[mattbee]

My first too; I enjoyed it but if I wasn't meeting up with old friends, I wouldn't have bothered.

Coming from the UK, the city trash and cycling standards seem fine :) There is a darned hill in the way of everything in Brussels, but I brought my bike helmet and buzzed around on hire scooters.

I agree with another poster here, the ventilation in some rooms will just be intolerable for some people. Sometimes windows are opened and you can sit near them, sometimes not. Quite often you will have walked across campus and squeezed onto the floor at the back of a busy room to sweat, straining to hear someone mumble.

The atmosphere around the grubby 60s uni & grey weather is non-existent. But the live streaming is apparently excellent. You don't need to travel to see the talks, and it's easier to quit out of a bad one :)

It's a logistical marvel in some ways, but also a total white boys club, the most homogeneous conference I've ever been to.

[elric]

> but also a total white boys club, the most homogeneous conference I've ever been to

Is it? It's one of the most trans-inclusive conferences I've been to. There's a lot more women at recent editions as well. I suspect the audience was a reasonably fair representation of the IT crowd in Belgium and surrounding countries. There's something to be said for the lack of diversity in IT in Belgium, but you can't really blame FOSDEM for that.

[catwell]

It depends a lot on the rooms you go too as well, it's a reflection of the various communities (in Europe mostly, although quite a few people come from overseas too).

[radicalbyte]

He must have been somewhere else. Saw and spoke to plenty of non-CIS-males in and around K (where the big cantine is with coffee). A majority looked white/male of course but that is a function of the industry and demographics of Western Europe.

It's by far the most diverse conference I've been to.. but I've only been the Microsoft events and CES where the most diverse you got was being a white CIS dude wearing jeans instead of a suit.

[dale_glass]

> My first too; I enjoyed it but if I wasn't meeting up with old friends, I wouldn't have bothered.

It gets better on repeat visits. The first one is daunting, it's a very busy conference with lots of running around and often not making it into a full room.

Once you figure out what's where and the general flow of the place it's a much smoother experience.

My current strategy is to mostly ignore the big keynotes. You can always watch the video afterwards. To me the most important things are the talks where I expect to have questions to ask, and the stands. If you can't ask a question after the talk you can often still talk to the speaker in the hallway.

With a bit of practice and a plan you can have very cool conversations with some very interesting people, and sometimes people organize an after-FOSDEM dinner or similar type event.

[cbeach]

> a total white boys club, the most homogeneous conference I've ever been to.

Sorry you feel that way.

Personally, diversity of people's thought interests me more than diversity of their superficial birth characteristics.

I recall meeting great people and talking about all manner of things when I last attended FOSDEM.

Maybe next time try interacting more - learning about people's character and experience - rather than judging those people on their skin colour at first glance?

[zilti]

Thank you, spot-on.

[bowsamic]

There’s no way you’ve been here for 12 years and think this comment is appropriate for this forum

[zilti]

Is it that bad now here, too?

[bowsamic]

The tone of the comment is dishonest and mocking while responding to an unqualified but reasonable concern. It isn’t appropriate for this forum. In the past this forum was much less conservative though

[zilti]

I don't see anything dishonest and mocking in calling out racism and sexism. At most, the comment is a bit condescending.

[cbeach]

It makes me sad for society, and concerned for my children, that many people on the Left now believe that racism and sexism are okay, provided they are directed toward white men.

The Overton Window shifted sufficiently far to the left that perpetrators of anti-white and anti-male bigotry can't even comprehend why some would find it disagreeable.

I think we need to take a long hard look at the education system, legacy media and social media, and tackle hyper-"progressive" ideology where necessary. Society is going to a dark place if we allow the next generation to be endoctrinated with moral relativism.

[bowsamic]

How is it "calling out racism and sexism", the initial comment was the opposite of sexist and racist. The comment I replied to was racist and sexist. The original comment was anti-sexist and anti-racist

What is dishonest is that both you and the person I replied to are pretending that anti-racism is racism and racism is anti-racism

[DANmode]

What are you talking about?