Invited Talk
Intermediate
FOSDEM - what it is, why we do it, and how
Approved
Session Description
FOSDEM is the largest Open Source conference on Earth, with the most talks and tracks by far. At 8,000+ it is also one of the largest ones by attendee size. And it's the largest one, by far, which is completely non-commercial and for the benefit of the community. For 25 years in a row, by now.
Let's talk through what FOSDEM is, how we make it work, and what you can copy.
Key Takeaways
Learn how to organize a non-commercial, for-community FOSS conference.
References
Session Categories
Community
Which track are you applying for?
Main track
Speakers
Richard "RichiH" Hartmann
Senior Developer Programs Director
Grafana Labs
https://chaos.social/@RichiH
Reviews
100
%
Approvability
1
Approvals
0
Rejections
0
Not Sure
[discussed and approved as invited talk]
Richard “RichiH” Hartmann is going to attend IndiaFOSS 2025.
RichiH is the Senior Developer Programs Director and a member of the Office of the CTO and OSPO at Grafana Labs. He is a Prometheus maintainer, OpenMetrics founder, OpenTelemetry member, and much more.
He’s also renowned for organizing and running some of the largest tech conferences worldwide, including KubeCon, PromCon, DENOG, DebConf, Chaos Communication Congress, and especially FOSDEM.
I think a talk on FOSDEM will be extremely relevant. FOSDEM is not only the largest open source conference by the number of talks and tracks, but it’s also fully community-run and non-commercial, now running for 25 consecutive years with over 8,000 attendees annually.
Richard’s experience in running FOSDEM and other large-scale events could provide invaluable lessons for the local ecosystem here, especially as we grow our own events and communities.
Reviewer #1
Approved