We invite you to give a talk about contributing design to open source projects!
“Design” can mean anything including typography, graphic design, interaction design, user experience, human-computer interaction, accessibility, information architecture, content strategy, service design, user research, design research and more. You don’t have to be an expert in the field – you could have been involved in a project for as little as a year or as long as a decade. As long as you have been involved with design in any respect in an open source project, we’re interested to hear what you think!
Here are some topics that may inspire your talk:
Your experiences contributing to design in an open source project
How you use FLOSS tools to design
An open source project which is an example of great design
Your design process, research methods, and go-to resources while working with open source projects
Your ideas on fostering diversity and inclusion in design and open source
I’m Aishat (preferred Maya), the lead design maintainer with the AsyncAPI Initiative, an open-source community. I also serve on our Code of Conduct and Technical Steering Committees.
I’m looking forward to submitting a talk for the conference! I wanted to check if there will be any travel sponsorship for the main speakers and co-speakers. I’m thinking about teaming up with another design lead from the open-source space to present on topics like design in product development or usability testing and measurement.
There’s no funding for travel/accomodation and associated costs just yet - sadly. The core team have spoken about it a few times but we lack the infrastructure to support travel stipends just yet - we may be able to partner with an org that can but likely not by FOSDEM 2023
Hello there! I am also planning on submitting a proposal for “open source design” theme, particularly, I wanted to discuss challenges in collaboration and new tangible interface ideas for remote design spaces. Still trying to make my proposal fool-proof. But wanted to follow-up about the travel grant situation, it would definitely be great if possible.
Hi there! It’s very unlikely we’ll be able to figure out how to offer stipends for travel etc. for 2025. The core team for open source design is currently in multiple in-depth discussions regarding how we make decisions, which includes for larger funding amounts/stipends given as well as the infrastructure needed to help with visa applications.
Apologies to disappoint but we will let you know asap if we can support!
I actually considered giving a talk, but I’m a little hesitant. I wanted to write blog articles about some thing first, to get my thoughts in a clearer shape, and to assess the relevancy of my experiences.
There are some areas I could potentially touch:
my journey from a (mostly backend) developer to user research and experience
some easy things to get started with user testing and research
my criticism on the concept of feature requests (asking users to present a solution instead of describing their problem)
And further, I would even be interested to give a talk dedicated to how UX design matters everywhere, and using CLI-only applications as an example that UX is not only a frontend thing (e.g. complicated config files or unintuitive command line options being similarly worse to confusing buttons). But I believe that I would not want to give a talk about such a topic alone. So unless someone is interested to do it with me, I’ll probably postpone it to later.
Blockquote my journey from a (mostly backend) developer to user research and experience & my criticism on the concept of feature requests (asking users to present a solution instead of describing their problem)
Hi hi! these two topics immediately made me want to watch a talk on them! I would really encourage you to pitch one of these two ideas even if it’s not perfect!, and if you want to have time to chat and want some like, collaboration time to build out your ideas i’m very happy to get on a call :)))
FOSDEM is a pretty chill and conversational conference - there’s no stage, it’s more like a lecture room (haha it is actually a lecture room!) so you’ll be in front of an audience but it’s typically full of encouraging smiles and lots of encouragement.
The easy wins with usertesting and research is also awesome but we have had past talks that have covered that topic - if you were specifically speaking to, for example user testing and research for command line tools then that specificity would be amazing.
I’d happily pair up on the talk with you if you’d like but I also think there’s so many community members here that’d be interested! I recommend making a new post here on the forum something like ‘looking for a FOSDEM conference talk partner!’ etc. and i’m certain you’ll get some replies :))))))
I guess I’ll focus on a Forgejo “case study”, because it allows for greater flexibility in prioritizing issues. Although I have some titles in mind, it’s hard to come up with enough content to fill a talk.
i’m very happy to get on a call :)))
Thank you. I’ll reach out once I need input. I’m currently rather constrained on my time and need some calm moments to think more about my plans in depth. I’ll try to write down more details about what I have in mind ASAP.
FOSDEM is a pretty chill and conversational conference - there’s no stage, it’s more like a lecture room
Yes, I’ve been there in 2024, too. I only attended one talk due to the crowded rooms, and I missed the Thunderbird talk although I wanted to go there.
I’d happily pair up on the talk with you if you’d like
I might come back to that later or post to the forum. Maybe for FOSS Backstage Design or something like this.
