FOSDEM 2020

 February 2, 2020 -  Bruxelles, BE

This year, as it has happened for the last few years, I’ve been at FOSDEM. As always, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, and that’s why I continue to go there, and every time I have to suggest other people which events to attend in Europe, I always mention FOSDEM as the main event.

I think it’s fascinating to see how room sizes and crowdedness of the rooms changes over time. Years ago, the container-related rooms (containers, container security, Go) were relatively small, but already crowded, and over the years, the rooms got bigger and bigger. Every year they have been very crowded to the point that for the majority of sessions, some people were turned away. This year this pattern continued for those rooms, except for the Go one, which had a massive improvement in size, and, as far as I know, it never turned away people due to the over-crowdedness. I think this speaks clearly on the importance that containers are getting in those years and the fact that they are quickly moving. If there were no innovations in the container space for the whole year between two FOSDEMs, I think many people would prefer to go to other rooms. I think this is what is happening to the Go room. Even though I really appreciate the Go room and the Go language, I think it will shrink over the next years because - as it’s sane for a programming language - Go is not getting tons of new features every year. Due to this lack of news, people that already know the language might opt for different rooms since, at FOSDEM, there are always many exciting talks at the same time.

I look forward to attending FOSDEM next year as well, and I’ll try to see if the pattern of the container rooms continues!