October 13, 2026
This summer, I started an internship with FreeBSD Taiwan, and my mentor, Li-wen Hsu, recommended that I attend EuroBSDCon. He said it is a good chance to make connections and get familiar with the community, as I had also started my master’s degree in the Netherlands. Through the generous support of travel grants provided by the FreeBSD Foundation, I was able to attend the conference.
I also viewed EuroBSDCon as an opportunity to explore where I could contribute to the FreeBSD Project, as I was still trying to find an intersection between my own interests and the needs of the community. Due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to attend the main conference over the weekend. Nevertheless, I aimed to learn from the technical talks, to better understand the FreeBSD community, and to explore possible directions for future contributions.
Throughout the talks over two days, I found three talks that especially stood out to me and gave me new ways of thinking about problems that I had previously considered from a much narrower perspective:
- The Realities of Enterprise FreeBSD1 by Allan Jude
I was curious about what makes FreeBSD unique, especially in real-world situations. This talk partly answered that question, and also brought me a perspective I had never considered. Unlike individual users, in an enterprise environment, unvalidated updates can introduce risks. So updates have to go through validation, testing, and deployment processes, while security vulnerabilities may require rapid patching, and the product lifecycle may outlast the OS support lifecycle. I found this perspective inspiring and relevant to me as an Embedded Systems student, because long-lived embedded products face exactly this kind of lifecycle problem.
- Run Time Reoptimization for Modern Heterogenous Systems2 by George Neville-Neil
Before attending the talk, I knew that I had not studied optimization in much depth. This talk delivered the idea in a fresh way and motivated me to learn more about the area. George presented an approach to dynamic and adaptive optimization at runtime. Instead of relying only on optimization decisions made before execution, the system monitors actual hardware behavior through performance counters and uses that feedback to re-optimize selected functions while the program is running. I found this particularly interesting because I had never thought deeply about the motivations and limitations behind different optimization
1 https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/HRXAHF/
2 https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/CPAE7W/
techniques. This talk made me realize that optimization is an area I have not explored deeply enough and may be worth studying further.
- Unix Manpages, Then and Now3 by Kristaps Dzonsons
I had generally treated man pages as a natural part of Unix, so it had never occurred to me to think of them as a documentation interface with their own design assumptions and limitations. This talk covered some of the history of man pages, but also limitations of the format and interface, such as limited language support, the difficulty of writing good man pages, poor fit for tools like curl or C++, etc. This was particularly relevant to me because I am also planning to contribute documentation to the FreeBSD Handbook.
Following my mentor Li-Wen’s advice, I also tried to make connections and get familiar with the community. It didn’t go very well at first. I found it difficult to start conversations. Either I didn’t know what to say, or I couldn’t find the opportunity to talk to speakers I wanted to talk to. During the conversation with my mentor, I learned that one speaker, Zhen-Rong Wu4, had studied at the same university where I completed my bachelor’s degree. After his talk on Sunday, I had the chance to introduce myself and talk with him, and we continued our conversation during lunch break. I learned a little about his experience and how he first became involved in FreeBSD-related work. Later that day, I also had the opportunity to have dinner with Li-Wen, Zhen-Rong, and several other FreeBSD community members and conference attendees at a small local restaurant in Brussels. We talked about the cultures of different countries, which made me appreciate how international and welcoming the community is.
Over the two days, I was really impressed by how approachable the people in the community can be. Many of the attendees were experienced engineers and researchers, yet the atmosphere remained relaxed and friendly, with speakers joking on stage. At the same time, the technical discussions were serious, and the Q&A sessions often included detailed and challenging questions. One question in particular left a strong impression on me. After Zhen-Rong’s talk, someone asked how the community could help the project. That moment made me feel that the community was not only interested in hearing about new work, but was also actively thinking about how to participate and help move projects forward.
The conference gave me several directions to follow after returning home. In my conversation with Zhen-Rong, formal verification came up as one possible area. He advised me to look into FreeBSD-related formal verification work and ask my mentor about possible projects. He also invited me to contact him if I decide to pursue work in that direction. Another outcome came from George Neville-Neil’s talk. Since I did not manage to speak with him during the conference, I emailed him afterward. He kindly replied and introduced me to Ed Maste, and I am currently following up on that connection. Although I am still exploring
3 https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/MDEE9H/
4 https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/HSMCFS/
where I can best contribute, I now have a much clearer set of technical interests and several concrete people and directions to follow up with.
I had two very fruitful days in Brussels. Having only recently moved to the Netherlands and started my master’s degree, I was still finding my rhythm. And these two intensive days gave me a clearer sense of where I could go next, both in learning and in contributing to FreeBSD.
I had also attended AsiaBSDCon earlier this year, but I attended largely because it was nearby and because one of my professors encouraged students to participate. By the time of EuroBSDCon, I had become more motivated to contribute to the FreeBSD Project. Thanks again to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring my travel expenses to EuroBSDCon 2026.