Should we cancel all FLOSS (and related) conferences in the US?
@hub Canceling conferences and meetings in the US makes sense, as being in the US is now not safe for:
- LGBTQ+ (especially trans)
- women (especially pregnant)
- people with non-pale skin
- anyone with a food allergy (FDA is shut down)
- anyone with a compromised immune system (CDC is shut down; important health info is being suppressed)
- non-US-citizens
- anyone flying (as the result of the FAA firings; there have been multiple aircraft crashes since)
& whatever's yet to be announced
@garrett @hub indeed. If we replace US conferences with those in other countries, at least only US based people need to be at risk when flying.
It sucks for community events, especially those in blue states that are otherwise safe, but really apart from the ones I have already signed up to go I ... am not sure I want to, for all the reasons people have said above. And I'm cis het male with rather light skin pigmentation that can pass for an evangelical if I have to
@michelin @hub Having hybrid conferences with local hubs is probably one very good solution here.
It's already a better method to avoid COVID and other airborne diseases, better for accessibility overall, and it's likely better for all the reasons on this list as well.
(It also scales a lot better than shoving thousands into a tightly-packed space in a super-spreader event with all kinds of issues.)
@michelin@hachyderm.io@garrett @hub indeed. We need to get better at doing this ... When #StrangeLoop wound down the organizers suggested something like this could be the future, but in practice people still want to get together because we have not solved replacing the #HallwayTrack yet
@garrett @hub and speak of the devil!
https://social.v.st/@becha/113943814869639464
I think I'll definitely check out @fluconf next year. A conference that is explicitly online so there's no backtracking to doing it in person
@michelin @hub Yeah, hallway track is the hardest thing to replicate.
What if we had more casual video chats with folks from time to time? And had spinoff chats from that too? Like an "unconference", where there are some topics people can then have smaller chats around? Topics can be community related (FOSS, GNOME, KDE, systemd, etc.) or anything else anyone is interested in (photography, crochet, general chat, birding, upcycling, cycling, etc.)
It's not quite the same, but could be valuable.
@garrett @hub that could work. If it's in the context of a virtual conference that might be easier IMHO, as people would be more likely to block the entire day or half day and so be available
We need a way to be able to more easily create ad hoc meetings with a group of people though. I have yet to see a VC solution that does this well (Hopin came close, I've seen at least one proprietary one that could have been promising too, but both didn't really make it)
@garrett @hub #CentOS #HyperscaleSIG does this with a regular social hour - @fedora too though I haven't been able to make the latter for a while so I'm not sure it's still done the same way. But attaching it to a conference and replicating the ability to serendipitously connect with "weak links" ... that is tricky
@michelin @hub FWIW, Matrix could actually do this as well.
Not only does it now support hop-in hop-out multi-person conference in the new version of the video chat (both versions are currently available, as they're finishing up the new version), they're also working on fixing up the encryption UX mess, where it's much more seamless to use.
However, I think it still requires a Matrix account on some Matrix server somewhere (federated). But that's probably fine for FOSS devs.
@garrett @hub looking forward to the encryption mess being resolved - and for what is previewed in Element X to be done really (still no sliding sync support on hosted accounts)
Right now there's still a lot of holdout even among (older) FOSS people who prefer IRC, and younger ones and non FOSS types who prefer Discord, Signal, Telegram etc. and I can't really blame them
@yotamn @garrett @hub I have not been able to use it as an Element One and EMS user on my two main accounts - have the overly large vertical space usage in the standard Element been addressed?
On Android I avoid that by using SchildiChat instead, they're working on rebasing on the latest Element codebase and on a Next app based on Element X too. Not available on iOS though so I still need Element there.