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+Title: FOSDEM and Guix Days 2024
+Date:  2024-02-12
+Category:
+Tags:
+Slug: fosdem-2024
+Lang: en
+Summary: About my personal FOSDEM 2024 experience and Guix Days
+
+This year I gave a talk at FOSDEM, summarizing our work on the Guix
+bootstrapping for RISC-V, so I decided to get a couple of free days more and
+also visit the Guix Days, that where happening before the FOSDEM itself. Let's
+do a short summary of my experience here.
+
+### Guix Days
+
+I visited the Guix Days but not full-time because I wanted to spend some time
+in Brussels itself, rather than being locked in a place for the whole day.
+
+We had some interesting discussions about Guix, the most interesting for me was
+the Guix Governance, where we discussed how Guix is managed and how it works
+internally in a social level. This discussion was specially important for me as
+an external contributor because I believe Guix has a complex but opaque
+internal structure that is difficult to grasp from the outside. Being in places
+like the Guix Days themselves let's you understand it but it's our
+responsibility to make Guix accessible for people that doesn't have time to
+come to these kind of events.
+
+I say all this because I'm basically that person. I don't enjoy this kind of
+events that much and I feel I was a little bit forced to be there to be a
+little bit more than a random string in the IRC chat.
+
+I had the chance to be there, but it was an effort to me. I'd like it not to be
+the same for others.
+
+It's not like I'm an antisocial, in fact I feel I'm a very social person, but I
+don't like the politics of things and this event, more than anything else, I
+felt it was a political event where I had to be just to show up.
+
+This is not just a Guix problem. Most large enough project fall into this kind
+of dynamic, where people that show up are better considered that those who
+don't. It makes sense (this is how the world works), but at the same time it
+doesn't (I don't like how the world works).
+
+
+
+### FOSDEM 2024
+
+We arrived FOSDEM on Saturday. It was literally impossible to do anything
+there. It was basically supercrowded. We tried to watch some talks, all were
+full. Waited for a long queue to enter one and we didn't have the chance to
+enter in the end and we decided to leave. We had a nice day in the city instead.
+
+[Sunday morning I gave a talk][talk]. Sunday was way better: we could walk
+around and do things but we spent the morning in the Declarative and
+Minimalistic Computing Devroom until my talk happened. After my talk, we
+watched a couple more there and left for a very good lunch.
+
+I think the talk went well, but I'll leave further judgement to you. Feel free
+to watch and send me feedback if you like to do so.
+
+[talk]: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1755-risc-v-bootstrapping-in-guix-and-live-bootstrap/
+
+
+
+### My feelings
+
+In a personal level, traveling (taking flights and all that...) is mentally
+exhausting for me, and it's also expensive. I don't feel like I would do this
+often in the future, as I didn't do it in the past.
+
+Also, I don't enjoy geeky events like these that much. I don't use Guix or any
+other software as a part of a tribe, I just think it's useful. I enjoy other
+kind of social interactions more. I just felt like an outsider in both events,
+but I don't really want to become anything else than that. I don't feel
+comfortable with becoming "part" of anything. I believe software is not a cult,
+and everyone should have the freedom to contribute and enjoy in a purely
+practical way, with no identities involved.
+
+Also I felt like people around those higher latitudes are colder, they laugh
+less than I do and they don't have the boiling blood that I have. Maybe that's
+why my talk made people laugh and react. There's nothing wrong about that,
+culture is always cool, but the culture mismatch I felt it was a little bit of
+a barrier.
+
+Apart form all that, I had the chance to visit a cool city with my significant
+other and with my friends, who came to support me in my talk and enjoy a
+conference. We probably didn't enjoy the conference that much, but I
+experienced being surrounded by people that love me and had a lot of fun with
+them, and that's more valuable than anything else.
+
+On the other hand, I don't need FOSDEM for that. I feel grateful for my people
+every single day of the year.
+
+Don't expect to find me in many geek events like these, but I don't totally
+discard showing up from time to time.