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FOSDEM 2024 notes

It was my first time at FOSDEM. I met up with friends, volunteered at the conference, organized an informal accessibility discussion. Great time.

Volunteering

I decided to spend my first day of FOSDEM as a volunteer. It’s a great way to meet new people, do something new, and obviously give back to the conference (which is completely free).

Of all possible tasks, I signed up for the Volunteer pool and did a bit of everything:

Thunderbird - Ryan Sipes

Take Your FOSS Project From Surviving To Thriving was so good that I took notes :)

  • “We don’t need more unmaintained software that people rely on”
  • Thunderbird perception: “Crappy Outlook”
  • To avoid – Associating OSS with “not as good”
  • It works: Asking for money in a direct way to users
  • When: After upgrades
  • Don’t maintain your own donation stack

Design clinic

I attended a design clinic session run by Open Source Design, where we discussed challenges for Django. Bernard and Belem provided us with a lot of suggestions and insights.

  • Make a Call to action for designers
  • Record testimonials of admin users
  • Provide empirical proof of design issues
  • Open source design consulting
  • Planning, open source design easy
  • Do a call / make a plan
  • Teach desigenrs about open source
  • font size customization in site or app
  • Give and respect choices

Product management methods

Lauri Apple’s Please Make It Make Sense: Product Management Methods to Make Your Project’s Purpose Clear was great. Lauri has been helping with Wagtail’s sustainability roadmap, and I learned a lot from her feedback and coaching.

  • Different groups help diversity
  • Sustainability for project managers
  • Valuable high-purpose work
  • Product management great way to get experience
  • “Do a survey”
  • “We want scooters now”
  • “Not no but not yet”
  • Quality of life

Accessibility and ATAG BoF

Notes for Web Accessibility and ATAG.

Main conclusion: we’re organising an Accessibility devroom next year :)

WCAG

“Standard”, but accessibility is first and foremost about doing what works for users. A, AA, AAA. “For a standard about accessibility, it’s not the most accessible document”

WCAG 2.2

  • Controversial? accessible authentication – captcha
  • Security <–> accessibility tension
  • Effectiveness of captcha vs. bots, risk to block real users
  • “makes people think”
  • Backend expertise fundamental for authentication

WCAG 3.0

❓ Relevance of WCAG for designers. WAI EOWG. “WCAG for designers” website

Future website: WCAG for backend devs?

shouldIUseCarousels.com website

ATAG

  • “Have you looked into ATAG?”
  • CMS users
  • Tools accessibility create barriers
  • People with disabilities left out of software engineering careers

Accessibility in grants programs

  • Red team accessibility audit
  • Accessibility testing at the end
  • Accessibility Blueprints

Power profiling

Power profiling my entire house with the Firefox Profiler was an excellent overview of how readily available the tooling is to measure energy use. I had heard of the Firefox Profiler’s new features before but never had the chance to use it, so this talk was very insightful.

CMS dev room

I joined the CMS dev room (“Designing Futures of FOSS Content Management with the Open Website Alliance”) towards the end of the conference.

I find the concept of the Open Website Alliance interesting, though I’d rather see collaboration on more specific topics like accessibility.