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