[FOSDEM] Press Request: Fosdem attendance figures for 2012?

[Tias Guns]

On 09/02/12 19:19, Philip Paeps wrote:
> On 2012-02-09 16:27:19 (+0100), Mathias Huber<mhuber at linuxnewmedia.de>  wrote:
>> for a news item in Linux-Magazin, could you estimate the attendance figures
>> for 2012? What were they in 2011?
>
> We've been guessing "about 5000" for a couple of years.  That's also what we
> print on the t-shirts and in other publications.  We can't get exact numbers
> because people are free to turn up (or not) as they please.  The 5000 number
> was guestimated based on a number of factors and seems to be a reasonable
> reflection of reality.
>
>> How many more rooms were available through the use of building K?
>
> We had one extra large auditorium and six extra smaller devrooms.  But mainly
> the K building gave us a lot more space to put stands and a much nicer
> environment for the stands themselves.  I'm sure they're happy to be out of
> their dark corridors!

Some more detailed numbers:

Last year we had 25 devrooms over 2 days, in 14 physical rooms.
This year, we had 27 devrooms over 2 days, in 18 physical rooms.
(some are 2 days, see http://fosdem.org/schedule)

In K, there is an auditorium (800 ppl) + 6 rooms (~85 ppl capacity). We 
used this opportunity to increase the number of hacker rooms (1 in 
H,K,AW) and BoF rooms (2 in AW) as well.

The amount of talks increased from ~330 talks (~200 hours) to ~430 talks 
(~270 hours). We also did 4 more main track talks than the years before 
(an extra hour Saturday evening, and an extra hour Sunday midday).

Admittedly, that's a lot.


Kind regards,
Tias

>> Is the date for 2013 already set?
>
> Not yet.  We are trying to schedule a debriefing meeting with ULB in the next
> week or two.  We'll try to get the dates sorted out then, but we may need to
> wait until summer if ULB has no view on their calendar yet...
>
>   - Philip
>