Matthias Mair
First time attending #fosdem after having been at a few different chaos associated events. The event seems to have a very different, much more technical atmosphere in my very limited experience. There seems to be a strong focus on sharing knowledge. Speakers in the devrooms often revered to people in attendance, it felt like rooms contained active members of the rooms topic.
Different to #ccc / #38c3 but equally nice. I will have to attend more things outside of chaos too.
Jan 31 at 6:06pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadMatthias MairJan 31
Also #ulb and #brussels seems very lovely and clean, not sure why I was told otherwise by multiple ppl in my social circles.
Show threadleyrerJan 31
@matmair yeah, fosdem is quite unique. 💖
Show threadMatthias MairJan 31
@leyrer it is amazing, this reminded me of the high quality academic conferences I got to attend during school. But at a much lower price and with less ivory tower behavior.
Show threadJames BelchamberJan 31
@matmair I'm fascinated by this, as someone who has never attended CCC. How would you describe it in contrast?
Show threadMatthias MairJan 31
@jamesbelchamber there are very technical and interesting talks, especially around security and understanding how the technical realm works but a lot of talks are less deep and there is lot more political topics.
The structure is also different. There is a lot of infrastructure, lore and community dedicated places.
ccc has hundreds of things around the lecture tracks to discover. It is really a different world while FOSDEM seems more knowledge-centered.
Show threadMatthias MairJan 31
@jamesbelchamber the lore at ccc is ever evolving, everything is up for change. New initiatives and infrastructure just shows up. Topical sub communities form like #c3tactile or #c3nav and are adopted as sort-of official in a short span of time.
Chaos Communication Congress is a really fitting name. It is loud, artsy, colorful, diverse, anarchistic, democratic, nerdy and beautiful. There are also talks but you can watch them later thanks to #c3voc
Show threadMatthias MairJan 31

@jamesbelchamber i am a boring middle-aged white man but I get the feeling that #ccc is a yearly safe-space for a lot of people that need a break from being seen or treaded different 4 days a year. It tries to be a utopia in a lot of ways.

But it is hard to describe and I have read of ppl that felt lonely - which I never felt but there was some community discussion around that. And tickets can be hard to get if you are not part of one of the in-groups.