FOSDEM14

With FOSDEM just around the corner, it is time for us to enlist your help.

Every year, an enthusiastic band of volunteers helps us make FOSDEM a fun and safe place for all our attendees. We could not do this without you. This year we again need as many hands as possible, especially during the buildup (starting Friday at noon) and teardown (Sunday evening). No need to worry about missing lunch. Food will be provided.

If you have some spare time during weekend and would like to be a part of the team that makes FOSDEM tick:

We need help with the following:

• Setting up the venue on Friday: this mostly involves carrying tables to their destinations and setting them up, putting up signage, covering the walls in brown paper, ... in short: transform the campus into a conference venue. We need as many volunteers as possible for this task.
• Deploying the network on Friday: rolling out, neatly securing and crimping UTP cables. People with experience rolling out networks and crimping cables are very welcome!
• Manning the infodesk during the weekend: help out fellow attendees with their questions, sell t-shirts, ... . Proficiency in English is a must, but if you know other languages, it certainly wouldn't hurt.
• Heralds: briefly introduce the speakers and the topics of their talks, make sure all talks end on time by giving speakers cues near the end of their time slot. Keep an eye out on room safety and report potential issues such as overcrowded rooms before it becomes more than a "potential" issue.
• Safety: keep an eye out for hazardous situations such as patches of ice that could trip people up, overcrowded rooms, ... This also involves barring entrance to rooms that are at full capacity so we can keep the conference safe for everyone. This can be combined with moderation.
• Teardown and cleanup on Sunday evening: collecting beer bottles, tearing down the network, pulling brown paper off the walls, taking down the signage, stacking the rental tables in neat heaps, broom the floors, ... Basically, make sure we're welcome again next year. ;)

If any or all of these sound like your kind of gig, pick your task(s) at https://volunteers.fosdem.org and subscribe to the volunteers mailing list. Feel free to shout out and introduce yourself!

In addition to general volunteer work, we are also looking for volunteers specifically to help out with video-related work. This involves:

• Operating a camera in one of the many rooms which will be recorded by the FOSDEM video team;
• Regulating the audio in one of the rooms;
• or operating the DVswitch station.

While A/V experience is of course always welcome, all that's really needed is that you're interested; on-the-job training will be provided.

People interested in helping out with the video team should subscribe to the video team mailing list before the event. Important announcements will be made there, and be prepared to join us on IRC during the event.

Note that it's perfectly okay to subscribe to both. Just make sure to let the respective coordinators know when necessary.

Just like previous editions we have performed some interviews with our main track speakers.

To get up to speed with the various topics discussed in the main track talks, you can start reading the following interviews:

• Arvind Raj: An Introduction to Sage
• Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson: Mailpile
• Daniel Naber: How we found a million style and grammar errors in the English Wikipedia... and how to fix them
• David Goulet: Linux tracing with LTTng: The love of development without printf()
• James Turnbull: Software Archaeology for Beginners: Code, Culture and Community
• Olliver Schinagl: ARM Allwinner sunxi SoCs and the community behind it: The most open source (friendly) SoC!
• Ric Wheeler: Persistent Memory: Changing the Way We Store Data

A reminder that VisitBrussels are still offering discounted hotel rates to FOSDEM attendees.

There are still rooms available at the following hotels:

• Ibis Ste. Catherine (***)
• Hotel Chambord (***)
• NH Atlanta (****)

More information available from VisitBrussels (mind the dates when searching).

After overwhelming response to our call for participation, we can now announce the 45 stands in the AW and K buildings at FOSDEM 2014.

FOSDEM offers open source projects the opportunity to display their work during the event. At their stand, a project can share information, demo software, sell merchandise, give away goodies, and so on, and personally interact with the visitors.

The list of accepted stands is now available.

In addition to these, O’Reilly will again be selling a wide variety of books at their usual location in the H building. There will also be room for announcements and job offers as in previous years.

We are pleased to announce a second round of confirmed presentations.

There is more to come as we are still reviewing a number of proposals.

Instructions on how to participate in the FOSDEM 2014 keysigning event have been published and the keyserver is accepting submissions.

The annual keysigning event at FOSDEM is one of the largest of its kind. With more than one hundred participants every year, it is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the web of trust.

For instructions on how to participate, please see the keysigning page on our website.