Kathy co-organized a half-day developer room focused on Microblocks at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium this February.

Mentor Kathy Giori, who engages in global partnerships and outreach for physical computing tool Microblocks, recently co-managed the proposal and execution of a developer room for the annual FOSDEM (Free and Open-Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium this February. FOSDEM is a volunteer-organized, donation-funded, free and public event featuring hundreds of talks, workshops and developer rooms that promote the use and development of free and open source software (FOSS) projects. Kathy partnered with several developers to produce a half-day of presentations introducing and interweaving Microblocks technology with several other powerful FOSS projects, including Robotistan PicoBricks, M5 Core, Elecrow Mbits, Elecfreaks Pico:ed and Adafruit Circuit Playground Express. They introduced an array of features, uses, and compatibilities, all while entertaining the audience with physical computing activities such as “musical” RFID reading, “dancing robots” and touch-screen “finger painting.” She also highlighted the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology and the defense of digital inclusion through FOSS. “We imagined how lovely it would be if next year we could convince the FOSDEM organizers to offer us a space to set up a “youth zone” or “physical computing zone,” Kathy wrote in a recent blog post. “With such an amazing tool to program today’s great hardware, you can create something practical, beautiful or even magical.” ​