FOSDEM 2021, like many conferences across the span of 2020 and beyond was very different to previous years and no less for the volunteer team at Open Source Design (OSD). The volunteers at OSD however, are used to communicating asyncronously as we’re reasonably well spread out across the globe.

As open source design has done for the last 5 years, we applied for a devroom at FOSDEM 2021 and succeded! t was then that we reached out to our community and wider for talk submissions ahead of FOSDEM’s plans around the services they would use for both talk submissions and the platforms to hold the conference. We received 17 talk proposals and were able to accept all of them alongside our two usual FOSDEM open source design sessions.

At our most busy time we had over 293 people watching the Open Source Design Devroom which is more than we’d have ever been able to fit in the smaller rooms at the university campus in Brussels!

We had talks from established designers in the FLOSS space as well as designers that are newer to FLOSS which offered a fantastic broad approach to the topics relevant to design in FLOSS.

The talks are listed below, each with a link to the speakers talk outline and profile on FOSDEM as well as their talk video, also hosted on the FOSDEM website.

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A brief introduction to Open Source Design by Bernard Tyers . See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Communicating CryptPad by David Benque. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Design Bitcoin for Everyone: How we practice and spread open design to make Bitcoin more intuitive and accessible by Christoph Ono. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Redesign of an established Open Source CMS: Drupal Admin UI: Past, Present and possible Future by Sascha Eggenberger. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Why are we scared of user research? by Belen Barros Pena. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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UX contributions to pip, Python’s package installer: A conversation about UX contributions with the pip team by Bernard Tyers. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Gain a Superpower in OSS as a Designer Through Code by Kartik Choudhary. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Open design and how everyone can be a designer: Changing the way we design together by Memo Esparza. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Mentoring designers in open Source Software: What I’ve learned mentoring and supporting designers in OSS. by Eriol Fox. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Ways to Contribute to OS Projects Without Writing Line(s) of Code by Sixtus Chizaram Isaac. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Community-accessible EEG monitoring of the user’s mental state in the UX/UI research by Dmitriy Kostiuk. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Latest tech, great! Accessibility, not so much. by Oana Mangiurea. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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OSH Communication Kit:Conversation starters for the Deaf and the Hearing by Daniel Wessolek. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Own Your Healthcare Experience: An Open Source Path by Juhan Sonin. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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Penpot, design freedom for teams: One FOSDEM and one pandemic after we’re excited to announce that Penpot Alpha release will be launched February 2nd! by Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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The Open Source Designer’s ToolBox: Recommended Techniques and Tools for Open Source Designers by Abigail Makolo. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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The user in the cultures of UX design and open source by Jan Dittrich. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

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You can also take a look at our twitter from FOSDEM 2021 to see live tweets summarising the talks and spotlighting the key content discussed: http://bit.ly/OSD-FOSDEM2021

Our two regular Open Source Design community delivered sesisons are first, an introduction to Open Source Design’s mission and vision and the final session which is an open discussion to ‘pitch your project’ where FLOSS projects can spend some time talking to the devroom attendees about their FLOSS project and asking for design support. This is also an oportunity for designers interested in helping FLOSS projects to talk about what they’d like to offer. See the twitter thread here

Why pitch your project is important to the Open Source Design Dev room As Open Source Design we’ve discovered over the years, that FLOSS projects are interested in design and the wide spectrum of support design functions can offer a FLOSS project but they often get stuck with what exactly to ask for and what is reasonable and appropriate! by offering a chance for FLOSS projects and designers to ‘pitch’ both sides of the partnership gets a chance to communicate what they need, want and can do for each other.

And finally, here’s a screenshot of the Open Source Design team and attendees at the end of FOSDEM 2021! Add the lovely screenshot here. Screenshot of the open source design dev room at the end of FOSDEM 2021