3 years ago I also decided not to come again, yet I did it this time; was a mistake.
It is overcrowded, because it's free. Queues in front of the crappy foodtrucks, coffee stands, rooms, everything, are there, because it is overcrowded. The feeling of dirtiness comes from the unpleasant buildings with tiny corridors, quickly applied concealing cardboards, ducktaped signs, underplanned amount and positioning of trash cans and the lack of enough cleaning staff.
We could explain for hours what other problems are stemming from the fact it is a free conference. However...
The organizers' unprofessionalism regarding crowd control, speaker introduction, moderation, maintaining the "OPEN/FULL" sign does not depend on money. I would think it's common sense, but apparently the moderators do not really care if in every 30 seconds there is someone sneaking in the room through a squeaking door. Every. Freaking. 30. Seconds.
Talks were great. All of those I managed to fit in the room, were fun, enjoyable, with a knowledgeable presenter. I felt extra bad for them trying to answer questions at the end of the sessions when people started to switch rooms because of tight schedules on scattered rooms.
Now I have an accountability buddy who would prevent me going to FOSDEM ever again, unless they introduce a fee of 50 bucks or something.
"...Every. Freaking. 30. Seconds."
Absolutely frickin true. I was at a 09.10AM session at building [UB 5.*] where the doors are right beside where the speaker stands. One person per 30S was hopping in, till the end of the talk.
In the "Observability Track" the Fosdem staff member was totally pissed that no single person listened to his repeated continued pleas to stay back till the Q&A finishes and the talk concludes.
Everyone attending Fosdem must have some level of courtesy towards those who speak and those who are attending.
Pulling of a free, volunteer-ran conference for many thousand attendees year after year is incredibly impressive. I thanks all the volunteers making FOSDEM happen for their hard work.
F in FOSDEM stands for free. In my eyes, one of FOSDEM's goals is to legitimize FLOSS software for any software use-case.
Also in my eyes, lack of professionalism (or the intent of improve) undermines legitimization efforts.
Thus, with all the respect to those who really care about the volunteering, I don't think it's a legit excuse to repeat "but it's free!"
And don't forget, after all for us: It's not free. I, and many of the attendees paid heavy €s to fly there, book accommodation, eat out, etc. I don't mind to invest into going to conferences, networking, meetups, like OpenStack summit, kubecon/dockercon, Google cloud summit, react confs etc. However...
FOSDEM in it's current format is best consumed from your couch at home, following the live online streams. And one of the reasons for this apparently is that FOSDEM is unfortunately "free".
In my eyes FOSDEM proves that the community-driven FLOSS model also works for producing a conference (including the talks that we can enjoy from our couches), not 'just' for producing software.
I think we are mostly beyond the need for legitimization of FLOSS these days. But as you mention there is no shortage of professional events.
It was my first time at FOSDEM. I listened to podcasts/read blog posts from people that have been attending the last 15 editions so I kind of knew what to expect. I brought snacks both days, and didn't bother bringing a laptop. I picked odd hours for commuting, and tried to commit to a track/room for a bit (it took me days to figure out my schedule)
That means I probably missed some of the FOSDEM experience but I also didn't experience much crazy (except for the wintry mix that made moving around so hard on Saturday)
You are right that the volunteer experience is inconsistent and I have no data to compare to other years. At times, in some rooms, it felt like the attendees were self-policing (shooshing others, controlling people standing up, etc.) when the volunteers were not. I've also been to events in other places (Open Source Summit Japan comes to mind) where there were volunteers but the experience was much more streamlined. It might be cultural, who knows.
What I heard (and therefore wasn't expecting) is that nothing new gets announced at FOSDEM anymore. However there are still tens of thousands of people in the industry that might hear the news on Twitter/HN/elsewhere and still want to go ask questions/have a debate.
I agree that the talks at FOSDEM are great but I also stopped going for the same reason. Some smaller, less-crowded annual events that are I often attend instead are:
