FOSDEM Debrief 🫡

My own stats on what I’ve done over the weekend:

- Spoke to +100 developers, it was great seeing a couple of familiar Flemish faces and meeting some new ones but overall the crowd was extremely diverse.

- Ended up doing a short interview promoting the protocol and ended up going to 0 talks.

- Tried to evangelize by going booth by booth to distribute a Nostr flyer to other FOSDEM projects, with the hope that they would broadcast the info towards their SOME person to add Nostr on their list or to build out a library for the languages that were present ( This was a fairly slow approach )

- Kept it to Nostr protocol 95% of the time, the Bitcoin narrative is not always a good time to push and as a side note I’ve met more Monero users than in the last 5 years.

- Was able to convince some engineers to look into the #soveng endeavor.

Small overview from the most common questions.

- They have heard about Nostr but are not sure of the details. ( mostly through the bitcoin community )

- What is the difference with ActivityPub, Mastodon, Fediverse ?

- IOT developers, so questions regarding MQTT & Meshtastic integrations ?

- Current state of MLS on Nostr ?

- What are the current biggest clients / apps build on Nostr ?

- Will jack still give a talk ?

Things we could improve:

- Bring more stickers like loads more,

- Bring T-shirts, Pins… could be a good way to fund these adventures instead of raising funds.

( Most projects where selling something to help raise funds for projects )

- Almost no onboarding / client installs.

- Compared to the Nostr booth at BTC Amsterdam not a single person asked if they could charge their phone.

Personal Note:

The last time I visited was roughly 13 years ago and me being a little more seasoned I just loved the fact that I was able to pay some support to the open source projects I’ve been using for years ( homebrew, modzilla, Free BSD,.. ) and see the amazing diverse crowd that is the open source Movement 🧡

Al final shoutout to our great pirate crew 🏴‍☠️:

The Dutch Guard ( nostr:npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe & nostr:npub1l77twp5l02jadkcjn6eeulv2j7y5vmf9tf3hhtq7h7rp0vzhgpzqz0swft ) and a adrenaline fueled nostr:npub1t6jxfqz9hv0lygn9thwndekuahwyxkgvycyscjrtauuw73gd5k7sqvksrw , nostr:npub1rfw075gc6pc693w5v568xw4mnu7umlzpkfxmqye0cgxm7qw8tauqfck3t8 and nostr:npub1r30l8j4vmppvq8w23umcyvd3vct4zmfpfkn4c7h2h057rmlfcrmq9xt9ma amazing finally meeting you IRL after close to 2 years since the Yakihonne hackathon 😀