TL;DR: It was my first time at FOSDEM and it took some time to feel comfortable, this post may help newcomers. As I mentioned in my previous post, I spoke at FOSDEM this year. It was my first time there (in the whole Europe, btw!) and it took some time to get used to the way the event goes. This post will show some tips that may help FOSDEM newcomers and maybe some veterans as well.

This year my proposal to speak at FOSDEM was accepted and I spoke at the Desktop devroom! :) It was my first talk in English, so I decided to do as many rehearsals as I could. I was 8 in total, but as expected, it was still a little bit faster than expected. :P I had 30 minutes to present and I did it in 26. I usually speak fast and this presentation was made to be fast because I had a lot of content to show in 30 minutes.

Book: A história de Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. Um livro para quem é fã de Tolkien. Esse é um livro relativamente pequeno, com uma história de cerca de 50 páginas e muitas referências para um dos primeiros trabalhos do Tolkien. Eu só recomendaria esse livro para quem já leu outras obras do Tolkien como Silmarilion ou Os Filhos de Húrin. A história de Kullervo inspirou muito do que aconteceu na história de Turin Turambar, além de outras coisas que são contadas no Silmarilion.

Book: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. I decided to read this book one month before visiting the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. My plan is to use the whole context of the book to have the full experience when visiting the museum. The book is OK. Most part of it is just what you expect from a diary of a 14 years old girl, even with the whole context implied.

Book: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. It was a good reading. I would review this book as 3 stars but at the end, I was convinced that it made me think about many interesting things on successful people in general. The key point of this book is: what makes successful people is a match of many factors. Some of those factors were not clear to me.

Book: The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory by Julia Shaw. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. The whole point of this book is to show that our memories are not reliable. We can’t be sure that something happened because a lot of things may influence our past memories. The good argument in favor of this book is its references. There are many references for academic studies. The bad part is that it is not so comfortable to read, the language is not that good.

Book: Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This is that kind of book that does not answer questions, it just creates a lot more. :) I tend to not implement algorithms just for the sake of learning a new one and this is not a good thing. When you read these kinds of books you understand why it’s so important to know which kinds of algorithms already exists and which problems they solve.

Book: Introdução à Web Semântica: A inteligência da informação by Diego Eis. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Tive o prazer de ajudar no processo de revisão desse livro. O assunto sempre me chamou a atenção mas nunca parei para estudar e entender as necessidades. Esse livro vai desde o começo da internet, mostrando as outras tentativas de implementação e como chegamos na forma de mostrar dados que temos hoje. Essa forma possui alguns problemas para dar contexto para as coisas e fazer os links entre os conteúdos, e é aí que entra a web semantica.

Book: Programming Elixir: Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun by Dave Thomas. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. It’s not the best Elixir book I read but it’s a good book. I started with Programming Phoenix for a more practical learning. This book feels like the other “Programming language book”. You will find how to split a string, or how you can deal with regex. In case you’re looking for the methods for many types, it will be for you.

Book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. It was good at the beginning but the end was too self-help for me. I learned good things in this book and that’s what matters for me. Here are my raw notes about the book: Give a fuck about things you already have, not only what you want. We have a limited number of fucks to give, choose yours wisely.