Being so privacy focused in this day and age...

FOSDEM was (and is!) accessible without a reservation, without handing them your personal details. They were an example before I was ready to understand the importance.

I hope they will be able to "get back to normal" next year.

The huge overcrowding and damp winter weather at FOSDEM always seemed to make it a disease vector. All of my team returned home ill after each FOSDEM. Makes sense not to try to run it in person.

True, have gone to FOSDEM the last two times it was held and got a nasty cold the first time and a flu on the second time.

One year, I was sick and presented something anyway, it was so cold outside I renamed the event FROSTDEM.

This effect is well known at scifi/comic/cosplay conventions where it's colloquially called "con flu" or "con plague". I think people would have benefited from masking up at any type of those events. But I guess that may not make for the ideal costume photo.

Or the more alliterative "con crud".

true, though (1 data point) I have always been surprised that I have never got sick during or after FOSDEM.

I've been there every year since 2012, never caught a single bug... You just got unlucky I guess

This is the argument people make with COVID.

Well, there are a lot of RCEs and exploits at FOSSDEM so it's normal to be powned.

Great! All conferences should transition to having an online edition (in addition to an in-person event if there is demand). Not everybody can travel half way around the world to a conference. It's also often much more inclusive- personally I am much more comfortable pre-recording a talk or livestreaming a talk online than presenting in person.

One of the good outcomes is that, even after events go back to being in person, there's going to be a more significnt online component than in the past. FOSDEM has been very good about this for a while. But more commercially-oriented events in particular worried that having everything on video would take away the incentive for people to pay and attend in-person--or that the videos by themselves just weren't worth the cost of making them.

Companies have seen though that they can get a lot more reach through video even if attendees are far less involved overall. I do think we'll see the presentations mostly being done in-person though. It's still more hybrid in that regard right now but in-person attendees are mostly not going to watch videos.

It used to be possible to have both, fosdem was streamed online live. I think it's best to have the choice, looking forward to fosdem 2023!

as long as sound is well recorded, so often you had online talks that were entirely unwatchable

I think the best part of these conferences is not actually the talks, but rather the chance in-person encounters with other developers you wouldn't get to meet otherwise.

Ah, that's a pity but at the same time totally respect the decision the Committee has made. It would have been a horrible choice to have to make.

At least you don't have to run between rooms, running across ULB campus, while leaving 5 minutes earlier to still assure a place. :)

5 mins is optimistic. Last time I went, rooms were full all day. People would sit in the room all day, for a talk they wanted hours later. People who actually wanted to be in the room would stand or sit outside, and watch the stream on their laptops and phones. It's massively oversubscribed, with poorly sized rooms.

One upshot of all this is that next year it might be just as easy just to head somewhere with decent connectivity within ULB, slap on a headset, and watch it that way. It's certainly less trouble than trying to get in. If that catches on, hopefully it'll discourage some amount of seat camping.

I've done this at conferences for years†, hotel room track is great to catch a talk when you need to recharge your extraversion battery.

†FLOSS conferences having been generally well ahead of mainstream on streaming.

There are just too many people for the facility. Last time I went I just camped out in a devroom that was of the most interest overall. Made for a much better experience than trying to go from talk to talk.

While disappointing at one level, the decision is very understandable. It's a crowded event and, given the distributed layout and lack of registration, there's no real way to put any controls in place even if they wanted to without making massive changes that would require much more staffing.

>> People would sit in the room all day, for a talk they wanted hours later.

So people claimed seats early because the rooms were full because people were claiming seats early....

Not really. There are just a lot of people very unevenly distributed--although the fact that people are willing to camp out for the talks they want to see (which many others probably want to see as well) probably amplifies the unevenness.

Yes, similar to my experience, if you want to run out, being close to the door is the only way to actually manage it.

So much for "going back to normal" I suppose...

I see some comments to the effect of "so much for going back to normal". But only those who have actually been to FOSDEM will grok why they chose to go online for 2022. It's jam-packed in the best of times, and many contract the (in)famous "FOSDEM cold".

It sucks, but I understand and fully support the FOSDEM staff's decision to go virtual for 2022. I'm saying this as someone who has been going to FOSDEM since 2012; and as a co-organizer of one of the Dev Rooms.

I don't know when they decided it exactly but FOSDEM usually takes place in Brussels, at the ULB / VUB (Université Libre de Bruxelles / Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and these last days the numbers of new COVID cases are really through the roof in Belgium and Brussels more specifically (Brussels being the belgian city with the lowest vaccination rate in the country) and several politicians are asking once again, as you can guess it, for more and more restrictions.

I think they just made the call this week. I last checked not long ago and there was no info on the site yet.