@neil My experience differed from yours a little, I can only assume because we picked different devrooms. Not once did people leave before Q&A had finished, and the devrooms I was in did program 5-10min gaps between their talks for movement. I think each devroom is run (schedule as well as people management) by whomever set it up.
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@neil
I've gone about 10 times in the last 20 years (not this time - sorry to have missed you). My experience matches yours mostly, although I've normally found the wifi pretty good. Agree, too busy and too hot though. Absolutely hate the stampede as soon as Q&A is mentioned making Q&A time pointless.
It helps if I accept I need a big gap between talks to get anywhere and adjust expectations accordingly. Sometimes even then need to camp out in a popular devroom.
@neil
Brussels city centre being pretty small, it's feasible to do a lot of meet-ups after the event is done for the day. Some arrive a day or more early just for this. There's a lot of extra side events that tag on to the start or end of FOSDEM dates as well, for this reason - many people already happen to be there together.
I will probably go again but it takes a lot out of me!
Thanks for the write up - a few years ago after a particularly meh conference experience I sat down to come up with a set of criteria that any future conference would have to meet before I would consider attending/speaking - these kinds of logs are very useful when making such decisions.
@neil my experience of FOSDEM (an most conferences honestly) is that if you want to follow the conferences you are better at home watching a stream or recording. When I go to FOSDEM it’s mostly to meet in person with dozens of people over 3-4 day who all happen to be in Brussels at the same time. There are some nice spots to have a quiet-ish discussion around, but they may not be well indicated.
Also my first FOSDEM & I feel similarly. I did enjoy giving my talk though, as it was nice to answer some audience questions.
@lolaodelola sorry to have missed you!
I tend to agree, the stalls are hideously crowded, the acoustics of _everywhere_ are terrible (I popped on my AirPods on the voice enhancement mode in a couple of talks). Masks essential.
That said, I still go most years, my strategy is to stay in a devroom for half a day - so I watch random talks rather than micro targeting -exact- ones. This is a lot less stressful - and often fascinating.
Plus fact that I'm bound to run into folks I haven't seen for ages and swap gossip.
@neil I've not been to FOSDEM, and I've not been to any conferences since COVID; but generally I had a few hour tolerance for them - enjoy looking at things, meeting people for a bit; and then I'm out of braincells and that's enough thanks. The actual watching people present is often the most boring part as well.
@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.
@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 That is extremely useful to know. Thankyou!
