Last weekend FrOSCon took place in St. Augustin (near Bonn). While memory is still fresh: here's a short look back with the focus on what I think worked well and what we could maybe improve for next year (should we want to do it again):
It was the 2nd time we had a dedicated FOSS on Mobile devroom with a mix of talks, discussions and hacking time and the first time we had a booth showing different devices running Linux. It was nice to see people joining for the first time as well as some familiar faces.
(image taken from https://fosstodon.org/@postmarketOS/112976637275476001)
Talks
There were talks ranging from how Qualcomm devices are booting (and how the should boot), Debugging the Mobile Linux stack as well as happenings in the app ecosystem and how the weekly news feed covering our ecosystem is created (to name a few). I think the diversity of different topics was well received.
Lightning Talks
Last year we had two one hour slots for lightning talks which weren't completely filled so we went to 30min total this year. The three 10min talk slots filled up quickly with
- Usage of BTRFS on Mobile Linux
- A project to bring VR gaming to Mobile Linux using Guix
- A project for mainline recovery
so we squeezed in a 4th one between two talks (about posting images to the Fediverse directly from a digital camera). We should likely reserve one full hour for lighting talks.
Discussons / Round Tables
The What are you missing to use Linux Mobile daily… round table/discussion (which was sparked by last year's Phosh community get together) was enlightening as it highlighted the different issues people are having (for some of them others could already contribute a solution). We should likely keep that as a fix point in the schedule. These are the bullet points from the white board we could use as a base the check what changed (hopefully improved) next year.
Time for Hacking / Problem solving
The Let's hack together on Mobile Linux session on Sunday morning looks like a good idea as people can trickle in as they see fit in the morning after the social event. It also allowed people to drop by with questions or devices they wanted to get Mobile Linux on (which wasn't always possible due to not yet working kernels).
We could often spark some hope though by redirecting them to the booth to see similar devices to theirs running Mobile Linux. This made me notice that not everyone was aware that there's a booth as well so we could connect booth and devroom better i.e. mention the booths location and devices present there on the devroom's white board and have a printout with the talk schedule at the booth.
Podcast
The postmarketOS podcast Live Episode was a very nice wrap up of the two conference days. Something similar (or same) would be nice next year.
Misc
Some other random thoughts on what we could keep/change for next year (should we want to do it again):
The closing event is somewhat superfluous. Let's drop it. Some people have left by then as they need to catch trains or want to say goodbye and we can have some closing words right after the last talk. We're also usually enough people to clean up the room afterwards. The opening event however is useful as an introduction on what to expect (especially for people joining the first time).
People said that speakers were sometimes hard to understand in the back rows so we should consider using a speaker microphone (which would also make recording possible).
It would be nice to (optionally) video record sessions as there were some requests regarding that but people also raised privacy concerns and enjoyed being able to watch talks without being recorded but that's solvable by having areas in the room that don't end up on camera. On the other hand not recording gives the whole thing a "be there or be square" touch.
Setting up the room on Saturday morning became a bit hectic so it's likely better to do that on Friday afternoon (especially if we'd need to set up video recording as well).
Not having any events in the devroom when there are Mobile Linux related talks on the main track (like this years eSIM management on Qualcomm phones) looks useful to avoid split brain.
Keeping the room ventilated worked out well according to the measured CO2 levels. Hopefully the health and safety guidelines were appropriate to make everyone feel comfortable. If so we should do that next year again.
Taking a photo and posting it to the Fediverse is a lot of steps on Mobile Linux atm. A small app that allows to open a picture (or paste it from the clipboard), rotate and crop it, add some text (that is also added as alt text), allows to select from a list of hash tags and post it to ones timeline would be nice to have to make that less distracting.
Thanks
Many thanks go to the people doing a presentation, staffing the booth, the FroSCon orga for a smooth conference and everyone joining, listening in and participating.
