Via the RSGB: June 2025 – Strategic priorities update

Back at the end of January I attended FOSDEM 2025; primarily to gain an insight into what other societies/countries were doing to promote amateur radio to the younger generation and also to a growing potential audience in the software development community.

FOSDEM is marketed as follows: “FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open-source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in!”

On my way to my first day at the show, I randomly bumped into two young people in FOSDEM T-shirts at the hotel on the Saturday morning. They kindly helped me travel to the event and, coincidentally, one was a German licence holder. In conversation it became clear that he saw his radio licence as a means to enhance his electronics/software experimentation and was not a traditional radio ham by any means.

FOSDEM itself was attended by several thousand individuals with the M/F split at perhaps 60% male and 40% female. Most people I spoke to at the event were there to meet people they knew online, and a common theme was the expectation that most lectures would be full to overflowing. Everyone seemed to suggest they would catch up with the lecture stream online later and concentrate on meeting people and attending those lectures that were not being recorded.

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