FOSDEM 2027 - Smart Homes Devroom

Smart Homes - Connecting ecosystems, Returning control.

Call for Papers

The Smart Homes Devroom will give FOSDEM a place where the full open-source smart-home stack comes together: not as competing islands, but as one connected technical ecosystem.

Attendees should leave with a clearer understanding of how these technologies complement each other - and how open source can return meaningful control of the connected home to the people who live in it.

Building an open smart home involves much more than choosing a home automation platform. It requires devices and embedded software, communication protocols, message brokers, orchestration tools, data storage, observability, energy management, edge intelligence and reliable infrastructure. These components are often presented separately, even though their real value emerges when they work together.

The Smart Homes Devroom will connect these layers and demonstrate how open, interoperable, local-first and vendor-independent digital homes can be built in practice.

If your work helps explain how one part of the stack fits into the wider ecosystem, how different technologies integrate, or how open source can deliver more control and long-term value to users, we would like to hear from you.

What We’re Looking For

We are especially interested in talks that close a gap in today's smart-home ecosystem, for example:

• Breaking a silo: a bridge, integration or standard that makes multiple ecosystems/projects work together where they previously did not.
• Taking back control: liberating a cloud-dependent device, replacing a vendor service, or making a home keep working offline.
• Operational reality: what broke after six months, and the architecture or trade-off that fixed it.

Beyond that, we welcome submissions covering topics including, but not limited to:

• Platforms & automation: home automation platforms, architectures, orchestration, workflow tools and integrations.
• Devices & embedded systems: open hardware, embedded systems, sensors, actuators and device firmware.
• Interoperability & messaging: Matter, Thread, Zigbee, Z-Wave, MQTT, event-driven infrastructure, protocol bridges and gateways.
• Infrastructure & self-hosting: homelabs, message brokers, storage, networking, monitoring, observability and data visualisation.
• Sensing & edge intelligence: local voice assistants, edge AI, computer vision, presence and occupancy detection.
• Energy: energy monitoring and optimisation, solar integration, batteries, smart EV charging and energy-aware automation.
• Privacy, security & resilience: local-first and offline operation, security, reliability, long-term maintainability and liberation of cloud-dependent devices.
• Real-world implementations: integrations across different layers, failures, trade-offs, migrations and lessons learned.

We particularly encourage presentations that explain the problem a project or technical approach solves, demonstrate integrations between open technologies, discuss standards and real-world interoperability, explain architectural choices and trade-offs, share operational experience and lessons learned, or provide reusable knowledge to the wider community.

Project introductions are welcome, especially where they help attendees understand an important part of the wider ecosystem. Proposals should go beyond a feature overview and explain the problem the project solves, where it fits in the smart-home stack, how it complements or integrates with other technologies, and what value it brings to users seeking more open, interoperable and controllable homes.

Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for maintainers, core contributors and experienced practitioners who can share first-hand knowledge of a project, standard, integration, architecture or real-world implementation.

Real-world implementations are welcome when they reveal lessons, patterns or integration approaches that are useful to the wider community and help others build more open, reliable and interoperable smart-home environments.

The audience will include people from different parts of the open-source ecosystem, with varying levels of familiarity with smart-home technologies. Talks should therefore provide enough context to be understandable beyond a project’s own community, while still offering meaningful technical insight.

Speakers should explain where their technology fits, how it relates to other parts of the stack, what value it brings to the wider ecosystem and end users, and what attendees should take away from the session. The aim is not to simplify the subject, but to make the talk accessible across neighbouring technical communities.

Talk Format

Choose the format that best fits your proposal. The organisers may suggest the other format when building the final programme.

Practical Expectations

• Language: all talks are in English.
• In person: the devroom is on-site in Brussels; we cannot accept remote talks.
• No travel funding: FOSDEM does not reimburse travel or accommodation; speakers cover their own costs.
• Recording: sessions are live-streamed and recorded by FOSDEM, and the recordings are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
• Code of Conduct: all speakers and attendees are bound by the FOSDEM Code of Conduct.

How to Submit

Please submit your proposal at https://fosdem.org/submit. When submitting your proposal, make sure you choose the “Smart Homes” entry in the "track" drop-down menu, otherwise, your proposal might go unnoticed.

Your submission should include:

• Your name and short biography
• Contact information
• Talk title
• A concise abstract of roughly 150–300 words explaining the problem, technical approach, ecosystem value and what attendees will learn
• Intended audience and assumed knowledge
• Your preferred format: Standard Talk or Short Talk
• Relevant project, repository or documentation links where applicable

A strong proposal names the problem, states where it sits in the smart-home stack, shows how it integrates with other open technologies, and gives a clear takeaway. A feature overview alone is usually not enough.

Selection: This is a call for proposals, not a guarantee of a slot. The devroom runs for four hours, so we expect to receive more good proposals than we can schedule. Proposals will be reviewed by the organisers against the criteria below, and we may also suggest a different format. We recommend that you wait for our notification (planned for 5 December 2026) before booking travel or accommodation.

Important Dates

• ~27 October 2026Call for Papers opens
• 24 November 2026Submission deadline · 23:59 CET
• 5 December 2026Speakers notified
• 12 December 2026Accepted speakers asked to confirm
• December 2026First online speaker meetup · introductions, overview of all accepted talks and start of the speaker community
• January 2027Second online speaker meetup · presentation tips, practical preparation and final alignment
• 22 January 2027Final presentation copy due to the devroom organisers
• 30–31 January 2027FOSDEM 2027 · Smart Homes Devroom on Sunday 31 January, 09:00–13:00

Speaker Support

We want speakers to feel part of the devroom well before they arrive in Brussels. Our goal is not only to build a strong programme, but also to help speakers connect with each other and prepare their sessions with confidence.

We will organise two online speaker meetups before FOSDEM.

• First speaker meetup: an informal introduction between the speakers and organisers. We will also present an overview of all accepted talks so that everyone can see how the different sessions fit together and where there may be interesting connections between topics.
• Second speaker meetup: focused on practical preparation. We will share tips and tricks for building an effective technical presentation, discuss the flow of the devroom and cover practical matters for presenting at FOSDEM.

We will also create a shared Bluesky community space so that speakers can exchange ideas, discover overlaps between their sessions and stay in contact with each other and the organisers in the run-up to FOSDEM.

Speakers who would like additional help with their presentation can ask the organisers for an individual preparation session. We are happy to review structure, messaging, timing or presentation flow where useful.

Value-focused, Open and Non-Commercial

The Smart Homes Devroom is strictly non-promotional. Speakers may be affiliated with commercial organisations, but submissions must focus on Free and Open Source Software, open technologies and technical substance. Product pitches, sales presentations and marketing-led talks are out of scope.

Proposals will be evaluated on their technical substance, openness, relevance, originality and value to the FOSDEM community.

Volunteering

A team of four volunteers has already committed to help staff the Smart Homes Devroom throughout the session. Additional help is welcome. If you would like to support speaker preparation, room operations, timekeeping or transitions, contact the organisers.

FOSDEM itself also runs on volunteers. You can register through the official FOSDEM volunteer site.

Organisers

Maarten Raeymaekers

Independent smart-home enthusiast and enterprise-software solutions consultant.

Arjen Moermans

Independent smart-home enthusiast and enterprise-software solutions consultant.

Joost Lekkerkerker

Open Home Foundation and open-source smart-home community.

Olivier Daury

Principal Cloud Architect and Open Source Board member at Amadeus and hachyderm.io infrastructure staff.

Contact

Maarten Raeymaekers - mraeymaekers@gmail.com
Arjen Moermans - arjen@moermans.net
Joost Lekkerkerker - joost.lekkerkerker@openhomefoundation.org
Olivier Daury - olivier.daury@gmail.com