: https://www.dragoncon.org/dailydragon/20202/get-connected-virtually-with-dis... Disclosure: I volunteer for Dragon Con as a moderator and show host, after 12 years of running their video production team (DragonConTV). I did not setup the Discord server but used it a lot for audience interaction during the event. Best Regards… br --- Brian Richardson – brian.richardson@intel.com – @intel_brian -----Original Message----- From: FOSDEM <fosdem-bounces@lists.fosdem.org> On Behalf Of Alasdair G Kergon Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 5:17 PM To: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net> Cc: fosdem@lists.fosdem.org Subject: Re: [FOSDEM] virtual presence "stands" on FOSDEM On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 07:35:07PM +0000, Luke K C Leighton wrote:

i put forward, kristoff (et al) that it would seem that the logical natural answer to your question would be to... well... actually *recreate* the entirety of the Brussels University *as* a 3D model

We already publish the current endpoints for the mobile apps to use, and we'll be adding some new ones to the feed this year (when we know what they'll be). The model we're working towards is to publish a set of endpoints (chatrooms, video streams etc.) that clients (eg web browser, mobile app) join together. We have a team working on this, but if anyone here has the time and skills to help us, send a message to info@fosdem.org outlining what you might be able to offer (especially your time during December and January). So you would "just" need to digest that same feed and wrap a 3D visual environment around it and offer it to people as one of the alternative viewing options. We already have traditional mapping data presented at nav.fosdem.org which you could use as a starting point for the location. (We did discuss going 3D like this early on, but ruled out doing it ourselves this year as it would be too much of a distraction and we need to focus on the getting the essential elements right first.) Alasdair _______________________________________________ FOSDEM mailing list FOSDEM@lists.fosdem.org https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/fosdem

On 12/5/20, Kristoff <kristoff@skypro.be> wrote:

I do not think that we need to things to complicated and I surely do not want to burden FOSDEM to much for this.

ah you may have misunderstood. i raised the idea of different presentation systems (3D versions of "forums") with a view to encouraging *participants* to contribute, not to expect FOSDEM volunteer organisers to do everything. alasdair then followed up by explaining that exactly this sort of thing had been anticipated, and back-end APIs had been designed that could be used by any such portal, whether 2D or 3D, web-based or app-based. the fact that the very first hit for a 3D online forum had the exact same idea, that plugins would work with backend APIs, this is just funny and a coincidence / convergence. however: i stress one critical thing from some rather s*** experiences with online conferences (and one fantastic one, XDC2020) over the past 6 months: multiple redundant paths and gateways to chat, video, audio and content are CRITICAL to successfully being able to keep participants and speakers in constant real-time contact. in the case of XDC2020 this was achieved with jitsi servers gatewayed into youtube-live, all talks were pre-recorded, the Intel sponsors stunningly kindly offered all speakers grants to upgrade their internet connectivity and provide decent microphones, and last resort took telephone numbers in case of internet failure so that Q&A during talks could be done over the phone. with sponsorship from Jitsi themselves and/or freeconferencecalls.com it may be possible to gateway VoIP and SIP into the FOSDEM jitsi servers, if that has not already been organised. therefore, kristoff, i was NOT saying "do the most complex looking thing" i was saying "do ALL of them" and that's the beauty of the APIs that alasdair says have been designed. FOSS individuals are slightly different from your average business user who doesn't care or know in the slightest about privacy, security, TOR, cookies and tracking. FOSS individuals actually read and review and do not agree to slack, wechat or discord terms and conditions: they run with javascript DISABLED, not just cookies blocked, and route through TOR and other anonymising services. some of them will actually check if there are patents on the audio and video streams coming from a site, and if there are any will refuse, out of principle, to watch your video or listen to what your business has to say. consequently you need to take this into account when designing your "stand" landing page. you may no doubt already be aware of all of this: i am simply laying it all out so that the context is clear for everyone, and we do not have suggestions, "hey everyone how about making slack the default exclusive gateway for all FOSDEM participants including speakers" as was done for OpenPOWER NA 2020 for example.

As I see it, our main issue this year is to attract visitors to whatever online event we organise.

indeed. and thus the domain name fosdem.org becomes the key gateway there.

So, this means

- a presence on the FOSDEM website. (either on the site itself, or just a link to a website on our servers)

indeed. all under the fosdem.org domain. other such schemes snipped, they are respectable reasonable ideas worthy of merit

This would allow us to attract both 'targetted' visitors and more random-people 'walking by', so If this would be possible, this would be more then sufficient for us.

agreed

From our side. We will look into preparing a number of videos to put on some video-platform,

do bear in mind what i said about the encoding format. ogg vorbis flac dirac theora are your friends. disregard that and you will find that key strategic FOSS developers walk away, and because they are using TOR, JS, cookie and adblocking, you have no idea that they even came to your site.

and do some presentations and demos on jitsi; but we can all organise that by ourself so we do not need to bother the FOSDEM volunteers with that.

indeed. however, see end below: it would not be unreasonable to somehow gateway those via the fosdem domain (caveat: who writes that code) now, how can i put this best. can i check with you if there is a possible assumption that you *might* have made? the assumption that i feel you might have made is that just because the fosdem.org domain is controlled by the team, it is *only* that team that must do the work in developing the website source code *behind* that domain. was that unspoken assumption foremost in your mind when you wrote the (really good) ideas above? the reason that i ask is because (and i have not checked here) i would expect the entirety of the fosdem website source code to itself be a libre project (is this the case, and if so where is it?) consequently, with a little coordination and double-checking, *your company* might actually be in a position to implement the very simple and straightforward features that you expect to have... *and they run on fosdem.org servers* rather than being off-site, isolated, and hard for visitors to find. not, and i apologise if this was not your intent or implication, "expect the fosdem team to write it for you" which of course noone would not expect anyone to say. obviously the team have the final say in what actually runs however this is less work than designing and doing security review which others can help volunteer with. so this is, i believe, what alasdair was inviting people to do: contact the email address he gave and volunteer to suggest ideas and help enhance the source code behind the fosdem.org domain, not just for your benefit but for other sponsors and stand holders, and for your own benefit in future fosdem events as well. make sense? l.