Privacy matters too

> Perhaps DeVault's, and others', calls for more transparent governance could also lead to reducing the workload on individual FOSDEM organizers and improve the event even further.

Not necessarily. One of the reasons privacy matters is: it gives more "trial and error" freedom.

Here's an analogy: imagine you don't get a chance to rewrite your commits before submitting them. Like this:
https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/tip/www/rebaseharm.md

Or even one step further: imagine the undo history of your editor has to be public.

This would slow you down and certainly not "reduce your workload"

Now you don't want completely opaque decisions process either, especially for an open-source conference. There is a fine line and some level of trust is required. If that trust fails after repeated attempts to provide gentle feedback, then "cancel" and fork and do your own conference/project. Happens all the time.

> That does not mean the organizers should be immune to criticism or free from calls for improvement, but perspective—and one hopes kindness—is in order.

Hopefully!