What i would like to know though, that may already exist, is the attendance in terms of numbers over the years. I would like to understand if more people are interested or fewer.
It's not about being interested in my opinion. It's about location, who can afford it and in some cases the organizing party counts as well.
As long as the onboarding process is focusing on countries whit broken economy and extremely limited education, where people don't have a pot to piss in, cashing out and spending every penny they earn, don't expect high attendance numbers. African countries are making the top of every shitlist (not accidentally btw), Venezuela as well and very few would be willing to pay to attend. I'm sure if you would get an official list with the location of each HF and the attendance number, you'd see what I mean.
i don't say that this doesn't have any impact but still in my opinion, it's not the main reason as to why the attendance is that low. 90% of the people i knew are not in Hive for the reasons i mentioned. The onboarding process is focusing on low-income countries cause the way things are, nobody else can actually even get a spare income, maybe 1%. In general focus was everywhere both in steem and early Hive days but the fact was that most of the people from EU, USA and other countries where salaries are better simply dropped out or moved on after witnessing some stuff here.
Hivefest ended up being a meetup where mostly the same people participated, having fun and such, like a friendly meetup with someone you had a lot of time to see and a way to travel to another country. Fewer and fewer projects are announced, and there is no hype anymore and this will keep on going as it currently is. Heck even random cardfests or other events get more attendance.
This is the long-term result of abuse on the platform. We keep on talking and talking about the DHF and after years, they have now decided to have a "roundtable" to talk about it, but no action yet. At the same time new cryptos are out, new projects, and we just exist.
if i sounded like attacking, don't take it that way, we are both veterans :P in here and interacted in the past here and there. It was just a runt :P