socialwebfosdem

A quick update for people at #FOSDEM who are interested in the Fediverse. There are three main public events: the Social Web Devroom is a main track in room ua2118 from 3pm to 7pm Sat Feb 1. The Social Web BOF (“birds of a feather”) is on Sunday Feb 2 from 12pm to 1pm in . Finally, Social Web After Hours is on Sunday Feb 2 from 7pm to 9pm at HSBXL. And use the #SocialWebFOSDEM hashtag to track the community on the Fediverse!

Next week is European Open Source Week in Brussels, culminating in FOSDEM 2026 on the weekend. There are several important ways to stay connected to the Fediverse while you’re visiting this week!

Mastodon maintains a booth at FOSDEM throughout the weekend. It’s a great place to get Mastodon merch or take a selfie with the Mastodon team.
The Social Web Dev Room is a day-long event on Jan 31 in room H.2215 with loads of talks about Fediverse software and Fediverse organizing.
There will be a loose mingling of Fediverse people at the À La Mort Subite bar in Brussels on Friday Jan 30 after 8PM. Wear a Fediverse symbol on a nametag or some other creative way so people can find you. Find your own table and then start mingling. There’s no organized activities or special space; just a node in space-time where you’re more likely to run into Fediverse people than normal.

As always, watch the #FOSDEM and #socialwebfosdem and #FOSDEM2026 hashtags for news and updates.

If you’re not travelling to Brussels, watch for streaming video from room H.2215 . There are also Fediverse events happening throughout the world throughout the year; Fediforum keeps a great list of the most prominent.

Hey, all. One thing that’s different this year about the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2026 is that we’re going to include talks about the organizational and social aspects of rolling out Open Source Fediverse software for individuals and communities. Last year, we focused pretty heavily on technical talks from the principle developers of FLOSS packages. This year, we want to make sure the other aspects of Fediverse growth and improvement are covered, too.

Consequently, the guidance for last year’s event, which was focused on how to make a great technical presentation, might seem a little outdated. But on reviewing it, I’ve found that it still has good advice for social and organizational talks. Just like software developers, community builders see problems and construct solutions for them. The solutions aren’t just about writing code, though; more often they involve bringing people together, assembling off-the-shelf tools, and making processes and rules for interaction.

Talks about Open Source software to implement ActivityPub and build the social web are still welcome, of course. We’re just expanding a bit to cover the human aspects of the Fediverse as well.

I’m looking forward to having the interesting discussions about bringing people together to make the Social Web. If you haven’t already, please consider submitting a talk to https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp. Select “Social Web” from the “Track” dropdown, and include the length of your talk (8/25/50) in the submission notes. The deadline is December 1, 2025, so get them in as soon as possible!

The schedule for the Social Web Developer Room at FOSDEM 2026 is starting to be populated as the speakers confirm their availability. We had a tonne of great submissions for this year’s track, and even with double the time from last year, we still had to leave some great talks on the cutting room floor. But we still managed to fit in 24 great talks, large and small. We’re going to see some additional events happening as FOSDEM 2026 gets nearer. Watch the #SOCIALWEBFOSDEM hashtag for more news and events.