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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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