Hello, everybody, and welcome to the anecdotes from 25 years of fuzzdom, and I will just introduce
you to our speakers.
We've got Richie who's been staff for about 15 years, and we've got Raphael, who's a very
special guest, as the founder of Oftem.
Hear me?
Okay.
Well, let's remember that fuzzdom is one index based, so it's the 25th edition, but it's been 24 years
that it exists.
The first edition was in 2001.
Yeah, I do it.
So the first edition was in 2001.
The work name was Ozdeck.
The open source of the European conference.
It was then renamed to Ozdeck.
We play using the conference with the meeting, and it started actually, the work on the
conference.
The first edition started, the idea started in October.
The work on the conference itself started in November.
Just to give you an idea of the chaos that it was.
It's not to brag about it, but I did a loan, 90% of the things that needed to happen.
You can imagine that if one person organizes an event that was foreseen to be for 30 people,
40 people, and that you then get positive answers for big speakers.
You get positive answers from a big sponsor, and they bring a lot of big names.
And then you see the interest growing, but you still don't have any idea of how many people
in the world, because there is no registration.
Just as today, it's free entrance, everybody's welcome.
And then the first day, we had 600 people, 700 people.
And I was the only guy who knew what was happening at the conference at the organization side.
There was no welcome team, there was no infotainment at that time, there was no welcome stand.
And people started spontaneously to organize the conference themselves.
So there was a team that grew at the first edition, the first name infotainment that was absolutely spontaneous.
And that's why I also see the first name as a software project that grows from one person that has an idea, shares it,
encourages to participate, and it's been a great pleasure to see it first of them grow that way.
One question I get was, why in February, I don't like the cold, I like the summer, good weather,
but when I was then, for the first edition, when I was then started, it was known by no one, nobody knew it.
So I decided to organize it in February, because in February in Paris there was a big Linux conference,
big Linux commercial conference, and I thought it would be great to have a conference for developers,
really focusing on the development of open source software.
And that's how the idea came.
And yes, first them started as scheduling in comparison to others, so trying to get people coming from Paris to the conference.
Because this often the opposite, there are a lot of smaller conferences that are planning according to first them,
but at the start, first them started as planning compared to another conference.
Regarding, again, the first edition, six weeks before the devents, I didn't have a venue,
so I had big name, speakers, a lot of interest, a lot of visit to the website, activities on the mailing list, but no venue.
That was stressful.
But mid December, I think, end of December, I got the confirmation, we could go at the ULB, on the other campus,
and have two rooms there for the conferences.
But six weeks before the event, it was still not true, and it was still possible, it had to be cancelled.
And that's giving an idea of the chaos at the organization of the first them conference.
In the beginning, first them was not very well known, and we even printed posters that we sent to other universities to make it better known.
Regarding the organization, of course, to bring speakers at the event, it got money.
So nobody in the organization is paid, and this is still like that.
But you still have cost for travel, hotel and so on.
The first edition, everything went very well, great names and so to positively, via Linux, sponsored the event and a lot of speakers.
But then via Linux, it was announced as the new Dell, at that time it was the .com boom.
But the second year, for the second edition of first them, the Linux was not there anymore for the money.
So it was a hard time to find sponsors, find the money, and during a long time, I didn't have any sponsor.
I tried to get sponsor, but either get good negative answer or new answer at all.
And especially for more highly, I tried several times to mail them, never go to an answer.
And one day, I decided to go to cold them.
And I thought if they don't answer, if they don't say yes, they will be no second edition.
So for the second edition, it was really, really hard.
And luckily, at the last minute, I got Joseph from Morale, and she was very enthusiastic.
And from then, they started to sponsor the event.
And they were sponsor until 2020, I think, something like that.
But for a long time, they had a booth selling books, but until Brexit, until Brexit.
Yes.
Can you hear me like this?
Yes.
So just to be clear, it's still pure chaos.
The thing didn't change.
So yeah, there's also just now a little bit of random bits and pieces over the following years.
For those who remember who we're here, remember as the physical booklet.
Yeah, that booklet.
That booklet.
Yeah, so we used to actually cut off like two weeks before, before foster, which was great, given Christmas.
And New Year isn't everything, like really, really great to have this timing.
So we could make the booklet, and we could write other late source, and had to be in late for reason and everything.
And speaking for myself, once I did almost alone, once I did completely alone, not sleeping for two nights.
I'm not as young anymore, but finally we got rid of the booklet.
It's really great to not have to say the word.
IPv6, some of you might know, because something we are actually quite proud about.
Well, I didn't catch anything, you just said.
I didn't catch anything, you just said.
Sorry, maybe just wait until after.
Or do you have a mic? Yeah, go ahead.
I just wanted to say IPv4 was planned back then day with all those octids.
And when it was designed, there was this feeling that there would be too many addresses that there would be just not enough just too many.
And we got to the point of IPv6, right?
And that's probably just wanted to cut in like this and say hello word.
It's more of a comment than a question.
And yes, IPv6 was already done in 1996, so also not super relevant to here, but thank you.
We were actually the first major non-network conference.
There was the ripe conference, which did it once before us.
They beat us by only like a few weeks.
But we were the first non-network conference, which had IPv6 only on the main network.
This was another one of those, of those first ones, where there was very little sleep involved.
I think I went to the hotel just to shower, nothing else.
We actually had two slides, one with normal and one with sorry, we don't have any internet for you,
because everything was broken.
And I literally radioed in OK go with the good one.
I think I have it.
Also, this broke Ubuntu's implementation of network management.
And their booth got really, really busy.
I just like what I knew the person who initially started network management.
He had, and this one got fixed really quickly.
Like really good.
The booth was just annoyed with people who were broken.
IPv4.
We used to have more IPv4 and called, always sponsored the address space.
And then they couldn't anymore, because the pressure on the IPv4 space just became too much.
And for those who don't know, IPv6 actually offers temporary V4 space, which you can get for events,
and which you can get for research purposes.
And they had extremely hard rules on how long you could have it.
You had to give a detailed plan of the excitement, everything.
And maybe it was two weeks.
Maybe it was like seven days.
Maybe it was three days.
I forget the details.
But like super short amount of time to actually build up the BGP session,
talk to your upstream people.
Can you please update the filter?
Because I updated all those route objects.
And can you please know it doesn't work?
Can you please do it?
And then it still doesn't work in South America.
Because that takes like three to five days to actually get there.
So they couldn't watch the streams in South America ever.
So the fix was, I just got to events.
It's easy to chase the policy and now for anyone.
It's just different.
And now we have enough space for this kind of thing.
Something which was not planned this way.
I promise.
But pretty soon after this.
And actually remember of the European Parliament will be speaking
in the smallest room we have.
Which maybe tells you a little bit about how this is really not about.
Oh, there is a big name.
And this and that and we are going to do something about it.
Everyone gets their space where they get it.
And then they just come do their thing.
And this is also part of what makes custom great that people really are equal.
The fiber we have a story from 2010.
But also don't know.
The O-Building is there where all of the outside connections used to come.
It's a little bit different these days thankfully.
And we had to go to info desk in H.
Because we still had our main hardware in H at that time.
Nothing came.
And we pulled a fiber through the fire shafts,
through the two puddles, through the water, through everything.
It managed to break seven out of eight fibers.
And then we had to fix it.
And thankfully could borrow a splicing thing.
And also here hostie who was in train in addition.
Kind of fixed it.
But we didn't have any other hardware.
So literally just to scotch tape and try to.
And it worked.
But what we didn't realize.
We actually had flipped the X and RX.
But also don't know.
That means like unless you can physically just re-pluck this in the physical switch.
Or in the in the g-bake or SFP of the physical switch.
You're screwed.
So be know who at the time still led the.
The a TD department of resulb, which is like the a TD department with inulb.
He was on holiday.
And he started for a in the morning.
To drive back back from north eastern France.
Back to Brussels.
Just to unlock the door.
Repluck the fiber.
I don't know if I can go back to his family who wasn't super pleased with everything.
The column.
In 2018 someone decided to paint a column blue.
Enter a conversation with you.
Be about the world and the universe and birds and trees.
And I don't know.
Which please don't do it.
But if you go to the column you still see a little bit of blue.
So it also like it lasted for quite some time.
But also to be clear if you do this and be catching your out.
You know, just to be very clear.
So unless it's on the ground paper we get into massive issues with you.
I just leave this is actually something which improved massively over the last few years.
It used to really be running on on the complete lack of sleep of a lot of people and.
A few people who are too stubborn and stupid to say no this is stupid.
I'm going to stop like a lot of us were just pushing through as they could.
We have become much better at this thankfully over the years.
And we actually do get sleep and sometimes we get to see the sun which is.
Uncommon for us during for them.
In front of the Wi-Fi for those who have been here longer.
It used to just not work like not at all.
Also for those who remember we use a physical hacker spaces with physical switches with physical network
cabling and you could plug in your laptop and for the first.
As awesome.
There are laptops where not really a thing we even had.
Physical CRTs and computers where people could sit down and hack on.
Which today seems completely insane.
Of course I have all the information of of humanity in my pocket and so does everyone else in here.
But it was a completely different time.
And again personally speaking who guns with once that lost in Brussels.
Somewhere in the in the government district that we literally just hacked the WAP.
Of the government institution.
Of a random building.
I mean just to get online and get some online maps and to see where we actually very
because we were completely lost and we didn't have anything.
Mobile and was middle of the night we couldn't ask anyone.
Water.
So for those who know now often we have to replan rooms.
Sometimes we even realized on a Saturday that there is currently a marvellous
office going on in the room which we thought we had but we built up in the wrong room.
And so we have to completely change everything and tear it out of the complete room and build up a new room.
That happened just this this edition.
Very in the morning try to get started and basically there was a marvellous session.
And they probably wondered what all the video equipment was but they just did their thing.
And yeah.
But one time we actually had flooding.
And the water literally flowed out of the water during what was supposed to be custom.
And yeah then they just told us yeah this is not normal.
Like the multi python sketch of the front fell off.
That's like similar to that situation.
And next year they actually renovated the room a little bit.
We still have sometimes leak roofs and such.
I mean some of those buildings are literally over 100 years old in particular a W
that thing just happens.
This is me debugging the power distribution last year and just plug putting in the the circuit breaker every now and then again.
And then someone replugs something and the circuit breaker pops.
And then we divide and counter and figure out where the actual fault is because we didn't have any measurement equipment.
In cameras we always went under again on the money topic.
If you don't have money you don't have no foster.
We rented out equipment in particular one specific type of camera.
Which we needed for our specific setup and we rented out all of Belgium.
And Northern Germany.
For this specific type of camera and some other equipment.
We actually spent so much when we actually got the build is almost made for them phone.
We obviously recovered but this was another one of those situations where we almost just didn't had any money.
And actually it reminds me that for the first edition maybe even the second one.
We rented beavers to project the slides because there were no beavers.
I mean it's unbelievable now.
But we had to provide a computer with a beavers to project some slides.
So it's yeah we've come a long way.
Very long way.
Also for those who don't know in particular in older buildings like you or a W or H.
The reason why it's so insanely loud up front is because those rooms are literally designed for a time where you didn't have microphones.
You just stood there and you just talked loudly and everyone else in the audience had to hear you.
And there's why a lot of those rooms are so insanely loud in both directions.
And why it's so unbearable if people talk or bang the chairs when they move in and out and you have a speaker up front.
Because they are literally designed to project sound in both directions because they're very built for a time where we didn't have those things.
Okay.
That was planned.
Nothing.
There is no accident at any first time ever.
Everything is planned.
In 2013 we had finished first them and we were done with everything and we cleaned up everything.
And as per usual we thought we were pretty good about it.
And then we had chaos.
Good.
And then we got a call.
And some of us were super angry with us.
Of course we did not clean up properly.
We really thought we were like, we had our due diligence.
Speaking as a former Teflon Manager, I literally used a broom on carpet just to get stuff out.
Like we took this seriously.
Yeah.
We had forgotten one thing.
And a year or two later we forgot the same thing again.
There's also in the more personal level.
There's this theme because I did ask for anecdotes from people and many people reached out and told us how.
It's basically closed rooms over filled rooms and lots of conversations.
But also about how many people really got life changing events, how initiatives got started, how even some foundations really got there.
They boosted their kick from fostering with the help of fostering were able to grow.
If it's a fee and others amongst them, like a lot of things really grew and came from fostering going obviously both ways because it's not just us being great and awesome.
Obviously we are.
But like it's not just us doing this.
It's also always going in all directions and everyone helping each other and uplifting everyone else.
Just wanting to join me.
And I think that's really a key of first them and from the start.
The idea is was to bring hackers together and to help discuss exchange ideas and at the first edition we had a room.
And after the event I went in the room and on the blackboard you saw people add on schema, discussing and that's was really great.
That was the meaning that's us them at reached its goal.
And today it's still the same thing. It's much bigger.
But the key thing is that when you come to foster them you meet people from all horizons.
You can discuss about a lot of subject.
A lot of technical subjects makes me think about the Belgian guy who was working on an encryption algorithm.
And I invited him and he said, you know, conference, what we like to talk about there.
And I told him, it's technical.
Good technical, good technical.
And then he said, I maybe, maybe.
And afterwards it told me, I didn't believe the question I got.
Oh, technical those were the level of technical question he had was unexpected for him.
And that's also great.
Means you have all all technical levels at first name.
You can learn a lot, but you can teach a lot also because there are a lot of people there for learning too.
And that's that's really great to see it continue.
Always track as the best part of fostering.
Myself included there is a lot of people who only see friends once a year.
Fast to miss important to a lot of us.
So yeah, I'm very happy to see this slide.
Because then as far as being about open mind accepting everyone.
And it has always been constructive, positive.
We never went against something.
We always went for something, for freedom, for new things.
For exchange, for discussion, not for distracting commercial software.
We don't care about that.
We always want to be constructive.
And I hope that we'll stay like that.
We see change.
There has been discussion about denial of service against Muslim.
I mean sitting during a talk.
That's not for them.
What's them is constructive.
If you don't agree, express your disagreement, but don't sabotage the event.
The event is organized by people in their free time.
If you're a millionaire of software project, you know that when an entitled user comes in and say,
you have to implement that because that's a good idea.
I tell you, is that's great?
No, it will burn developers.
It will bring to burn out.
It's the same for the conference here.
People are volunteering.
If you destroy their work, it's no fun.
So let's remember to be positive.
And if you don't agree, you can express it, but don't destroy anything.
Always be positive and constructive.
That's really, really important.
Thank you.
I have this tradition that is going to be a photo.
There's also going to be a photo just after.
Because everyone has old t-shirts is heavily invited to take part.
If you don't want to be in the photo, just cover your face.
If you want to be in the photo.
I think we forgot something very important.
No?
No, that's comes after.
If you want to confront Walter, he's hiding.
If you go through, I think Walter is coming.
No, not.
There is a Walter.
There's also for those who don't know a photo project, which has been running for like five years of portrays.
The photographer already had to leave.
But I'll just go and put a few photos here.
They're really licensed.
Everyone agreed to be on those photos.
You also have contact information at the back.
If at future for them, you want to be photographed yourself.
So you can just take one if you want to.
For me personally, last year it was the kidney.
This year it's a car accident, so maybe I can do it again next year.
But for them always ends with the dance.
I think you remember for them is for having fun.
Who was there in 2001 or until 2005, six?
Okay.
So you remember me talking on a sitting on the table, moving my legs like that.
Several years later, I learned that it was annoying people.
I didn't know.
And every year at the opening session I was there like that.
Very enthusiastic.
But yeah.
So as you know, we at post them, it's also having a question about having fun.
We sang, we danced.
And there's the famous constant dance.
This was invented by Damia Sondras,
who is the first guy that joined me in organizing the event.
And we were tired.
It was the Sunday afternoon.
We were tired.
And he was saying, man, I'm tired.
I'm always running, running around.
And we had so much fun seeing the doing that.
It became the first dance.
So if someone wants to join on stage for the first dance,
let's do it again.
That also goes for all attendees.
If you want to join the dance, go on stage.
Yeah.
The two of us.
Okay.
Let's go.
The first dance.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
And continue having fun at first them.
It's great to see it continue like that.
Yeah.
So there's a seamless transition for anyone who brought old
first them or us them or other relevant open source shirts.
Now is your time to come up on stage for the photographers.
Go over here somewhere.
And we are going to take a photo of everyone with their old T shirts.
Or jackets or hoodies or whatever.
You can also, if you want.
Ooh.
You want it?
Okay, perfect.
Just find this base.
I can do your thing.
Also take a photo of this so you can send me the last year T shirt.
Good enough.
Yeah.
If you only have this year's T shirt, that's also fully okay.
It's about to shirt, not about oh, it's X years time or whatever.
Yes.
Do you want to?
I need to.
Well, we read from left to right.
If you have an early year try and stand on this side.
If you have a later year try and stand on this side.
Do you want to go through and sort people a little?
No, no, everyone.
If you have a t shirt.
Yeah.
Go on stage.
What are you coding?
Probably yours.
Yeah.
I have a Q and a year.
If you've heard about that.
I left it in a photo because they've got it.
It is internality.
Can I just go ahead?
Yeah.
Don't send it to front.
Yeah.
This year's volunteer shirt also counts if you want.
Special guests don't need a shirt.
No.
Yeah.
I won't.
I was going to say that.
It's actually better if people go in the rows as tears because then you can see the shirts.
That's an angle.
Yeah.
Everybody's going to be squashed.
You can do both.
We do both.
Yeah.
What's the offer?
There's a wish.
I'm not scared.
I must admit that I can't scan.
Okay.
So both you.
What are you also taking pictures?
Okay.
So we have enough.
Okay.
Just go ahead.
What?
Do you also want to go a little bit in the middle for the photo?
Same as Alister.
And we also have a professional like with real tripod and
Try pot and search, but that's going to take a minute or two, I think.
And it's a wait for the tripod, it doesn't take a single photo yet, so wait a bit.
Yeah, we're going to flip it afterwards.
If you need me to count down to smile or something or if you want to use your fingers or your hand or...
Wait a minute, everyone stay in position, we are going to take two or three and then we're going to flip the complete room.
It's long, it's not a blue column.
If you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to count down to smile or if you want me to smile or if you want me to smile