Tech conferences moving north as Trump policies turn off attendees

http://business.financialpost.com/technology/tech-conferences-moving-north-as-trump-policies-turn-off-attendees

by gasull • 8 years ago

78 59 8 years ago

business.financialpost.com

chmod775• 8 years ago

Not very surprising. There's little invective besides familiarity with a location to keep these kinds of conferences in any particular place. So even small problems like these can send them packing.

The attendees are from all over the world anyways. The big selling point is going to be the difference of buying a plane ticket to Canada vs buying one to the US + having to deal with the hassles of US immigration and customs.

tclancy• 8 years ago

There's little invective

That is a wonderful Freudian slip!

Gys• 8 years ago

The big selling point is going to be the difference of buying a plane ticket to Canada vs buying one to the US + having to deal with the hassles of US immigration and customs.

Exactly. I for one voted for Canada for exactly that reason.

msumpter3• 8 years ago

Worked previously for a company owning many trade shows/events and we purposefully moved the shows to various destination cities to encourage the tourism aspect, a new city every year was tough so we repeated cities eventually. We never ventured into moving an existing US based show out of country, when we did international shows they were always stood up as separate. But considering the political climate today, it really isn't a surprise to move one north of the boarder.

trexen• 8 years ago

The Trump policies are those of the democratically elected leader, which means it's the will of almost the majority of Americans that there should be such travel restrictions.

Seems a strange and disturbing choice that the US public has made but their willl should be respected.

Democracy provides for people to vote out the leadership if they don't agree, although the Google seems to suggest trump is currently looking good for reelection.

Larrikin• 8 years ago

The majority of people who voted did not vote for Trump.

RightMillennial• 8 years ago

True, but Trump got the votes where they mattered. Since we're categorizing votes, a majority of people didn't vote for president at all (44.37%) when compared to Clinton (28.43%) or Trump (27.20%) [1].

[1] https://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/

samfisher83• 8 years ago

Trump didn't get the majority of the vote. He won the electoral college.

perl4ever7• 8 years ago

You are responding to a more defensible statement than what was made above, as it said "Americans" and not "voters".

Turnout was 55.7% and Trump got 46.1%, which means he got about 25.7% of the possible voters. Clearly not "almost" a majority.

SketchySeaBeast3• 8 years ago

The article says that guests can't attend because of the travel restrictions, so it's moving to accommodate those individuals. Are you saying that the conferences shouldn't be allowed to move because "almost the majority" of Americans made a decision? The tech industry, a very small group with specialized interests spread across a global theatre, and specifically, a particular set of conferences, an even smaller sample, is beholden to the almost will of the almost majority in one nation?

lolc• 8 years ago

Are you saying that the conferences shouldn't be allowed to move because "almost the majority" of Americans made a decision?

I didn't read it that way. I think the intent was to say that if anybody is to blame for this, it's the people who voted for Trump. And that their will will be respected when conferences are held somewhere else.

magduf8• 8 years ago

You totally misunderstood the intent of that comment; it looks just like a comment I would have written myself. He's correct, Trump was democratically elected, so his policies represent the will of the people. If people outside the country don't like this, it's their prerogative (and in fact their duty) to take their conference and its 25000 attendees and all the tourism dollars that entails to a location that's more welcoming. I'm sure the people who elected Trump will be more than happy to see all these foreigners not coming to the US.

Svip2• 8 years ago

Wait, what are suggesting the tech conferences do? Stay in the US? Isn't it also their freedom to choose where to operate? And if operating in the US makes their conference inconvenient or impossible for some of their attendees, doesn't it make sense to move it to another country?

perl4ever7• 8 years ago

There is a certain tension between the phrases "democratically elected" and "almost the majority".

magduf8• 8 years ago

An overwhelming majority of American voters support the election system that resulted in Trump winning. If they didn't, they would have demanded that their leaders change this system some time in the last 225+ years. They've demanded and gotten other changes during that time, such as the Constitutional Amendment which banned alcohol, and then the one shortly after that repealed it. If Americans thought our strange voting system was such a problem, we would have gotten it changed by now.

lambda• 8 years ago

almost the majority

Trump was not elected by a "majority of Americans". He was not even elected by a majority of Americans who voted. In fact, he did not even win by a plurality of Americans who voted.

Because of weirdness of the way the Presidential election process works in the US, it's possible to win the election with fewer votes than your opponent; you just need a majority of electors, but most states allocate electors in a winner-takes-all fashion.

there should be such travel restrictions

Voting for someone does not mean that you agree with all of their policies. It's possible that a large number of Americans disagreed with those policies, but preferred other policies Trump held over Clinton, like lowering taxes and reducing regulations. Or that enough people were sufficiently uncomfortable with a woman as president. Or that enough people were convinced by the combination of Clinton conspiracy theories with the email scandal.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

but most states allocate electors in a winner-takes-all fashion.

And, while there is a positive relationship between population and elector count, electors aren't even assigned proportional to population, so even if each state assigned electors proprtionately to the vote, you could still win with less votes than an opponent if your support is concentrated on low-population states.

netsharc• 8 years ago

Well, the conference organizers are "respecting" the "US public"'s choice by holding their conference somewhere where more people are welcome.

If the management of the Holtin Hotels said brown-haired people are no longer welcome in their hotel, would you hold your conference (which has some brown haired people attendees) there or would you hold it somewhere else?

ihsw2• 8 years ago

That's not an appropriate comparison, the current administration is no more racist than the last (if anything it is less racist).

magduf8• 8 years ago

Well, the conference organizers are "respecting" the "US public"'s choice by holding their conference somewhere where more people are welcome.

Yes, exactly. You don't need the scare-quotes. The voters of the US have spoken, and their will should be respected. If they don't want to be a welcoming place, that's their right. It's the conference organizers' right to take their conference someplace more welcoming, and it isn't disrespectful for them to do this.

If the management of the Holtin Hotels said brown-haired people are no longer welcome in their hotel, would you hold your conference (which has some brown haired people attendees) there or would you hold it somewhere else?

Exactly! There's plenty of places in the world where you can have a large tech conference.

root_axis• 8 years ago

As others have already alluded to, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but even if he had won the popular vote that definitely doesn't mean his policies necessarily reflect the will of the majority of the American people (and the polls clearly demonstrate that the opposite is true)

rsynnott3• 8 years ago

Seems a strange and disturbing choice that the US public has made but their willl should be respected.

Sure. The US has, for now, chosen to adopt hostile immigration policies, which will incentivise international conference organisers to avoid it, like they do other countries with hostile immigration policies. I'm not sure where you see a problem?

although the Google seems to suggest trump is currently looking good for reelection

Eh? How did Google do that?

mbrumlow3• 8 years ago

One conference that I have never heard and now it is "conferences" -- as in more than one are moving north?

Also at first glace this conference looks like it was setup by big players just to have their "own" conference. You see, real conferences where where real innovation and tech happen at are not concerned with being "the fastest growing". Looking at the lineup this is clearly for something setup for what I would assume to be mostly executives to be brainwashed by much larger companies to use their products. Nobody wants to go and listen to the rubbish a bunch of CEOs have to say about stuff their engineers should actually be talking about. Just really feels like somebody figured out money influence and market control can be had with hosting a conference and so now we have "Collision" -- which sounds like a complete knock off of "disrupt"

But who knows, maybe somebody here has gone and will correct me.

EDIT I did not read every line of the article, and yes, 2 other conferences were mentioned, but the blurb about collision still stands.

Svip2• 8 years ago

What about the Creative Commons conference and RightsCon? They were both mentioned in the article.

mbrumlow3• 8 years ago

Thanks, I must have skimmed the article too fast I stand corrected. "Conferences" is now properly plural for the situation. To be honest while not a Trump supporter I really don't like reading anything talking about him because it probably is going to be biased in one way or another.

boltzmannbrain• 8 years ago

Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) is a top tier AI research conference that attracts people from all over the world, including the leading minds across academia and industry. The main utility many of us get out of it is the in-person interaction with the community -- research ideas are brainstormed, papers are shared and argued, collaborations are developed. Following Trump's immigration policies last year, there was discussion of moving NIPS '17 from Long Beach, CA to Cape Town, South Africa. This year the conference is returning to it's home Montreal; not to mention a lot of AI initiatives are making their way north of the border, unsurprisingly.

linsomniac• 8 years ago

There was some expression that people weren't coming to PyCon 2018 because of Trump, but it did end up selling out a month before the date. I feel like usually it would sell out earlier in past years, but I don't have the dates in front of me. Since this is the "big Python conference", it usually has a lot of international attendance, so it seems like it would be hit particularly hard by this sentiment.

msumpter3• 8 years ago

IMO the conference market has taken a hit in general prior to the Trump administration. For the previous several years, attendance and sponsorships were trending down, it seemed like most companies budgets were being pulled from onsite training to virtual and sponsoring companies wanted to focus on their own niche mini show around their products only. We had a healthy percent of international attendees that came in every year, I can only imagine with sentiment being customs/immigration is getting worse for travelers, that would discourage attendees from coming in.

oligopoly• 8 years ago

Market got flooded with too many bs conferenced trying to make a quick buck.

jankotek• 8 years ago

To be fair most of those policies were introduced before Trump. USA is paranoid compared to other countries.

For example I would love to visit Iran, but that would future visits in USA very difficult.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/middle-east/ir...

rsimmonds• 8 years ago

This isn't that surprising when you break it down.

While it's rarely thought about or discussed - Toronto isn't a small little town in Canada. It's the 4th largest city in North America. Bigger than Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.

Combine that with the fact that the Canadian dollar is weak and you've got the perfect match for tech companies.

volkl48• 8 years ago

Toronto is more like 10th in size (metro population).

Your comparison is based on population within "city limits" which are arbitrary and widely varying as to how much of the urban area of a city they cover.

Your overall point isn't invalid, just pointing it isn't that big.

kazinator• 8 years ago

Maybe it's not just the policies, but also the sheer travel-related annoyances.

oicu812• 8 years ago

The current US restrictions apply to citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and certain Venezuelan government officials and their immediate families. Were any significant number of conference attendees from these countries?

I think not. This is just a chearleading article by a Canadian newspaper. Oh Canada! Our home and native land! Trump is bad and that makes us good by comparison for thee!

wink• 8 years ago

I'm not saying it's reasonable thinking, but I've also heard many Europeans (including me) putting this as another "why would I visit the US?" point.

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

Could also be the homeless, needles-and-feces-on-the-street and high cost of attendance at the usual conference venues.

I'm looking at you, San Francisco. :)

Tech conferences moving north as Trump policies turn off attendees

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