The organizers of the developer conference for free software FOSDEM announced in September 2020 that the FOSDEM 21 will only take place online as a virtual event. A new supporter also helps with the ongoing preparations: Immediately after the announcement, the Matrix.org Foundation, under whose aegis the development of the instant messaging platform Matrix is ​​located, has the FOSDEM organizers its own know-how as well as practical support in setting up the Online infrastructure offered.

The annual Free and Open Source Developers Meeting (FOSDEM) will take place on February 6th and 7th , one of the larger conferences on open source software and Linux in Europe. Reserved for the 8000 to 9000 participants are usually several buildings of the Free University of Brussels.

Under construction: Community server for the FOSDEM 21 Although Matrix.org has so far been mainly concerned with the development of the messenger, according to its own statements in the year 2020 inevitably has a lot of practical experience with the development of online Communities collected. As examples, Matrix.org gives the successful realization of the online conference “Hackers On Planet Earth” (HOPE) last August as well as the progress made in setting up the “Project Phoenix” of the German IT service provider Dataport, which has up to 500. 000 should connect jobs in authorities via matrix and the client element.

Since there is not much time left until FOSDEM 21, according to the interim report from Matrix.org, the technical preparations are also in full swing: The community servers at fosdem.org are hosted by Element as a matrix server and, together with their own elements client on the web and for supported devices, represent the backbone of the next FOSDEM. All participants can use it without creating an account , follow the talks even in read-only mode. Bridges to IRC and XMPP servers open up alternative paths to talks and should allow users to use their existing accounts.

Chat rooms: organization via matrix bot All talks should be recorded in advance this year in order to minimize the risk of technical problems. But there will be an attached Question Time as a live stream. A Jitsi instance and WebRTC are also used, as well as an individual chat room for questions and discussions. Own widgets are to integrate Jitsi and a program overview and the matrix chat.

This year there is also a chat room plus Jitsi for exhibitors on request, in order to show the virtual visitors more than presentations and recorded videos . Wherever possible, Matrix wants to automate the set-up of the expected hundreds of chat rooms with a currently developed Matrix bot and compare it with the official FOSDEM program 21. Matrix.org has listed some open points that could still use help and volunteer work at the end of the interim report on the Foundation’s blog.

(tiw )