We’re not planning on moving, but folks keep asking. Why is BSDCan always in Ottawa?
For years the answer was “because Dan lives there.”
Then it was “because Dan knows everyone there and can arrange it remotely.”
Now it’s “because the committee knows everybody there and can arrange it remotely.”
Today, a more useful question would be, “What would we need to move BSDCan to $MYFAVORITECANADIANCITY?”
The answer? “Someone to do the work.”
Moving BSDCan to a new city would require someone in that city to take point on arranging convention space and attendee housing. Yes, we could sift through AI-spam-infested travel guides to find a place, but nothing can replace a live human looking at conference space and the neighborhood saying “Yeah. My people will like this.”
One of our goals is to be inexpensive. Last year BSDCan raised its prices for the first time since 2005. Many tech conferences cost thousands of dollars. We will not do that. That excludes the downtowns of Toronto or Vancouver.
We want nearby pubs and restaurants. We want interesting stuff for tourism. We want easy travel. This excludes, say, Nakina, Ontario. (MWL has been to Nakina. It’s lovely. It’s not right for BSDCan.)
Not only do we need a volunteer to do the work of talking to facilities, that volunteer must be demonstratably reliable. That means they need to be an active ops committee member for a good year before their proposed move.
You gotta help run a BSDCan before we’ll trust you to host a BSDCan.
We meet on the last Saturday of the month at 1800 UTC, and every Saturday the month before the con.
Having compared notes with EuroBSDCon, we are very glad that we can keep the same venue year after year. If BSDCan does ever move, we would want to choose a location that we can use for many years.