It was my first time this year, took my boy with me (9) who loved it. Especially being introduced to coding Ada.
What struck me is how kind and nice everyone was to him, always encouraging and he was showered with small gifts. So here's a massive thanks from me to everyone involved!
OP laments the lack of diversity at FOSDEM. At least here we have an example of age diversity :-). But maybe a "Kids FOSDEM" is not a bad idea at all?!
OP doesn't really understand that outside of the US people are more than black, white and Asian. It's not that long ago that the chairman of one of the most powerful German parties asked the population to report people if they hear them speak Arabic.
In the US whether you're Arab, Turkish, Greek, Iranian, etc. unless you're one of the darker Arabs they're all seen as white Caucasian to the average Joe. There was a report not long ago that people with Turkish names are half as likely to get a job in Germany. So the average Joe wouldn't understand that places such as FOSDEM are very diverse and very welcoming to any one of those backgrounds.
There was a blog post complaining about the lack of diversity at FOSDEM a couple of years back. Everyone was thrown in the "white Caucasian male" bucket. But that's less a testimony of FOSDEMs diversity and more one of the ignorance of a certain demographic that likes to look at the world through its own lens.
About 95% of the visitors were men aged from 30-60 and a large proportion of those (including yours truly) could do with dropping a few kilo's.
I don't particularly care about the gender / race / size of people presenting or visiting as long as everyone is treated fairly and properly. Which seemed the case.
Diversity of thought - that is extremely important - and that was on display to a point. I was really disappointed to not see anything from my favoured platform - C# - which would represent conceptual diversity. Which is a shame because the more that we normalise OSS in that ecosystem the better.
It's one of the major languages, just not so much in the OSS community because of the culture of Microsoft hate. Which made sense back then - Microsoft (and Apple) both earned that for what they did to Amiga. However Oracle are currently much worse but you never hear people hating on Java for that (they hate on Java because change is glacial, which is a symptom of Oracle).
> Diversity of thought - that is extremely important
The beauty of gender and ethnic diversity is that it help with diversity of thought as well. From motivating tech for more diverse sets of applications, to making it more inclusive in terms of localization, removing subtle biases in implementations (e.g. music tools that do not reflect purely western music traditions - to mention something concrete)
Its a tough nut to crack, as we don't need token initiatives but ideas that are authentic in the OSS context and can undo the entrenched society-wide lack of inclusion for certain groups.
Society doesn’t need equal representation in every field of endeavor. It only needs to remove institutional barriers to entry. I’d argue those barriers really don’t exist now and that lamenting over group preferences is a fool’s errand. I don’t see those lamenting over the lack of “diversity” in STEM having any issue with the lack of diversity in the NBA.
What’s the line? What’s the number where it’s not weird?
There are plenty of practical barriers in IT tech events, evidenced in having to constantly remind men at events that this professional event isn’t a mixer so chill with the PUA behavior, to stop assuming every woman they meet here at the event is in sales or advertising, to not doing events at strip clubs…
(I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
I don’t know the FOSDEM environment, and I imagine it’s much better than the norm on this front.
> What’s the line? What’s the number where it’s not weird?
There is no line that's weird. What's weird is expecting there to be a line like %50.7% female or %14.2 black.
> (I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
If this is happening at work it sounds like an unprofessional work environment in which case you have recourse. If the problem persists after making the unprofessional behavior known to leadership then there's probably systemic issues with that organization that go beyond just sexual harassment. As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
> Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
This sounds like you choosing how to spend your free time and if you think the "quality" of an event is effected by how many different skin colors and the percentage of gender participate, great. It also sounds like nothing is stopping you from doing that so I don't see an issue here.
What I want, is for people to feel more or less welcome at any event. There are events where this is the case, a lot where they are not.
> As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
"Me sharing my political beliefs in a work environment has a negative reaction" is different from "this guy keeps on hitting on me at this event". I don't want to be too dismissive, and yeah it is better if an environment is open, but for some stuff there is no "cover", so to speak.
(To put a finer point on it, "This guy keeps on hitting on me at this event" happens _even if someone completely keeps their mouth shut and does absolutely nothing to encourage it_)
You are right that in a company event or something, there's loads of recourse. The difficulty is more in semi-professional events, run by conference organizers and where there are many "external" people. There is often no clear chain of responsibility, a lack of real consequences for bad actors, and ultimately it means that there are people who feel unsafe, _no matter how little they say_.
Information technology isn't "every field of endeavor". Its a technology and device that is already being used to manipulate and control, redistribute wealth and is rapidly expanding to reshape every aspect of life. It infamously, intents to "eat the world"
The lack of a sense of responsibility illustrative in your comment is actually quite representative of how this industry has behaved thus far - precisely because of its unrepresentative ideology / cultural context.
If your female partner requires medical treatment and it turns out that it is less (or not at all available) because health care was gender biased for so long I hope that will bother you deeply too.
That would bother me but that's not what's happening in tech. If anything, tech is purposefully discriminating against white males at this point to promote some artificial ideal of race and gender equity.
we cant fix a wrong with another wrong. or by expanding the scope beyond solvability. the challenge is quite specific: can a FOSS conference be more "diverse" when the pool of people that have an interest in its subject is not particularly diverse (and taking it as a given that presenters are treated on merit)
the answer is not obviously "no". My original comment was precisely prompted by that parent expressing how cool the experience for their kid. A nine-year old is not exactly the typical attendee of a tech conference. The topics that you choose to cover. The activities that you choose to support. The atmosphere you choose to create. Those things make a difference on who chooses to engage. People's choices make a difference - nothing else does.
Yeah, it’s a racist comment because it assumes one has to have such and such skin color or such and such gender to be different. There’s an infinite number of characteristics that make us individuals, skin color and gender are just two.
I have organized devrooms at FOSDEM for almost 15 years. That thing about "lack of diversity" is bullshit, plain and simple. If women, or gays, or trans, or people with disabilities, don't submit talks, then they will not get talks accepted. And I'm not going to chase them begging them to submit talks or insert some talk just because they belong of a "minority". That would be unfair to the people that took the time and effort to actually submit a proper talk.
Oh, by the way, I have no way of knowing whether someone is gay, trans, disabled or whatever because all I see is a 1-2 paragraph bio and a 2-3 paragraph proposal and title. Stop blaming yourself for being a white man.
I would really prefer to be at a diverse conference. To make the conference experience as good as possible, maybe it would be wise to actively seek out diverse speakers if they are not applying.
FOSDEM is a diverse conference, it's great. If you've never been, go and then criticise if you don't like it. Don't rely on second hand information to make up your mind.
A reason why I dislike homogeneous environments is because I feel like the odd one out. If most people in a room are of the same demographic, and I don't fit that demographic, then I feel like an outsider.
It is hard to interpret your question as sincere when you imply that people want diversity so they can pick up women.
"lack of diversity" is a statistical fact, not bullshit, please stop winding yourself up. Whether there is "culpability" or whether there is anything that can realistically be done about it in the short / long term is another matter.
On the first count (culpability) I personally don't think that's the case for FOSS communities, i.e. there is no glaring reason to single them out - if anything they tend to be more open minded and collaborative, at least on average.
It is the second point that is the useful direction, whether there is any opportunity to change the picture, not because "we have to meet some quota" but where it might actually enrich the community and make its output (FOSS software) more impactful.
> If women, or gays, or trans, or people with disabilities, don't submit talks, then they will not get talks accepted.
If you went along and had a terrible experience as a guest (for example being the only woman in a room with a hundred men, 95% of whom are fine, but 5% of whom are creepy, meaning that you get to spend the session dealing with 5 creepy men), would you want to submit a talk, with the goal of getting up on stage and bringing even more attention to yourself?
Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating cycle - I get it, you aren’t going out of your way to intentionally make things worse, and that’s great! But it is perpetuating itself at this point, and it’s going to require intentional effort to stop it. That effort can either come from the minorities, going out of their way to fight an uphill struggle to insert themselves into an event that doesn’t want them, or it can come from the organisers, going out of their way to be welcoming to groups who are currently pushed away by the status quo.
I quite enjoyed this conference mostly for how ridiculously packed it was. It was the first tech conference where I was that truly felt like pre-covid times. However it made it painfully obvious how incredibly non diverse the crowd and talks were. With many of the more commercial conferences I was it did not feel that way, probably mostly because of how much support personal was there to balance it out at least on the hallways and booths.
It's a shame that it's still so packed even after COVID. The main thing that I disliked about FOSDEM when I was there in 2018/2019/2020 was the frustration of getting to a talk you are interested in and finding it's full from the previous talk. This happened for pretty much all talks I wished to attend.
FOSDEM in some sense is a victim of its own success.
FOSDEM running out of room is not an easy problem to fix. They get the entire university campus for free, the conference is free and changing that would be the end of FOSDEM, unless perhaps a huge sponsorship pops up.
> I understand that this is not an easy issue to tackle: FOSDEM has no entry tickets, but I am sure that most attendees would gladly fill out a quick interest check to help the organization tackle this issue.
Hmm, I haven't been in a while, and maybe I'm misremembering, but my impression was that the issue wasn't that space was being poorly allocated, but that there just generally wasn't enough space.
Yes and no. For some topics they simply don't have the amount of huge rooms, but sometimes they've also been misreading the audience and had put something that had gotten a lot of traction the last months in a tiny dev room (I think Go was like that, many years ago).
No blame here of course, it's run by volunteers and I think they're doing a stellar job. I'm also not sure if there would be any meaningful response "Yes, I plan to attend X Y Z dev rooms" - if only 10% fill that out, is that a good trend? Is 10% even realistic?
FOSDEM is unique when it comes to conferences. Not only is it free, but a lot of open source projects are represented there both in terms of talks/booths/devrooms.
Every year I'm surprised at how badly maintained both ULB and Brussels as a whole is. Everything is filthy, vandalized and broken. Is it like that everywhere in Belgium? Or is just Brussels?
Before FOSDEM I did some walking around Brussels and came across the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) campus which I'm not sure is connected to ULB but it seemed to be in even worse shape. I loved it because the campus felt a bit like a dystopian cyberpunk world. That being said I'm currently attending Cfgmgmtcamp in Ghent at the HoGent university campus and It's in a beautiful well maintained building. Maybe it's also slowly decaying :)
> FOSDEM is dominated by a very telling lack of diversity
No one cares about a persons gender or skin color. We care about the information that's being shared. Only racists and sexists care about the gender and skin color of the speakers.
While I don't believe it's really FOSDEM's job to fix - after all speakers for a high profile conference don't appear out of nowhere, it's a fair question to ask - where are all the people different from us?
Well, there is nothing to fix. As long as the speakers are picked based on their content, everything is fine. But OP suggests we pick speakers based on their skin color... that's fucked up.
Noone is saying that you should pick someone only based on the skin color.
The idea is to bring people, that for some reason is being marginalized by the community in general, to speak.
Like the person above mention "where are all the people different from us?".
The world is composed roughly by 50% female? Why are not there 50% in CS as well?
You cant balance it. In order to balance it, you already have to put these people into certain boxes, which is already pretty offensive. Then you'll have to descriminate against people in certain boxes in order to balance it. ITS WRONG. Stop grouping people up based on their skin color or sex or whatever. stop it.
“Women can’t face widespread harassment which pushes them away from tech conferences, because gender is a social construct, and thus there is no such thing as ‘women’, and thus we don’t have a problem so stop complaining about it”
You can not seriously believe that there is no more diversity in CS just because "they don't want to".
I have seem many arguments to this. I have seem many solution proposed to "fix" this situation.
Many which I don't agree with. But you win the price of the most shortsighted take on it.
I do it myself, that's why i believe it also works like that for other folks.
If some dancing school complains about the low amount of men I'd shake my head. Sucks for them, but I'm just not into it. Why should it be different for women?
You assume your personal view as the only true view. You give an example which strips away any nuance to the conversation. It only confirms your shortsightedness.
This seems a bit too simple. Representation does matter. It is not a comment about the gender/skin color of a particular speaker, but try to imagine being a young woman (or a colored person, or a trans person, or a feminine gay person, ...) entering the world of programmer conferences. It might be hard to feel included if everyone else is "different" than you.
The pandemic is still going on and there are zero mandates or restrictions. This means people that are at risk or more vulnerable can't attend these events safely. The collective response has been to shrug this off and cast these folks out of society. This should be no surprise that it leads to less diverse crowds. The only people that will go to in person events are those that are privileged enough to do so safely and have access to resources to treat illness if/when they catch it.
White men are privileged enough to go conferences safely without getting sick. We should put a quota on them going to the events to make it more equitable for other races with weak immune systems.
No we should make conferences accessible by offering virtual/streaming/hybrid, by focusing on ventilation (measuring CO2 in rooms and moving more air), limiting attendance in packed rooms, mandating vaccinations and boosters, mandating masks in public areas, etc. Basic stuff.
Think of disabled people in wheelchairs. We don't say "well we better cut back on able bodied attendees to encourage more disabled"... we build f'in wheelchair ramps and accommodate them. Same thing for COVID and mitigating air spread disabling diseases should apply.
I’m in complete agreement with you, but I’ll note that FOSDEM fails even your weaker test: I personally witnessed someone in a wheelchair being unable to access a talk because the room’s entrance (a curved staircase) couldn’t accommodate their chair.
ULB is certainly a fun campus to have FOSDEM on (and I don’t have any real alternatives, given its size and location), but accessibility already seems to be relatively low on the list of concerns.
> FOSDEM is dominated by a very telling lack of diversity. We could argue that this is a characteristic of the technology and CS world and that FOSDEM simply inherits it. However, it is 2023, and we should do better. Having roughly a 10% of female speakers 1 with not even a clear upwards trend is not representative of the industry anymore, and it is certainly not inviting for a conference that (I think) tries to be a safe space.
This is tiring... FYI "There are fewer women in open source than in the ICT sector overall"[0]
I’m disappointed by the fixation in these comments on the sole piece of constructive criticism in TFA: I was also at FOSDEM, and it’s easily the least diverse tech conference I go to, cybersecurity or otherwise.
I don’t think the FOSDEM organizers or community are bigoted or particularly prejudiced. But that’s the entire point: you don’t need to be either of those things to maintain a status quo.
1. In the picture, it looks like there is a guy wearing a teal mask on the back of his neck. This is in an auditorium of 99% of people not wearing masks at all.
If you're here on HN, guy-- what's up? I'm guessing pandemic fatigue. Then again, maybe that's not a mask at all, in which case... well, I'm guessing pandemic fatigue again, I suppose. :)
2. Did anyone here attend FOSDEM while wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask? If so, did you meet anyone else in attendance who was wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask?
Very few people were wearing masks; I was on the bus from the city center to the venue, which was stuffed with people to the brim. The driver announced that wearing masks was recommended, though not mandatory. I was the only one wearing a mask.
On diversity, just a minor thing I observed: Me (African country) and a colleague of mine (some Asian country) got our visas - for a short stay Schengen visa - denied despite being co-organizers and volunteers for one of the dev rooms. The commentary here is that it's difficult (and expensive) for minorities (non-US and non-European peoples) to get into Brussels, moreso with the refugee crisis. It sucks. I'm not entitled to getting a visa, but it would be nice if, like some folks, I could plan myself and just show up. But it is what it is.
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[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadWhat struck me is how kind and nice everyone was to him, always encouraging and he was showered with small gifts. So here's a massive thanks from me to everyone involved!
We'll be back next year :)
In the US whether you're Arab, Turkish, Greek, Iranian, etc. unless you're one of the darker Arabs they're all seen as white Caucasian to the average Joe. There was a report not long ago that people with Turkish names are half as likely to get a job in Germany. So the average Joe wouldn't understand that places such as FOSDEM are very diverse and very welcoming to any one of those backgrounds.
There was a blog post complaining about the lack of diversity at FOSDEM a couple of years back. Everyone was thrown in the "white Caucasian male" bucket. But that's less a testimony of FOSDEMs diversity and more one of the ignorance of a certain demographic that likes to look at the world through its own lens.
But there’s a disconnect here: the OP highlights poor gender representation, not any of the things you’ve said.
I don't particularly care about the gender / race / size of people presenting or visiting as long as everyone is treated fairly and properly. Which seemed the case.
Diversity of thought - that is extremely important - and that was on display to a point. I was really disappointed to not see anything from my favoured platform - C# - which would represent conceptual diversity. Which is a shame because the more that we normalise OSS in that ecosystem the better.
The beauty of gender and ethnic diversity is that it help with diversity of thought as well. From motivating tech for more diverse sets of applications, to making it more inclusive in terms of localization, removing subtle biases in implementations (e.g. music tools that do not reflect purely western music traditions - to mention something concrete)
Its a tough nut to crack, as we don't need token initiatives but ideas that are authentic in the OSS context and can undo the entrenched society-wide lack of inclusion for certain groups.
What’s the line? What’s the number where it’s not weird?
There are plenty of practical barriers in IT tech events, evidenced in having to constantly remind men at events that this professional event isn’t a mixer so chill with the PUA behavior, to stop assuming every woman they meet here at the event is in sales or advertising, to not doing events at strip clubs…
(I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
I don’t know the FOSDEM environment, and I imagine it’s much better than the norm on this front.
There is no line that's weird. What's weird is expecting there to be a line like %50.7% female or %14.2 black.
> (I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
If this is happening at work it sounds like an unprofessional work environment in which case you have recourse. If the problem persists after making the unprofessional behavior known to leadership then there's probably systemic issues with that organization that go beyond just sexual harassment. As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
> Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
This sounds like you choosing how to spend your free time and if you think the "quality" of an event is effected by how many different skin colors and the percentage of gender participate, great. It also sounds like nothing is stopping you from doing that so I don't see an issue here.
> As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
"Me sharing my political beliefs in a work environment has a negative reaction" is different from "this guy keeps on hitting on me at this event". I don't want to be too dismissive, and yeah it is better if an environment is open, but for some stuff there is no "cover", so to speak.
(To put a finer point on it, "This guy keeps on hitting on me at this event" happens _even if someone completely keeps their mouth shut and does absolutely nothing to encourage it_)
You are right that in a company event or something, there's loads of recourse. The difficulty is more in semi-professional events, run by conference organizers and where there are many "external" people. There is often no clear chain of responsibility, a lack of real consequences for bad actors, and ultimately it means that there are people who feel unsafe, _no matter how little they say_.
The lack of a sense of responsibility illustrative in your comment is actually quite representative of how this industry has behaved thus far - precisely because of its unrepresentative ideology / cultural context.
the answer is not obviously "no". My original comment was precisely prompted by that parent expressing how cool the experience for their kid. A nine-year old is not exactly the typical attendee of a tech conference. The topics that you choose to cover. The activities that you choose to support. The atmosphere you choose to create. Those things make a difference on who chooses to engage. People's choices make a difference - nothing else does.
The beauty of FOSDEM is that you can make that happen next year if you’d like.
Oh, by the way, I have no way of knowing whether someone is gay, trans, disabled or whatever because all I see is a 1-2 paragraph bio and a 2-3 paragraph proposal and title. Stop blaming yourself for being a white man.
It is hard to interpret your question as sincere when you imply that people want diversity so they can pick up women.
On the first count (culpability) I personally don't think that's the case for FOSS communities, i.e. there is no glaring reason to single them out - if anything they tend to be more open minded and collaborative, at least on average.
It is the second point that is the useful direction, whether there is any opportunity to change the picture, not because "we have to meet some quota" but where it might actually enrich the community and make its output (FOSS software) more impactful.
If you went along and had a terrible experience as a guest (for example being the only woman in a room with a hundred men, 95% of whom are fine, but 5% of whom are creepy, meaning that you get to spend the session dealing with 5 creepy men), would you want to submit a talk, with the goal of getting up on stage and bringing even more attention to yourself?
Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating cycle - I get it, you aren’t going out of your way to intentionally make things worse, and that’s great! But it is perpetuating itself at this point, and it’s going to require intentional effort to stop it. That effort can either come from the minorities, going out of their way to fight an uphill struggle to insert themselves into an event that doesn’t want them, or it can come from the organisers, going out of their way to be welcoming to groups who are currently pushed away by the status quo.
FOSDEM in some sense is a victim of its own success.
Hmm, I haven't been in a while, and maybe I'm misremembering, but my impression was that the issue wasn't that space was being poorly allocated, but that there just generally wasn't enough space.
No blame here of course, it's run by volunteers and I think they're doing a stellar job. I'm also not sure if there would be any meaningful response "Yes, I plan to attend X Y Z dev rooms" - if only 10% fill that out, is that a good trend? Is 10% even realistic?
Having said that, it adds to the charm of universities and I guess you have older and newer campus buildings in every school.
This, and a lack of funding.
No one cares about a persons gender or skin color. We care about the information that's being shared. Only racists and sexists care about the gender and skin color of the speakers.
Like the person above mention "where are all the people different from us?". The world is composed roughly by 50% female? Why are not there 50% in CS as well?
You are assuming a lot there. I haven’t done and said none of it. I never advocated for quotas.
> You cant balance it.
You can’t indeed if you deny there may be a problem in the first place.
I have seem many arguments to this. I have seem many solution proposed to "fix" this situation. Many which I don't agree with. But you win the price of the most shortsighted take on it.
If some dancing school complains about the low amount of men I'd shake my head. Sucks for them, but I'm just not into it. Why should it be different for women?
Also, you could offer a counter-explanation.
Think of disabled people in wheelchairs. We don't say "well we better cut back on able bodied attendees to encourage more disabled"... we build f'in wheelchair ramps and accommodate them. Same thing for COVID and mitigating air spread disabling diseases should apply.
ULB is certainly a fun campus to have FOSDEM on (and I don’t have any real alternatives, given its size and location), but accessibility already seems to be relatively low on the list of concerns.
This is tiring... FYI "There are fewer women in open source than in the ICT sector overall"[0]
[0] -- https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...
I don’t think the FOSDEM organizers or community are bigoted or particularly prejudiced. But that’s the entire point: you don’t need to be either of those things to maintain a status quo.
If you're here on HN, guy-- what's up? I'm guessing pandemic fatigue. Then again, maybe that's not a mask at all, in which case... well, I'm guessing pandemic fatigue again, I suppose. :)
2. Did anyone here attend FOSDEM while wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask? If so, did you meet anyone else in attendance who was wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask?
Of the people wearing masks, most were wearing form-fitting N95s or similar. I didn’t see any DIY masks.
Was it a (DIY) fit-tested N95? :)