[cfe-dev] 2017 US LLVM Developers' Meeting - Registration Opening!

[Tanya Lattner via cfe-dev]

> On Jun 19, 2017, at 7:35 PM, C Bergström <cbergstrom at pathscale.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 8:34 PM, David Chisnall <David.Chisnall at cl.cam.ac.uk <mailto:David.Chisnall at cl.cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
> On 16 Jun 2017, at 17:20, Brian Cain via cfe-dev <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that it sounds attractive to hold a conference without attendance limits or fees.  But – seriously -- where could you host such an event?  In someone’s home?  Outdoors in a park? (“ahem, could you speak up, we can’t hear you back here.”).
> 
> I hear rumours that there are some universities near the San Francisco Bay Area that have quite large computer science departments.
> 
> A lot of open source conferences (including EuroLLVM) keep their costs down by relying on a university to provide the space and Internet access.  FOSDEM manages around 5,000 attendees each year at ULB in Brussels without a registration fee (though also without providing any food, which is less than ideal), and puts all of the main track talks online (smaller devrooms are responsible for arranging their own recordings if they’re doing formal presentations).  I would encourage the Foundation to look at BSDCan and PGCon (co-located spatially, but not quite temporally) as an example of conferences for open source projects that manage to keep their costs very low, yet provide a very positive experience for both the few hundred attendees and those watching the videos afterwards.
> 
> I'm really really glad David pointed this out because I felt kinda awkward for being the only person to push back against the "commercialization" of an open source project. On the other hand I'm extremely appreciative that it's being organized so professionally.

How exactly is the developer meeting “commercialization” of an open source project? 

> 
> I feel there's probably others with better connections to bay area universities to connect the dots, but if this is something that would be an option I'm happy to try to find space which is suitable.

What problem are you trying to solve exactly? 

To hold it at a university we would most likely need to have it during a break or on a weekend as most of their year round event spaces are not big enough. I think there is a false assumption that this is an idea that has never been explored.

> I've never attended the conferences which David mentions, but there's a long list of conferences which have a relevant audience and probably would love to share. With that in mind I wonder how open the foundation is to having this outside the bay area. (Some conferences rotate east/west cost to balance the travel for those who aren't in cali)
> 
> * apachecon
> * oscon (maybe this is too commercial)
> * C++Now/cppcon
> ... (Need more?)
> —————————

I am always looking at other conferences to learn and grow from. CppCon is an amazingly well organized conference and I’ve looked at them quite extensively for ideas. 

I would never rule this out, but we have a very large number of developers in the bay area that attend this event. Given the statistics, I do think moving to the east coast would drop our attendance. I’m open to feedback if people think that its something we should try. This isn’t something I’m seeing in the surveys I do after the event.

> Was there specific concerns with having this hosted by one company?

I think this achieves the opposite of your points above about “commercialization”.

> 
> Last comment and please take it lightly - Isn't there some big company building a spaceship or something down there.... wouldn't it be cool if that had a conference room we could use.... hmm..
> 
Not going to happen.

-Tanya

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/attachments/20170620/fdd272fb/attachment.html>