It's nice to be around others who share the same niche interests as you do. I went up to the stall of one of the projects that I use (ownCloud), expecting to say hello and exchange pleasantries, and instead ending up discussing the project and it's intricacies with one of the developers. It takes a bit of courage, but this is the best opportunity you can get to learn from the best of the best. I finally got to see what all the fuss about this Stallman bloke was about, and learnt more than I thought would about software licenses (from the perspective of a developer and a community).
The other astounding thing about FOSDEM is the sheer amount of beer that gets consumed. The convention takes over the delirium cafe in the centre of Brussels on the Friday before the event starts (complete with bouncers that ask you about the JVM before they let you in), which is packed to the point where you can't get into the street it's in. After everyone's woken up with sore heads the next day, extra shops open up around the ULB campus to serve the mas of developers who are still hungry for booze. A few of the stalls bring free (as in beer) beer, and will happily swig away while talking to you.
This time we decided to write off Monday and get a later train back (the idea that you're going to do anything productive on the day you get back to the UK is a naive one), which let us visit a few sites in Brussels. We didn't do this last year, and it was a really nice way to spend the day. We saw the cathedral, complete with the fanciest pulpit you ever did see. On the way out we spotted the Banque Nationale De Belgique, which turned out to have a temporary exhibit open. There's something about money which makes it intriguing, and the ability to print banknotes with your face on aside, it was an insightful look in to the way the euro is managed, and the role the member states play (and what's left to the central bank. My favourite was the machine used to invalidate old coins, which corrugates them :P We also went around the European Parliament, which was filled with quite a lot of European propaganda, but served as a reminder of how incredible it is that the European Union exists and does all the things it does (especially when the press opinion of it is overwhelmingly negative).
