[radicalbyte]

Went for the second time this year (after being invited by an OSS hero friend I made during COVID) and took my oldest (10) along.

Whilst last year was spent mainly on coffee, drinks and food with friends this year I basically spent the entire weekend with my son in the kids workshop. He loved it and I really enjoyed seeing him interested in coding.

Also spoke to lots of very nice and very diverse people; that whole "strike up a conversation with strangers" thing is what I love about FOSDEM and it's why we'll be back again next year. Everyone is welcome, most of us aren't there to flog something but to have nice chats and maybe catch a session or two.

Thanks to all of the organisers!

Maybe we should have a #hn community place or meet there next year? :-)

[stef25]

TIL there's a kids workshop! As from what age do you think it's interesting for them ?

[radicalbyte]

We spent the weekend here basically: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/room/j1106/

* Microblocks: https://microblocks.fun/

* MIT App Inventor: https://appinventor.mit.edu/

* Hedy: https://www.hedycode.com/

Hedy in particular was extremely good: it teaches kids to code in text in Python, building up from what looks like natural text into real code. The session was given by a primary school teacher (who was Dutch, which helped as my lad is Dutch/British and that's his first language).

She had excellent results with dyslexic kids, it turns out the black/white nature of code combined with the detail really helps them. Materially improves spelling.

Age? My son is 10 but there were younger kids there. My daughter is 7 and my son taught her how to use Scratch when he got home. So she's old enough. Although she is bright (skipped a year at school and the work she is doing is two years ahead of that).

[616c]

This is truly inspiring, thanks for sharing your experiences.