My biggest gripe with FOSDEM has been the same for over 20 years: the doors to devrooms should remain firmly closed during a talk. It's so annoying (and disrespectful) when people come and go during talks. The seats and tables are all very noisy, the accoustics tend to be poor. The best way to attend dev room talks is by watching the videos. Sigh. I wish people would just be polite enough to wait outside when a talk is already in progress. Or at least bother to enter quietly.
The criticism of Brussels is warranted. There is a serious lack of public toilets in Belgium in general, but it's worse in Brussels due to the population density and prevalence of poverty. The trash situation is something I've been meaning to write an essay on, but two words to sum it up: political incompetence.
For what it's worth, I got politely turned away at the PostgreSQL devroom doors when I was about 10 minutes late to a session. Perhaps this is not something that got passed along to all volunteers.
Could have been because the room was full. That's AFAIK the only reason why lecture hall doors are closed at FOSDEM. At least Postgres has a room of more or less appropriate size lately. A couple of years ago, they had some of the most interesting talks in one of the smallest rooms. Impossible to get in without queueing up a talk or two in advance.
It's in good part because the conference is at its limits.
Scheduling is uneven. Talk A ends at 10:50, talk B starts at 10:45. Also getting from the H building to K takes a good while, and interesting talks tend to get full which is an extra reason to try to be early.
Unfortunately it's not a really solvable problem short of maybe making the conference a day longer.
I haven't been for a while but latterly I came to the conclusion that you picked a devroom for a day/half-day that you were interested in the talks/people and hung there. Or you spend the half-day networking/socializing. It's mostly an exercise in frustration to flit from room to room for specific talks.
> The trash situation is something I've been meaning to write an essay on,
Did a quick search because I recall an old article by The Economist dating to between 2000-2005 already complaining of people in suites leaving their dogs to shit on the sidewalks without concern. I sadly can't find it but there is plenty of content that teils me things haven't changed.
The criticism of Brussels is warranted. There is a serious lack of public toilets in Belgium in general, but it's worse in Brussels due to the population density and prevalence of poverty. The trash situation is something I've been meaning to write an essay on, but two words to sum it up: political incompetence.