West Coast Bias

Because of Silicon Valley, Microsoft, and such, there's a lot of programmers on the West Coast, from California up to Washington State. And, California, especially Southern California is nice, typically, year-round. Because of this, a lot of programming conferences, especially those hosted by O'Reilly tend to be on the West Coast. ETECH has been held in San Diego and was held there again. Rubyconf which apparently held in Chicago last year is now held in Portland and will be held there again.

To be fair, the big cities in the central US (Chicago, St. Louis) and those on the East Coast (Washington DC, Boston, New York) are probably both huge, filled with traffic, sprawling, and doesn't give you the warm fuzzies of smaller cities like Seattle, Portland or San Diego. Many of these West Coast cities also have better than average wireless connections, which is key for techie conferences.

Even so, the travel time is really a pain. Places like Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and so forth, are central to the US. I was glad to hear the Rubyconf will be held in Charlotte which is much closer than where I live (out in DC) than Portland. The problem, obviously, of West Coast to East Coast travel is that you either have to leave in the middle of the day, or take the red eye, that is, take an evening flight and arrive the next morning.

Railsconf, for example, will end at 4 PM, but I know several people that will take flights at 10 PM (including me) or later, and so we have quite a few hours to waste until that time. It would be nice, at the very least, for the conference to have something for us to do afterwards. Those who have to run can run. The rest can hang around to do some sponsored activities.

And of course, there is the hassle that people need to check out by noon, and so they have luggage with them. To their credit, Railsconf is willing to hold onto the luggage, but just until 4 PM, when the conference officially ends.

I suppose this West Coast bias has as much to do with the city's ability to host a techie conference and being relatively nice. If there's traffic issues, if there's crime, if there's lack of hotels, if it's really expensive to stay. Indeed, were it not for the fact that people like "nice" places, they really ought to host it at a college campus. I realize living in dorms sucks, but the cost would, in principle, be considerably less, at least, if a college campus were pretty smart about it. And believe me, hotel costs are a pain.

I know that won't ever be the case because conferences feel the need to be "classy" and college campuses, while getting "classier" over time, are still pretty much college campuses, which means rooms are made on the cheap with tight spaces, and then students aren't known for keeping the place nice, and the hired help aren't at the caliber of a good hotel.

I realize this complaint is rather fruitless. For a variety of reasons, people prefer to host these on the West Coast, and it may be one of the issues where the solution is (sigh) move to the West Coast (or at least, to Chicago or Denver).

Rant off.