New blogpost:

@neil “the coin culture”, coffee shop on one corner of “U” building, on the main strip, is *slightly* calmer than elsewhere. I’ve just secured a comfy sofa seat to recharge myself a little

@jmtd Smart!

@neil I think you captured the experience in your post. Remember to rest and recover, its an intense event.

My first FOSDEM was 2015, I presented in 2020. The crowds really are overwhelming. Presenting at FOSDEM and knowing folks makes a huge difference. But I wouldn't attend now.

@anna wrote about their experience last year:

https://notapplicable.dev/daring-to-dream/

I really liked their references to systems design and came away with a book recommendation, that I need to get.

@neil When you said you were planning on going, my thought was that it would be far too crowded and far too much booze for your liking.

@onepict @anna That's a great blogpost - thanks so much for flagging it!

@mansr Oh, I avoided all the alcohol events

But you were right about crowds.

@neil That is extremely useful to know. Thankyou!

@neil Oh wow this saddens me immensely to hear. My takeaways would likely have been the same as yours it seems.

It can be incredibly hard as an organizer to say no, but that does seem to be what has been the problem here. The number of attendees need to match the venue size, and scheduling talks properly is much more important than total talk throughput.

Thank you for your writeup.

@neil Sounds like it hasn't changed much since the times I went there, in the early '00s.

People getting up and leaving as soon as the Q&A started was the most annoying thing for me. This is not how conferences are meant to happen, and I find it incredibly rude.

The SF cons I've been to have all scheduled 1h talks with 30m between, so you get time for a breather.

The academic ones have usually been more tightly packed, but with, say, 2-3 closely themed talks/session.

@troed @neil last year, I heard that Fosdem doesn't have a registration system, and that causes way too many people to attend in too little space. Is this true?

@loke @troed @neil "You don't need to register. Just turn up and join in!" not been there IRL myself since 2023 however, watching online from Sweden this year

@neil I've only ever gone as part of a group, which may or may not mitigate some of your experience (it doesn't make any difference to people being oblivious about quietly entering or leaving talks, mind)

I think the issue with timing is that it's not really one event, it's a whole bunch of mostly independent events, with dev rooms being entirely run by their organisers

RichiH tends to give some kind of infrastructure talk on the Sunday which you might find interesting and maybe will go into the WiFi

@neil @justine especially if you are just attending and have back to back talks across multiple buildings; meeting people ends up being a (lovely) distraction

@loke @troed Yes, there is no registration, or counting of attendees.

@neil @loke

Well. There's the problem then, besides not running a synchronized talk schedule with ample time to move between talks (which is also usually the setup/preparation time needed for presenters).

@annehargreaves @neil yeah honestly that sounds like a hate crime