straw poll: git merge conference location

straw poll: git merge conference location

[Jeff King]

I took an informal poll at the last contributor summit in Brussels, but
that obviously has some bias. So I'll ask here: do you have a location
preference for a Git Merge conference (and associated contributor
summit) next March?

We're looking at doing it in North America, but there are two specific
questions:

  - is there preference between East Coast vs West Coast?

  - preferences between Canada and US?

There's no commitment, but please only share your opinion if it might
actually impact your decision (i.e., if you might actually attend the
contribu summit). Feel free to email me off-list if you don't want to
start a flamewar about countries or coasts. :)

There's also been discussion about doing something (possibly in North
America) in the summer or fall of this year, but as far as I know there
hasn't been any planning so far.

-Peff

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Elijah Newren]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 1:58 PM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>
> I took an informal poll at the last contributor summit in Brussels, but
> that obviously has some bias. So I'll ask here: do you have a location
> preference for a Git Merge conference (and associated contributor
> summit) next March?
>
> We're looking at doing it in North America, but there are two specific
> questions:
>
>   - is there preference between East Coast vs West Coast?
>
>   - preferences between Canada and US?
>
> There's no commitment, but please only share your opinion if it might
> actually impact your decision (i.e., if you might actually attend the
> contribu summit). Feel free to email me off-list if you don't want to
> start a flamewar about countries or coasts. :)

You are probably not surprised to hear me vote in favor of North
America, but I'd like to point out that unless some responses didn't
reach my inbox, it looks like 100% of respondents so far are in favor
of doing it on this side of the pond.  ;-)

I'm fine with East or West coast, US or Canada.  Very minor preference
for west coast, but whatever works for the most people is best.  I'll
even try to go to Europe again if that's what works for most people,
but I might not make it if it's there.

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Thu, 14 Mar 2019, Elijah Newren wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 1:58 PM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> >
> > I took an informal poll at the last contributor summit in Brussels, but
> > that obviously has some bias. So I'll ask here: do you have a location
> > preference for a Git Merge conference (and associated contributor
> > summit) next March?
> >
> > We're looking at doing it in North America, but there are two specific
> > questions:
> >
> >   - is there preference between East Coast vs West Coast?
> >
> >   - preferences between Canada and US?
> >
> > There's no commitment, but please only share your opinion if it might
> > actually impact your decision (i.e., if you might actually attend the
> > contribu summit). Feel free to email me off-list if you don't want to
> > start a flamewar about countries or coasts. :)
> 
> You are probably not surprised to hear me vote in favor of North
> America, but I'd like to point out that unless some responses didn't
> reach my inbox, it looks like 100% of respondents so far are in favor
> of doing it on this side of the pond.  ;-)
> 
> I'm fine with East or West coast, US or Canada.  Very minor preference
> for west coast, but whatever works for the most people is best.  I'll
> even try to go to Europe again if that's what works for most people,
> but I might not make it if it's there.

I'll probably try to attend remote-only if it is outside Europe, which is
not a big deal for me.

Ciao,
Dscho

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Derrick Stolee]

On 3/13/2019 4:55 PM, Jeff King wrote:
> We're looking at doing it in North America, but there are two specific
> questions:
> 
>   - is there preference between East Coast vs West Coast?

I have no preference here.

>   - preferences between Canada and US?

There should be serious consideration for Canada only because visa issues
may prevent some participants from traveling into the US. I know that
some academic conferences have moved from US to Canada (even after already
being scheduled for a US location) due to recent changes and general
volitility in visa policies. Perhaps I'm making a big deal about something
that doesn't affect any contributors that would join us, so I hope that
anyone concerned about this can speak up (or contact Peff privately).

Thanks,
-Stolee

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 at 16:56, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>   - preferences between Canada and US?

If you're looking at Canada, East coast is generally more affordable
than West Coast in terms of venues and accommodation. The three main
tech hubs in the East are Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.

Toronto pros: nice city, lots of tech presence, direct travel from
most international airports
Toronto cons: only marginally less expensive than Vancouver

Montreal pros: nice city, lots of tech presence, quite affordable for
venues and accommodations
Montreal cons: many international travel destinations require stopovers

Halifax pros: very nice city next to the ocean, a vibrant (if small)
tech presence, very affordable
Halifax cons: most international travel requires stopovers, inclement
weather if unlucky

Honourable mentions: Quebec City (if you want to be in North America,
but feel like you're still in Europe :), Ottawa (if you like museums
and large historical government buildings)

Best,
-- 
Konstantin Ryabitsev
Montréal, Québec

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Thu, 14 Mar 2019, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 at 16:56, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> >   - preferences between Canada and US?
>
> If you're looking at Canada, East coast is generally more affordable
> than West Coast in terms of venues and accommodation. The three main
> tech hubs in the East are Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.
>
> Toronto pros: nice city, lots of tech presence, direct travel from
> most international airports Toronto cons: only marginally less
> expensive than Vancouver
>
> Montreal pros: nice city, lots of tech presence, quite affordable
> for venues and accommodations Montreal cons: many international
> travel destinations require stopovers
>
> Halifax pros: very nice city next to the ocean, a vibrant (if small)
> tech presence, very affordable Halifax cons: most international
> travel requires stopovers, inclement weather if unlucky
>
> Honourable mentions: Quebec City (if you want to be in North
> America, but feel like you're still in Europe :), Ottawa (if you
> like museums and large historical government buildings)

  from a purely selfish perspective, i'd pick ottawa ... once you're
downtown, it's all walking -- parliament, sparks street, byward
market. as for tech hubs, kanata is just outside of ottawa, and that's
some pretty serious tech hub.

rday

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Wed, Mar 13 2019, Jeff King wrote:

> I took an informal poll at the last contributor summit in Brussels, but
> that obviously has some bias. So I'll ask here: do you have a location
> preference for a Git Merge conference (and associated contributor
> summit) next March?
>
> We're looking at doing it in North America, but there are two specific
> questions:
>
>   - is there preference between East Coast vs West Coast?
>
>   - preferences between Canada and US?
>
> There's no commitment, but please only share your opinion if it might
> actually impact your decision (i.e., if you might actually attend the
> contribu summit). Feel free to email me off-list if you don't want to
> start a flamewar about countries or coasts. :)
>
> There's also been discussion about doing something (possibly in North
> America) in the summer or fall of this year, but as far as I know there
> hasn't been any planning so far.

This is going off-topic, but I'd be curious if splitting it up from Git
Merge in general is an option. Presumably the hypothetical event this
summer could be an experiment for that.

Personally I'd prefer to have a 2 day contributor summit stretching into
some hackathon to a 2nd day of talks for which I think most of us are
not the target audience. But maybe that's just me.

Once it's not a gigantic event requiring a gigantic conference venue
there's a lot more options for locations.

We'd just need something close to an international airport with
acceptable accommodation space for max 30-40 people. This'll also help
people who need to fly into NA stay under their respective travel
budgets, hotels in NYC or SF are going to cost a lot more than in some
small town outside a big airport. Something with more nature than
concrete would be nice.

But really, is Git Merge going to change its location on our whims? I
didn't realize we were that important :)

Maybe we can compromise on this whole ongoing NA v.s. Europe debate and
meet in Iceland :)

In Brussels I suggested in jest that we hold it in Junio's back
yard. The part that I'm serious about is that to the extent I have a
location preference it's that we warp it towards core contributors who
haven't been coming to these things, but otherwise would if the location
was different (no idea if that's the case in Junio's case...).

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Jeff King]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 09:31:29PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> > There's also been discussion about doing something (possibly in North
> > America) in the summer or fall of this year, but as far as I know there
> > hasn't been any planning so far.
> 
> This is going off-topic, but I'd be curious if splitting it up from Git
> Merge in general is an option. Presumably the hypothetical event this
> summer could be an experiment for that.

Yeah, it could be, if somebody wants to organize it. There was some
discussion on the list, I think, and a little bit in Brussels this year,
but I don't know of any concrete plans so far.

I had some vague discussion with GitHub events folks about it, and I
think Terry from Google showed some interest in possibly hosting.  I
think anything like that would probably be in the Bay Area, since it
would be easy for either entity to provide meeting space they already
own.

And that sort of gets to the crux of why it's attached to Git Merge. We
are piggy-backing on all of the work that goes into handling the venue,
etc, for that conference. I think it's really not much work on top of
the conference, but doing it standalone in a random city would actually
involve somebody doing some logistics legwork.

That said, I don't know that we need much. A big-ish conference room in
a hotel would be enough (though we were pushing 40 people this time!).
We don't really need a registration system, since we're small enough
that everybody knows everyone (or will know them by the end of the day).

> We'd just need something close to an international airport with
> acceptable accommodation space for max 30-40 people. This'll also help
> people who need to fly into NA stay under their respective travel
> budgets, hotels in NYC or SF are going to cost a lot more than in some
> small town outside a big airport. Something with more nature than
> concrete would be nice.

It's very scenic in my part of Virginia in the fall. :)

> But really, is Git Merge going to change its location on our whims? I
> didn't realize we were that important :)

Well, no. But it's one of many inputs to the process.

> Maybe we can compromise on this whole ongoing NA v.s. Europe debate and
> meet in Iceland :)

Iceland Air is always trying to sell me that "Reykjavik stopover"...

> In Brussels I suggested in jest that we hold it in Junio's back
> yard. The part that I'm serious about is that to the extent I have a
> location preference it's that we warp it towards core contributors who
> haven't been coming to these things, but otherwise would if the location
> was different (no idea if that's the case in Junio's case...).

It's possible that one of my ulterior motives was trying to get Junio
to speak up. :)

-Peff

Re: straw poll: git merge conference location

[Johannes Schindelin]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 786 bytes --]

Hi Ævar & Peff (and most importantly, Junio!),

On Thu, 14 Mar 2019, Jeff King wrote:

> > Maybe we can compromise on this whole ongoing NA v.s. Europe debate
> > and meet in Iceland :)
> 
> Iceland Air is always trying to sell me that "Reykjavik stopover"...

Iceland!

I could be talked into that. What's to hate about the incredible nature on
Iceland?

Seriously again...

> It's possible that one of my ulterior motives was trying to get Junio
> to speak up. :)

Junio, what would it take for you to participate in a Git Contributors'
Summit again? In 2015, you did, and it was really a pleasure for me (and I
hope it was not too terrible for you?).

I still hear your voice whenever I read your emails, and it would be
awesome to have that experience in person again.

Ciao,
Dscho