I don’t have a lot to add here, other than that I agree with trying to do something, and trying this seems reasonable to me.
/K > On 30 Sep 2025, at 11:14, Daniel Gultsch <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > We have a date for FOSDEM 2026: January 31st to February 1st > > This means we also have a date for Summit 28: January 29th - January 30th > > As the person who has (co)organized the last two summits I would like > to start a discussion on the next summit by asking a few questions and > floating some ideas. > > • How did you like the format of the last three summits? (Renting a > conference room in a hotel with lunch provided (in buffet style) by > the hotel) > > • Do you have a concrete lead for some company or organization that > could provide us with a conference room for free in the city of > Brussels? I’m not asking for vague suggestions like "maybe someone > could try to reach out to xyz" I’m asking if you personally know > someone who has a key to a room. > > • Do we want a 1 day or 2 day summit? Last year the 'official' part of > the summit was over after 1.2 days and had we known this we could have > probably managed to squeeze it all into one day. > > • If we do a repeat of the last two (three) years (which i feel is > somewhat likely due to how difficult it is to find places that would > have us for free and because I’m under the impression that people like > the "fancy environment" with the snacks and the fancy bottles of > water) I feel somewhat strongly that we should switch to a model in > which every participant pays for their own seat (at per cost) and add > a fairly generous fee-waiver on top of it. > I’m very much in favor of keeping the Summit accessible. > (Socio)economicly speaking our community is very diverse. We have > people in our community who would not be able to come if they had to > pay the ~250 Euro the hotel charges us per person. But we also have > people in our community to whom this is a rounding error in the > overall travel+accommodation cost. (I have personally been on both > sides of this.) > The XSF notoriously doesn’t have a lot of money and efforts to change > this over the last 3 years haven’t been very successful. Switching to > a fee waiver model would allow board (or whoever) to set aside a fixed > amount and send x (where x=10 for example) applicants to the summit > for free. > > > cheers > Daniel
