@neil Like in church.

[johannamakesgames@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dan @neil or having to pee. Or having to pee at a zombie apocalypse.

[krahabors@toot.lv]

@neil shortest evacuation route. It's built into our core.

[tinmouth@infosec.exchange]

@neil easier to leg it if it's boring!

[dan@mastodon.durrans.com]

@JohannaMakesGames @neil Does #Fosdem have a zombie apocalypse plan?

Bristol City Council does. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/preparation_for_the_zombie_apoca

[david_chisnall@infosec.exchange]

@to @neil

This is especially true for FOSDEM dev room talks, where I often want to go to one in a session, and where the times in different devrooms plus travel time mean I often want to duck out a couple of minutes before the end of the talk.

[snowyca@social.vivaldi.net]

@neil
A lack of politeness and courtesy seems to be a global problem?

[onepict@chaos.social]

@neil yeah it tends to be up to whoever is running the dev room.

The organisers of dev rooms do have to be quite firm and encourage folks to move together.

[anderelampe@chaos.social]

@neil hmm, not knowing the crowd and format, but it sounds like a pattern i have seen at other conferences: not enough space outside of halls to sit and work on a laptop, so people go to not filled sessions (and they are not interested about) to sit and type and ignore the talk.
Often this (not interested in topic, finally some room to sit) goes hand in hand with a lack of care for silence.

This is me guessing, but maybe this can provide you with a new perspective.

[maccath@phpc.social]

@neil for me personally it's a manifestation of claustrophobia. I need to be able to get out of a place quickly. The same reason I won't sit in the back of a 3 door car or in a window seat on a plane. Too many barriers = panic attack.

It's estimated 5-10% of the population have claustrophobia, so if less than 10% of the seats are end seats, then that might explain why it appears that there are a large number of 'hoggers'. ;)

[dentangle@chaos.social]

@neil FOSDEM is just like a normal FOSS conference made 10x bigger and then compressed back into the same space.

[gina@fosstodon.org]

@neil oof I hope people don't do this during my talk. 🥲