FOSDEM 2021: Amateur-radio infobooth ... volonteers needed

[Kristoff]

Hi all,



As some people who where on GNU Radio hamradio meeting on Saturday are 
already aware, the first weekend of February (6/2 and 7/2) is FOSDEM 
2021, the "Free and Open-Source Developers European Meeting".

This event is one of the largest conferences in open-source (hardware, 
software, data, knowledge) development in Europe, and includes the "Free 
Software radio devroom" on Sunday.
Check out the talks here: 
https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/track/free_software_radio/


However, FOSDEM in not only talks and devroom; it also includes a number 
of stands to promote opensource projects and the opensource culture. One 
of these stands is the "Infobooth on Amateur Radio" hosted by the UBA, 
the Belgian Amateur Radio Society.
The purpose of the Amateur-radio infobooth is to try to help bridge the 
amateurradio and opensource / developers / hackers / maker communities.
The goal is to demonstrate amateur-radio -as technical / scientific 
hobby that allows everybody to learn and experiment with radio and 
radio-communication- to the open-source community; and -at the same 
time- get more people from the amateurradio side to FOSDEM and show the 
advantages of open-source software, hardware and open knowledge and data.

As FOSDEM 2021 is an online-event, so is the infobooth; so everything 
will be done via online chat and videolinks.
Using the internet, the stand will show what it means to be a ham.
The FOSDEM organisation will help redirect (online) visitors of the 
FOSDEM conference (i.e. the talks and presentation) to the web / chat / 
video-content of the infostands; which will allow the stands to interact 
with the visitors.


Why am I writing this? .. Well, I am looking for volunteers who can help 
out (part of) that weekend.

The motto of the infostand this year is "a day in the life of a 
radio-amateur".
However, to make the FOSDEM web-presence more then just a website and a 
chat-server; we want to add live video-contents.

The idea is that you simply you do whatever part of the amateur-radio 
hobby you normally do that weekend (make radio contacts, do FT8 or JT9, 
receive images from the ISS, make a QSO over satellite, solder an 
electronics kit, ... whatever you like, .. perhaps even some GNU Radio 
things!!), and you provide a live video-feed of that.
This "video-stream" can be a camera in your shack, a screen-capture of 
your computer or a websdr, or .. -why not- a live video-stream while you 
are activating a SOTA summit.

This video-link will be streamed to a video-server, so that visitors to 
FOSDEM can 'hop in' to the stand, see what the amateur-radio hobby is 
about ("no, amateur-radio not just talking into a microphone"), and ask 
questions via chat and videochat.



But, wait, there is more.

As we now have this video-server, why not use it for some experiments 
ourselves?

image this: make a contact over radio and -at the same time- have a 
video-link over the internet to the station on the other side.
Have you ever wondered what really happens to your signal on the remote 
side when you change transmission power-level, your antenna or 
transmission mode of your station?
How is the FreeDV voice-call over HF is impacted by changing band?
Or would you like to know how your SSTV images over QO-100 get impacted 
by changing the mode?
This might be your chance!



So, are you available on the weekend of 6 and 7 February (between 9 AM 
and 4 PM UTC), and are you interested to help out to demonstrate 
amateur-radio to an audience that is actually interested in what you are 
doing (especially if it is geeky :-) ), please contact me.

I would need about 3 or 4 more people for each day, .. so any help is 
welcome!



(But don't forget to watch the presentation of the Free Software Radio 
devroom too! :-) )


73
kristoff - ON1ARF