141 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
141 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "FOSDEM 2023: Matrix’s first physical devroom"
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date = "2023-02-09T21:12:10Z"
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updated = "2023-02-09T17:02:40Z"
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path = "/blog/2023/02/09/finally-a-hybrid-conference-that-worked"
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[taxonomies]
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author = ["Thib"]
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category = ["conferences", "fosdem"]
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[extra]
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image = "https://matrix.org/blog/img/fosdem2023_stand_blurred.jpg"
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+++
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For the past two years, FOSDEM couldn’t happen in-person. Fortunately we could
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help, and Matrix hosted the world's largest free & open source software
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conference online! This year we were finally back in-person… but not only.
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[The set-up we have arranged in 2021](https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021-on-matrix)
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and [polished in 2022](https://matrix.org/blog/2022/02/07/hosting-fosdem-2022-on-matrix)
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has proved to be robust and served us well during the pandemic. Returning to an
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in-person conference didn’t mean we had to throw it all away… quite the
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opposite!
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<!-- more -->
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This year the OSS community could gather in-person, go see each other’s stands,
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and attend all too few of all the fascinating talks the speakers had prepared
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for us… but the conference was yet more.. Some of us couldn’t make it in person
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but could attend FOSDEM online from its Matrix Space. Devrooms were broadcasted
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live into the Matrix rooms where devroom managers and speakers could interact
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with the online audience.
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In total, thousands of users joined us online, both locally and remotely as
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seen from the FOSDEM homeserver: an amazing audience given the possibility to be
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on site.
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For us, it was also an opportunity to announce Matrix 2.0 to a live audience!
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Matrix 2.0 doesn’t mean we’re making breaking changes in the spec. It’s more of
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a nickname we gave to the milestone [we had promised in summer to deliver by the
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end of the year](https://matrix.org/blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special-2022#matrix-20)
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and had far too much giving the mother of all demos to a packed room of nearly
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1500 people.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="eUPJ9zFV5IE") }}
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## The first ever in-person Matrix devroom
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This year was also the first ever in-person devroom for the Matrix Foundation
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and Community. We had many proposals and could have used the whole day, but we
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had to share with many other deserving communities. We’re extremely grateful to
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FOSDEM organisers for the devroom… and it was a huge success! At many points the
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room was completely packed, with no seats left at all.
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We could [shoehorn 8 talks](https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/track/matrix/) in
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the in-person devroom. Picking them was really difficult! When one of the
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speakers unfortunately called in sick, the devroom healed the wound and filled
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the gap very quickly.
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The devroom started with a quick intro to Matrix from Matthew & Amandine.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="dPgYy-Y4f7w") }}
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Florian followed with a talk about MatrixRTC to explore what Matrix can do
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beyond instant messaging
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="P--LwIB3deA") }}
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Then Matthew did an awesome demo of Third Room and “3D widgets” (user generated
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content) that can be embedded into its worlds. Of course with a nice “The Matrix
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in Matrix” scene.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="nG8qJ4on00Y") }}
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Stunning 3D worlds are great, but the most popular use case for Matrix today is
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instant messaging. And we did a lot as the Matrix Foundation to significantly
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improve the performance with Sliding Sync, using matrix-rust-sdk as the showcase
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implementation. Kegan and Ben covered Sliding Sync and matrix-rust-sdk
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respectively, while Mauro showed us how Element X, the first client to use it,
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doesn’t stop here and goes way beyond to provide a snappy, sturdy, polished
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client.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="5iIs1zWuVOU") }}
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Kim and Oliver from Nordeck made an interesting presentation about how widgets
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can make Matrix a rich app creation environment.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="hhEUe414scU") }}
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The Trixnity project then introduced their fast, multi-purpose, well-tested SDK.
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A talk you don’t want to miss, particularly if you’re into Kotlin.
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="zDftIZm-DZ0") }}
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Pierre from Technostructures introduced us to [Kazarma](https://technostructures.org/projects/kazarma/)
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a bridge between Matrix and ActivityPub. In Pierre’s own words: “we talked a lot
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about interoperability, and we found it sad that we talked about
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interoperability for proprietary platforms, not with alternative decentralised
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networks, so we tried doing that”. And they did. Bravo Pierre and the team!
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{{ youtube_player(video_id="D3olH1aUCkQ") }}
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Finally Yan concluded the in-person devroom with a speedrun of all the Matrix
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projects he could find around. The video is not out yet, so we’ll add it to the
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second follow-up blog post: the one with the online devroom conferences!
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## Matrix for more than remote attendance
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FOSDEM staff used the Matrix rooms for on-site support. Whether the camera was
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blurry, microphones didn’t work, or there was a missing power plug: staff could
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be notified and answer very quickly before sending someone to actually solve the
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issue. But it also allowed staff to notify devroom managers for small
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adjustments, if speakers ever disappeared from the scene.
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Staff also told us Matrix worked much more reliably than anything other than
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walkie talkies from a coordination perspective and was more versatile. They
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consider narrowing down their use of walkies next year in favour of a deeper
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integration with Matrix. We’re excited to see that Matrix was yet again a great
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solution in the stressful, high paced context of a conference that gathered
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several thousand people in-person and several thousand more online.
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## Attending in-person
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Finally, a large part of the joy of attending FOSDEM comes from the people you
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meet there. The least we can say is that our stand was busy. We ran out of
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stickers and medium size t-shirts early on Sunday morning, but above all we had
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plenty of interesting discussions.
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A few people discovered Matrix during FOSDEM and were blown away by messages
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making it from Slack to Discord before their eyes, all thanks to Matrix and
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bridges. The overwhelming majority of people who came to us were already happy
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users willing to discuss architecture, our plans for the future, or even to
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verify each other with QR Codes or emoji.
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We want to thank the FOSDEM staff for organising this edition and using Matrix
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again: a successful return to the in-person format that builds on the online
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experience of the past two years. See you next year folks!
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