Friday Beer Event
While coming over to Brussels to attend FOSDEM, don’t miss this great opportunity to taste some of the finest beer in Belgium (and hence in the world).
When?
Friday, 29 January 2016 from 16h00 onwards, but feel free to join the party at any time of the evening. We will be there until the bar closes (well after midnight).
Beer, Beer and some more Beer
This year’s beer event will again take place at the Delirium Café, in a beautiful alley near the Grand Place in Brussels. In addition to the enormous variety in beers, the location also has enough room to accommodate the vast crowd of geeks we tend to be.
There are 25 different draught beers available. In addition to these, there is a cellar full of regular and specialty bottled beer. The beer menu on the bar’s website, while always out of date, is a good indication of the wide selection available.
Beer Distribution Algorithm v3.3 (stable)
After about ten years of incremental improvements to our notorious Beer Distribution Algorithm, we appear to have reached a stable version with the algorithm used: v3.3. We have no changes to the algorithm to announce this year, at least up to now—if we change our mind, we will let you know you in time.
Security measures / access control
We have reserved the ground floor of the bar (Delirium Café) and the first floor (Hoppy Loft) as a private party for FOSDEM, and this between 18h00 and 2h00. You are welcome to join before 18h00, as well as stay after 2h00. The Delirium Café has been extended some more, so we will be able to move around a bit easier. FOSDEM volunteers will help us keep this area FOSDEM-only. If you meet a volunteer or a guard at the entrance to the bar or at the entrace to the alley, make it clear to him or her that you are there for the FOSDEM party. Wearing appropriately geeky attire tends to do the trick, as does mentioning the name FOSDEM.
Beer Tokens
Tokens are €4 each or €3.5 each if you buy ten or more at a time. One token, one glass of draught beer (draft for our intercontinental visitors). For the sake of simplicity, soda (cola, lemonade, water, etc) is beer too—at least as far as tokens are concerned. Tokens may be bought individually or in bigger quantities, but FOSDEM staff prefers to deal with paper money rather than metal money. It’s lighter and easier to sort. Tokens will be sold as of 18h00 (at the same time when our reserver space becomes exclusive for FOSDEM visitors). FOSDEM tokens are also accepted at the Floris Bar—consisting of the Tequileria, the Garden and the Monasterium— (across the alley from the Delirium Café) as well as at the bar in the basement (Taphouse).
When you arrive at the bar, find the token selling booth (look for arrows, as well as a bunch of people in flashy yellow and orange t-shirts). In exchange for money, you will receive “beer tokens”.
Quality of Service
To keep latencies low and throughput high, we need everyone’s help. The easiest way to keep things going smoothly is for everyone to implement a transmit and receive window, as well as implement multiplexing. Send out one person at a time to acquire resources for your group. There's no reason why each member of your group should go and get tokens. It's a double win: less people in the queue, and more tokens for the same amount (1 token costs more per token than 10). Do not order individual beers—order beers for people around you too! Trays will be made available to efficiently move more than one beer from the bar to where they are needed. Similarly, when ordering beer, please take a moment to collect any empty glasses around you on a tray and send them back to the bar with whoever is ordering beer.
The Delirium Café staff is working hard to make our evening as pleasant as possible, but we’re legion.
Laws of Physics
Sadly, even the FOSDEM Beer Event is subject to the fundamental laws of
physics.
Our request for an exception for the principle that no two solid objects
can occupy the same space at the same time resulted in an RSET.
If you find the bar getting too crowded, it might help to go for dinner and
come back later.
Some of the bars will be open until 06:00 (that’s 6am to intercontinental geeks).
While FOSDEM staff will stop distributing tokens a couple of hours before closure
(we have a conference to set up early in the morning), the tokens will be valid
all night and after tokens run out, beer can be exchanged directly for cash
too.
From past experience the bar service has a very high packet loss—as well as
a high number of collisions and retries—between 23:00 and 01:00.
A note of caution
Unlike some other beers, Belgian beer is not just coloured water.
Some beers contain significant quantities of alcohol and will give
you a pounding hangover (as a side note, consuming lots of (pure) water helps
preventing that).
FOSDEM staff is not responsible for any hallucinations you may experience as a
result of this event. :-)
Be there!
A lot of work has gone into making this beer event the best ever. We’ve taken into account the suggestions from previous years and are confident that this edition will be a blast. Bring your friends and join us for a great evening out as well as a great opportunity to socialise with fellow contributors from all around the world.
Location
Footnote
FOSDEM is always looking for volunteers, even for the Beer Event. If you want to apply, have a look at the Volunteer website