FYUZ2023 had more going on than it might have seemed. Compared to last year, there was no vegetable orchestra, no olive-flavored bubbles, no “celebrity” speakers. And no Tareq Amin. On the other hand, talk of metaverse didn’t dominate, network slicing wasn’t the answer to all of telecoms’ prayers and FYUZ was largely a GenAI-free zone. Which left…? Which left …the nuts and bolts of open and disaggregated networks. Open RAN, for sure, remains a central pillar of the event, but there was more on open transport, open WiFi, open LAN and some useful exposure for neutral hosts (formerly known as NaaS – the TIP working group has been essentially renamed). There were a few downsides – the programming was a little patchy in places. Old-fashioned plenary-type sessions were too long; “keynote panels” can quickly lose energy. Slightly too many competing sessions (perhaps a nice problem to have, but some promised more than they delivered). A whole-day host/MC would have been useful to help with orientation and reinforce each day’s programming and takeaways. But these are minor points – and offered here as constructive input to make FYUZ 2024 even more successful. On the upside, FYUZ is still a unique event. […]