I was at Open Source Day 2025 in Florence

In 2024, I visited Open Source Day for the first time. It was so great that I promised myself I would return to Florence. After gathering enough votes in the public voting, I was going there as a speaker again. And you know what? It's still the best conference out there.

Travel

Last year, my travel was a bit complicated. This year, it was also complicated, but I learned one very important thing based on my last year's experience—Italian trains are amazing. So this year, instead of landing in Bologna in the evening, I flew to Rome and took a train there.

This way I could spend half of my day just waking around Florence and enjoying the vibe.

Next year I will probably even try flying from Łódź to Milan and taking a train from there to simplify everything.

And, while we're talking about my travel

The conference itself

This year Open Source was a bit smaller than last year - with just one track and one day. I'm a huge fan of one-track events, but on the other hand, I wouldn't mind if it were a two-day conference with a bit more breaks and time for networking.

The talks were amazing. But if I would have to pick the most memorable ones, I would go with (random order):

The Universe, The (Hello) World and Uranus by Edoardo Carlesi

Edoardo is the living proof that you can be an astrophysicist and an ML expert and at the same time be a guitarist in the famous (in some niches at least) Nanowar Of Steel.

I never thought that I would have a patched song (there are two versions of HelloWorld.java). I had so much fun listening to this talk.

Dungeons And Developers: Epic Teamwork for Legendary Projects by Pierdomenico Reitano

I'm a huge fan of Dungen and Dragons references, but this whole talk was like a DnD session. And it was really great and it explained a lot of things regarding teamwork.

Learning (Web) Development through Open Source by Leonardo Montini

Leonardo explained how important is to give to the community without wanting anything in return. Especially that you might get rewarded anyway. During his career, thanks to contributing to the community, he got his dream job.

Bridging Law and Technology: The Foundations and Future of Computational Justice by Sal Kimmich

Sal's topic was one the most difficult ones this year. And I will have to listen to it again - especially since we are talking about the intersection of law and tech. Sal touched on many things, but definitely, it's a great food for thoughts.

Amazing discussions

I had a lot of amazing discussions this year in the hallway (or near the place selling lampredotto). The topics varied:

• Open Source

• AI

• WordPress

• Career choices

• Salary gap in Italy vs Poland

• How to pronounce "chrząszcz"

• Lack of falling from the stage

• Why Italian tomatoes are so amazing

My talk

This year, again, I was a speaker. I had a chance to be an ambassador of our amazing Patchstack Alliance community and I told the story about how we closed almost 1000 plugins during one month. You can read more about it here.

I'm really happy with how it went, but the thing I'm the most happy about is the huge applause all the researchers got. As I mentioned - I was just their ambassador, and the community did most of the heavy lifting.

And I got my second Schroddy.

Time to sum up

It was amazing, energetic and inspiring. While a bit tiring, I have quite a few new ideas to try out. If you never visited OSD, then I think you should add it to your 2026 calendar. Also, because I know that many of my WP friends might be reading this, OSD is a great place to step outside of the WordCamp bubble (WordCamps are great too, but OSD is just different).

Also, I would love to say thank you to the whole organizer team - you are the best.