FOSDEM 27 - Emulator Development Room CFP

Due to popular demand, we have decided to revive the Emulator Development Room, and the Call for papers is hereby open!

Once again, FOSDEM 27 will take place at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, on 30 & 31 January 2027.

What is FOSDEM?

Stolen/Borrowed from the website:

FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.

Important stuff:

• FOSDEM is free to attend. There is no registration.
• FOSDEM website
• FOSDEM code of conduct
• Emulator devroom schedule (will be filled in once talks are selected)

What we’re looking for

We want talks that dig deep. Instead of many short talks, we host fewer, longer sessions so speakers have time for real technical detail, demos and discussion. Show us how things actually work under the hood.

Some ideas (for inspiration):

• Console and computer emulator development
• CPU emulation, binary translation, JIT and dynarec
• Graphics, audio and timing accuracy
• Test ROMs, conformance suites and measuring accuracy
• Reverse engineering undocumented hardware
• Debuggers, tracing and tooling for emulator developers
• Hardware on hardware emulation (FPGA and friends)
• OS emulation and virtual machine development
• Preservation, emulation history and keeping projects alive
• Running an open source emulator project: community, forks, handovers and legal pressure
• …

Talk formats

• Deep dive: 30 to 50 minutes, including Q&A. This is the heart of the room.
• Lightning talk: 5 minutes. Perfect for a first emulator, a neat trick or a work in progress. First-time speakers, this one’s for you!

Topic overlap

Some topics might be suitable or overlap with other rooms (such as the Retro & Virtualization rooms). In such cases we might contact the speaker and point that out, but ultimately it is up to the speaker where the talk should land.

Desirable speakers

Experienced speakers are very welcome, but hobbyists and/or first time speakers are equally welcome. As long as you have passion and/or knowledge you care to share. Never given a talk before? Submit a lightning talk, or reach out and we’ll gladly help you shape your proposal.

How to submit your proposal

Submit your talk through pretalx and select the Emulator Development track.

What should be in your submission

• name
• short bio
• contact info
• title (funny titles are required/appreciated)
• format: deep dive or lightning talk
• abstract: what you’re gonna talk about, and what the audience will learn
• level of technical depth, and whether you’ll do a live demo

Important Dates

• November 23rd: submission deadline (this one is firm, as FOSDEM needs our full schedule by early December)
• December 1st: selected speakers notified
• December 7th: schedule published
• January 30th & 31st: FOSDEM!

Volunteering

FOSDEM needs you! Every year, the FOSDEM team is assisted by an enthusiastic team of volunteers to help out with various tasks and make the event a fun and safe place for all our visitors.

There are some benefits to being a volunteer, but most importantly you help make FOSDEM possible :)

Visit https://volunteers.fosdem.org/ to sign up.

Contact us

You can reach us at mailto:emulator-devroom-manager@fosdem.org