post: going back to fosdem 2026

src/content/blog/going-back-to-fosdem-2026.mdx

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+---
+title: "Going back to FOSDEM 2026"
+description: "Last year I went to FOSDEM for the first time and it was amazing!"
+pubDate: 2026-01-28
+heroImage: "../../assets/photos/going-back-to-fosdem-2026/cover.png"
+tags: ["conference", "open-source", "community", "thoughts", "fosdem"]
+---
+
+Last year I went to FOSDEM for the first time, and this year I'm going back, not because I "have to" but because I want to, and that's already different.
+<br/>
+**I know that not everyone has this privilege, not everyone can follow their passions, and even fewer people are lucky enough to work in a field where their job and their curiosity overlap, so I don't take this for granted and I'm happy to have it.**
+
+## What FOSDEM actually is
+
+[FOSDEM](https://fosdem.org/2026/) is a free conference in Brussels, no tickets, no registration, no badge scanning, NOTHING! you just show up and go in.
+
+Many friends of mine ask *"How much does it cost? Do you need to register in advance?"* and they are always shocked when I say it's completely free, no "free tier with paid upgrades", just free and of course this is only possible because of [sponsors](https://fosdem.org/2026/about/sponsors/), so if you go, buy a FOSDEM hoodie or support the event somehow, it's worth it a lot!
+<br/>
+
+It's two days [January 31 - February 1](https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/) where around 8,000 and more developers meet at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) to talk about open source.
+
+There are keynotes, developer rooms, lightning talks, stands, and a lot of hallway conversations, beers (Belgian beers) really a lot of it 🍺.
+
+<div style="width:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56%;position:relative;margin:2rem auto;">
+<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/QTgzmGzanMnhiwsBql" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;pointer-events:none;" frameBorder="0" title="Beer cheers celebration" aria-label="People cheering with beer"></iframe>
+</div>
+
+
+## Why I went in 2025
+
+Last year I went because I was curious, I work remotely from Sicily and sometimes remote work feels like being in a bubble where you talk to your team, you read docs, you ship code, but you don't really *see* the open source world moving.
+
+It was my first time there, I had heard about FOSDEM many years ago but I was always too busy in my room doing stuff for my job and I never thought about going around to attend conferences, but I was wrong because the payback is huge.
+<br/>
+<div class="mx-auto justify-self-center py-2 font-bold !text-xl">....anyway, something happen and i decided to book a plane!</div>
+<br/>
+
+FOSDEM was different, it was chaotic, crowded, and noisy in the best way possible, it reminded me a kind of self-managed school days (in Italy we used to have these days where alumns self-manage the daily schedule of classes), same energy of people taking over his/her spaces, organizing themselves, doing their thing without much formal structure. The vibes were really like being back at university, that mix of chaos, learning, and random conversations over bad coffee... and I realized how much I miss that sometimes.
+<br/>
+
+I remember walking into a devroom about Rust and it was packed! People sitting on the floor, others standing in the back...BUT the talk was good and what stayed with me was the energy, *people were there because they wanted to be there, not because their company sent them*.
+
+At some point during the weekend I ended up in a talk about COBOL, yes COBOL in 2025 and the old-guy (probably it was a professore) was so passionate about it, explaining why it's still beautiful and relevant, and it was one of the most entertaining talks I attended, not because I'll ever write COBOL but because it's just *cool*, you know? Someone being genuinely excited about something most people consider dead.
+<br/>
+That's rare.
+
+<br/>
+
+There was also this [incredible lightning talk about honeypots for bots](https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4933-bamboozling-badly-behaving-bots/) where the guy was just amazing at presenting it, definitely one of my favorites!
+
+
+## What I didn't expect
+
+I went to FOSDEM thinking I would attend a lot of talks, take notes, and learn a ton of new stuff, but what actually happened is that I attended some talks but spent most of the time talking with people in the hallways, at the stands, or in random corners of the campus and that was way more valuable than I expected.
+<br/>
+
+I met people working on projects I use every day, talked with maintainers who were just there, available, happy to chat, no corporate filter, no marketing speak, just real conversations about real problems. One guy told me *"We broke production last week because of a stupid timezone bug, it happens"* and that kind of honesty? You don't get that in polished conference talks or LinkedIn posts.
+<br/>
+
+I also met some friends I only knew online, and it was weird in a good way, like *"oh, you're a real person!"* We ended up grabbing Belgian fries at some random food truck near the campus and between bites we talked about Nix, NixOS, and why declarative systems are super cool.
+<br/>
+
+Honestly, one of the best parts was realizing that when you feel a bit lonely or a bit crazy working on something "obscure" there's someone else from the other side of the world who came on purpose just to listen to you, to share that same weird excitement about some niche tool or some random problem.
+<br/>
+That's rare, and that's what makes it worth it.
+
+## The plan for 2026
+
+Last year taught me something: FOSDEM is not really about the schedule, it's about the people and the vibe.
+<br/>
+<div style="width:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:30%;position:relative;">
+<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/c3nniY4BV2a9kQz9yH" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute;pointer-events:none;"  frameBorder="0"></iframe></div>
+<br/>
+The schedule? is crazy, you can't attend all the talks, and even if you try to follow your plan strictly it becomes a mess because you start talking with somebody, you get into a conversation, and suddenly you realize you're late for the next talk, but it doesn't matter because you're happy and you're learning from people, not just from slides.
+
+<br/>
+
+So this year I'm going back, but with a *different approach*: I'm not trying to attend everything because the schedule is huge and it's impossible to see it all, and that's fine, so I'll pick a few talks I really care about, then I'll spend the rest of the time wandering, meeting people, and seeing what happens. <br/>
+I want to hang out more at the stands too, last year I rushed through them but this year I'll slow down. Also I want to talk with people working on tools and projects that I use but don't fully understand yet, sometimes the best way to learn is just to ask *"Hey, how does this actually work?"* it's a question that you can really ask!
+
+### What I'm looking forward to
+
+A few things, but mostly the chaos:
+
+- **Developer rooms**: last year I loved the Rust, GCC and NixOs devrooms, this year I want to check out the Security tracks, but honestly I'll probably end up in some random talk about a language I've never heard of just because the room looked interesting from the outside.
+
+- **Hallway conversations**: the random chats are still the main reason I'm going.
+
+- **More weird food experiences**: last year I ate way too many Belgian fries and I survived, but I also want to try more random street food around the campus.
+
+- **Meeting people**: I know some friends will be there again this year, and I'm excited to see them in person
+
+<br/>
+
+And I'm also really curious about how this world will evolve with the AI trend, will conferences become more important as a way to stay human or will they fade because everything can be "optimized" online? I don't know yet, but I want to be there to see it.
+
+## Wrap up
+
+FOSDEM is not perfect. It's crowded, the Wi-Fi is terrible, and you will get lost trying to find the right room. But it's real.
+
+And in a world full of [synthetic noise and polished content](/blog/why-i-write-these-posts), real is rare.
+
+See you in Brussels. 🙂