[FOSDEM] Call for Participation: Railways and Open Transport Devroom

[Cornelius Schumacher]

# Call for Participation: Railways and Open Transport Devroom

FOSDEM (https://fosdem.org) is Europe's largest gathering of Free and Open Source Software developers and enthusiasts, with thousands of people attending each year. FOSDEM 2023 will take place on the weekend of 4-5 February 2023 as an in-person event in Brussels.

For the first time we run a track ("devroom") about Railways and Open Transport to explore the space of Free and Open Source Software in the context of railways and public transport. We invite you to participate by presenting your work and projects in this space. This will be an excellent opportunity to show what you are doing and discuss it with like-minded people from the community.

## Key dates

* 10 December: Deadline for submitting proposals for presentations
* 16 December: Announcement of selected presentations
* 4 February (10:30-14:30): presentations at devroom at FOSDEM, Brussels, Belgium (Talks are streamed and recorded, but you must be available in person to present your talk)

## Topics

We are interested in presentations on any topic related to Free and Open Source Software in the context of railways and public transport. Possible topics include:

* Dealing with schedules, time tables, live information about trains
* Geo software, mapping tracks, stations, routing
* Accessibility assistants for travellers
* Information systems for trains, stations, infrastructure
* Simulation of network behavior, running trains, dispatching, schedules
* Implementation of railway-related standards
* Railway games
* Research topics, AI applications, AR, conversational UI
* Booking, tickets, travel planning
* ...

The audience is developers and enthusiasts of Free and Open Source Software. This includes a good number of railway fans and people active in related communities.

## Submission process

Please use the FOSDEM conference system Pentabarf (https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM23/) to submit a presentation proposal for the devroom. On the "General" tab, please look for the "Track" option and choose "Railways and Open Transport devroom".

Note: if you have used FOSDEM Pentabarf before, please do _not_ create a new account/username but rather use your existing one.

Preferred length of the presentation is 30 minutes, including Q&A. But feel free to also submit proposals for shorter talks.

FOSDEM records and live-streams all talks. Recordings are published under the CC-BY license.

## First-time speakers

FOSDEM devrooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the devroom administrators personally if you would like to ask any questions about it.

## Contact

The organizers of the devroom can be reached by sending email to transport-devroom-manager at fosdem.org. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any inquiry or suggestion for the devroom.

Simon Clavier, Cornelius Schumacher, Max Mehl, Mahalia Stephan - Railways and Open Transport devroom co-organizers