[BrianLy]

You'll also see them called "open spaces".

PyCon has some great ones although they were a little disappointing this year. A combination of the hotel layout and placement of the openspace proposal (sign up) board was not great.

[mattdeboard]

I agree. The BOFs were often VERY hard to find, plus they were what felt like a 10-minute walk from the hotel lobby. I tried locating a few that I was interested in but didn't have much success.

PyCon 2012 was my first geek conference and left me a little disappointed.

[BrianLy]

Please post more about why you feel this way. I know that Jesse Noller and some of the other organisers would be interested in feedback from first time attendees.