Add a podcast/rss feed for the video recordings? (can volunteer a PR)

[Ian2020]

Happy to volunteer a PR for this: could the website host a podcast/rss feed that lists the recordings, when available, as episodes? This would allow listeners to follow and listen as things become available rather than repeatedly checking the videos site. Also podcast apps are perfect for this and many are available including FOSS ones.

From chat on matrix I understand there's already an issue here but I cannot see it:

https://github.com/FOSDEM/infodesk/issues/103

...so forgive me if I'm repeating something there or have missed the discussion.

My guess (I've no experience with this codebase) is this would not be too much effort:

• Add a page/endpoint somewhere on the existing site e.g. https://fosdem.org/2025/videos/rss
• In the layout code we just need to loop through the events much like the event page does, picking out those with a video attachments and for each spit out a podcast item with all the expected metadata. Looks like transcripts are also available for FOSDEM videos so that's nice to have as well.
• Advertise the feed on the other pages e.g. home page, FAQ, etc wherever makes sense

Some assumptions/consequences:

• The static site is updated/redeployed regularly so the feed would get updated likewise
• The pentabarf/schedule data does include the video links once they are reviewed and available
• Listeners will need to subscribe each year to a new feed as the site is deployed per year. It's probably ideal as the feed will be quite big with 500+ episodes.

It looks to me like the current website sample data i.e. https://github.com/FOSDEM/website/blob/master/sample/export/pentabarf.yaml does not contain any events with video attachments. Is it possible to get a small sample in there that do? Maybe from 2024. I am not staff so cannot get access to any real data.

Happy to volunteer on this!

[johanvdw]

The data in the yaml is not secret, but in order to make something rss like we should add the timestamp of every link in it.

Videolinks are not special, they are just recognised by their title:

  fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how:
    event_id: 5165
    guid: 0e5d66f1-e2cc-5bd2-a524-b4b5fbaada3c
    conference_track_id: 437
    title: NixOS @ Doctors Without Borders (MSF) - why we use it and how
    subtitle: ''
    slug: fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how
    abstract: <p>We present a real-world use-case of NixOS to manage an highly distributed
      fleet of servers &amp; VMs in low-resource settings used for mission critical
      applications. After a brief overview of who MSF is and what we do, we'll dive
      into the technical details of how we manage our fleet with NixOS and the unique
      strengths that NixOS brings to the table.</p>
    description: ''
    start_time: '10:45'
    end_time: '11:05'
    start_datetime: '2025-02-01 10:45:00+01:00'
    end_datetime: '2025-02-01 11:05:00+01:00'
    start_time_index: 129
    end_time_index: 133
    duration: '00:20:00'
    day: saturday
    day_name: Saturday
    conference_day_id: 5
    speakers:
    - ian_sollars
    - sohel_sarder
    track: nix
    track_name: Nix and NixOS
    track_full_name: Nix and NixOS
    type: devroom
    room: k3601
    room_name: K.3.601
    room_rank: 5
    conference_room_id: 260
    language: en
    attachments:
    - title: Slides for MSF@FOSDEM'25 - NixOS, Why we use it and how
      file: Presentat_yoE4oU0.pdf
      filename: Presentat_yoE4oU0.pdf
      identifier: /events/attachments/fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how/slides/236701/Presentat_yoE4oU0/
      type: slides
      size: 1193813
      id: 6338
      event_id: 236701
      event_slug: fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how
    links:
    - title: Video (WEBM) for MSF@FOSDEM'25 - NixOS, Why we use it and how
      url: https://video.fosdem.org/2025/k3601/fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how.av1.webm
    - title: Video (MP4) for MSF@FOSDEM'25 - NixOS, Why we use it and how
      url: https://video.fosdem.org/2025/k3601/fosdem-2025-5165-nixos-doctors-without-borders-msf-why-we-use-it-and-how.mp4

I can easilty add a timestamp to those (export the created field when creating the yaml).