Proposal: Community-run Devrooms at IndiaFOSS

IndiaFOSS Conference
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I’ve been discussing this idea privately with a few folks at the anniversary meetup,
and thought I’d post here as well to get wider feedback.

I went to FOSDEM last year, and I really liked the devroom concept. If you haven’t been,
FOSDEM happens across 2 days at a university, with a main stage, which works same as
most conferences. However, FOSDEM also supports a lot (~70) of community-managed
devrooms (which happen across different classrooms in the campus). Each devroom
is essentially a small focused mini-conference run by a small community of volunteers.

In addition to the CFP for the conference, the FOSDEM organizing team also puts out
a “Call for Devrooms”. Among the many communities that were selected, a few were:

Rust, Ruby, Virtualization, Web Performance, PostgreSQL, RISC-V, Python, Open Hardware,
Nix, Mozilla, Matrix, Kernel, LLVM, HPC, GCC, Free Java, Emulators etc. [Complete List]

Devrooms are a mini-conference that runs on a shared-responsibility model:
FOSDEM takes care of the infrastructure & logistics (such as recording,
crowd-management, CFP management). But the community organizers for the
devroom take care of the programming (CFP selection, and scheduling).

The Devrooms run in parallel to the main conference track (except for maybe
the opening keynote).

See the FOSDEM 2025 Call for devroom and the Devroom Manager Manual 2024 for a better idea.

The NIMHANS venue already has 2 unused classrooms on the first floor, which
can seat ~50 people, and we can run 2 devrooms on each day in each devroom
for a total of 8 devrooms (maybe we can do a pre/post lunch split). We can also do asymmetric devroom durations (3/4 hours for the pre/post lunch).

If this sounds interesting, here’s what we need to do to make this a reality:

  1. IndiaFOSS Organizing team needs to figure out scheduling for the devrooms.
  2. A Devroom CFP needs to be published for the community alongside the main conference
    CFP.
  3. Clear guidelines for the devrooms (what kind of talks are acceptable,
    the CoC, and what responsibility are handed over).
  4. The Community needs to
    step up and propose devrooms that they’d like to see.

Think of running a devroom like running a small conference for your community
within IndiaFOSS. Sounds interesting?

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Its a great idea and i would love to volunteer to make this happen next indiafoss!

We were discussing this idea for MumbaiFOSS 2.0 some time back but due to a few venue changes and lack of bandwidth, we had to put away the idea.

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I like the idea of the devroom. The conference is going to be bigger this year, so the increased content is a plus. It’s a good way to involve more of the community, with focussed topics guiding people towards better submissions even. It’s flexible enough to include broad topics and niches (hardware obviously comes to mind, but then I could easily imagine compilers, kernel, music - these already have dedicated communities).

I am veering towards asymmetric devrooms (day 1 second half, day 2 first half). Like 4 devrooms over 2 rooms. Why ? Easier to start with a smaller number I guess. Also if a topic is big enough to have a devroom, at-least one talk related to each devroom topic might get selected for a main stage talk. Having that talk before the devroom itself begins may be one way to schedule talks.

Last year the CFP went out in June sometime, so let’s say the call for devrooms goes out 30-45 days in advance of that to provide enough time.

Logistics need to be worked out of course - including having more reviewers (part of devroom proposal?). In 2024, the 2 rooms used for workshops weren’t recorded or streamed. Devrooms would run reviewed talks. At a minimum we need to record them and ideally livestream. That is more logistics and costs…

These are just my thoughts without discussing with anyone else, btw. Over the next week or two we should have a much clearer picture.

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  1. Sounds like a great idea! I support dong this.
  2. I would also recommend starting small - between 2 and 4 - and that’s because picking a devroom/host places a significant amount of trust in the host, especially if the host is partially or fully responsible for the program during the conference. I would like to start small also because we already have enough trouble with video recording and post-processing as it is and adding more than 2 to 4 tracks could be a significant financial expense (I’m speculating here though)
  3. If this goes through, I’ll be submitting an application for a FOSS in Science devroom :grimacing:
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Sounds like a great idea, please expect official updates on this soon!

We have been discussing the possibility of a third day (more specifically a day 0) for IndiaFOSS. The rooms in NIMHANS are not great for hosting workshops (lack of internet, tables etc.) and a different day + venue for workshops solves that problem. That will leave these rooms empty during the conference and devrooms are a perfect opportunity to utilise this space.

Agreed. As Nemo pointed out, we have two rooms on the first floor which means we can only host a maximum of 4 devrooms over 2 days.

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