In the first week of February, Brussels proved to be the ideal place to meet free and open-source enthusiasts. In the hours before FOSDEM 2024 officially kicked off, most of the AsteroidOS core team had managed to organize their stay for the weekend and enjoyed an in-person meeting, for the first time in some cases. Darrel (MagneFire) and Florent (kido) arrived at the hotel first, followed by Justus (jrt) and Timo (eLtMosen) who brought our valued community member casept, to hold a refreshing evening meeting with beer and sushi. Casept and Justus delved into some detail, explaining the recent mainlining efforts on rinato (Samsung Gear 2). Everyone was delighted to hear Darrel slip the supposed surprise news that our long-time contributor dodoradio was traveling in to FOSDEM from the UK on short notice. We shared the news that Jozef Mlich (jmlich) had set up the AsteroidOS logo on the Linux on Mobile stand, planning to showcase his contribution of integrating AsteroidOS watches into amazfish on UBports and asked if any team member would support him in explaining AsteroidOS.
The team's initial plan was to just roam the halls and try to meet as many people and visit stands as possible. That rather poor plan was upgraded to a full-blown stand service by Jozef's kind offer to join him behind the Linux on Mobile stand and help us out of a certain misery. Timo had planned to wear a backpack with 30 supported AsteroidOS watches mounted to it, all running and ready to flash or connect to via USB on the go. But that elaborate plan disintegrated the evening before when the build was finished and weighed in at over 20kg. The remaining options were to either leave the watch rig in the car and forget about it, or bring it to the Linux on Mobile stand and see if the other projects would be fine with offering us a meter of space. Which they did!
The AsteroidOS team wishes to extend a big thank you to everyone involved in the Linux on Mobile stand for welcoming us so warmly and sharing their space! Jozef continued to promote AsteroidOS amidst the crowd for the entire day until shortly before his own talk on the pinetime. We cannot thank Jozef enough for his professional and enduring effort. It was truly inspiring. Darrel and Timo worked on the presented watches to first make them all usable and show different states of AsteroidOS. They answered questions and demoed the watches to visitors. Dodoradio joined shortly after the watch rig was set up and went right into business by changing the battery of a dead catfish (Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro) live at the stand. Public reception was overwhelming, and we were a bit humbled by our obvious lackluster planning. The end of the day came much too quickly. Only in hindsight do we now see how many longtime online friends were possibly standing meters from us without our realizing.
All who attended, either in person or remotely via live video streaming, agreed that it was inspiring and fun. Within days of the conclusion of FOSDEM 2024, the team has already started thinking about what we might be able to do differently and better for FOSDEM 2025.