OSCON Ignores World Outside the Bay

A former co-worker of mine just passed along the news that OSCON was going to move to San Francisco next year.

For people who went to OSCON this year, myself among them, this was hardly a surprise. It was pretty much the buzz on the conference floor at this year's show... a buzz that continued a couple of weeks later at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. O'Reilly, the event organizers, cited travel as a reason for reason not to go.

According to an interview with the Oregonian, Gina Blaber of O'Reilly Media stated "We're moving OSCON 09 to the Bay Area for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that travel costs are going up, and it makes sense to put a large event like OSCON in the Bay Area, where there is a huge local population for whom travel is not a significant issue."

In other words, go where the attendees live. Silicon Valley has more techies than Portland, and the Caltrain is a much shorter commute than Alaska Airlines.

While I don't disagree with Blaber's stated reasons, it occurs to me that the whole reason might not be given. I don't think it's travel to Portland that's so expensive... I think it's travel to Portland and San Francisco in such a short amount of time that's a negative influence on attendance. Moving OSCON to San Francisco may all be well and good for those folks living in California, but unless OSCON changes its date, I think the problem becomes much worse for them.

Imagine what the travel will now be for anyone who lives outside of the Bay Area. If someone wants to attend OSCON and LinuxWorld, they now face the prospect of coming into San Francisco twice in a two-week period. Now, I love San Francisco, but it is a much more expensive city to visit than Portland, as my company expense account will reflect.

OSCON seems to be ignoring the close proximity of the dates for these two events. I didn't mind going to Portland and San Francisco this year... I minded having to subject myself to the cross-country travel essentially back-to-back. Now, if the schedules for these two shows remains the same, I will have to spend more money on lodging in San Francisco and still make the same two cross-country trips.

As it stands, the only folks who benefit from this move are those who live in the Bay Area. I find O'Reilly's geographic focus on this issue to be very narrow. They are now going to force even more people to decide between attending one show or the other. They've made the problem worse, not better.

Of course, while I was at both shows this summer, there was speculation on changes for LinuxWorld, too, since vendors on the show floor were hopping mad about the level of traffic they didn't get. If that's the case, then the travel conflict might be moot.

If the organizers of these events really want to promote Linux and open source outside of Silicon Valley, then maybe they should start looking at their calendars instead of their atlases.