Vancouver Lisp Meeting?
Saturday, February 11, 2006
I'm at the
Northern Voice blogging convention here in Vancouver today. There
were actually two days - a self-organizing
"Moose Camp" on Friday and the actual
convention on Saturday (I didn't go to the Friday sessions
though). It was quite interesting and fun but since it doesn't really
have anything to do with Lisp, I won't go into any detail about it
here. Since it was a blogging conference, if you're interested, you
can read some of the
attendee's blogs for more info about the conference.
The reason I'm posting about this at all is because of the venue for
the conference. It was held at
UBC Robson Square, the downtown campus of the
University of British Columbia. The main campus is south-west of
the main city area; however, this facility is
located underground right in the heart of downtown Vancouver!
The conference facility is suitable for groups of up to about 250
people. While I was attending the Northern Voice conference, I thought
what a wonderful venue it would make for a Lisp conference. I spoke
with one of the organizers about costs and it sounded pretty
reasonable. I know
that ILC2007 is
planned for Cambridge, England but I wonder how much interest
there would be in a Vancouver Lisp conference at some point? Or, maybe
if it's not an ILC "biggie" conference, we could hold a
"European-style" Lisp conference here at some stage along the
lines of the
European Common Lisp meeting or the
Scheme Workshop. We could do one of those sometime in the next
year or two or an ILC sometime after ILC2007 (probably in 2009 as the
city will be pretty booked up with
other events in 2010 ;-) ).
Why Vancouver? Here are some reasons that I could think of just off
the top of my head:
- Vancouver is a lovely city to live in or visit
- Vancouver is the home of lispvan, a fairly new but pretty active Lisp users group
- Vancouver is the home of one of Lisp's historic notables
- Vancouver is close to Seattle and relatively close to other West Coast areas of the US (two of the last three ILC's have been in San Francisco, so Vancouver would be an alternative West Coast venue)
- The Canadian dollar is weaker than the US dollar (however, it's been gaining ground against the US dollar quite a bit recently) so non-Canadian visitors would find that their money goes further
- Vancouver is fairly cosmopolitan and tolerant so it's easy to feel at home here regardless of where you're from
- Vancouver is a gateway to Asia and has a major international airport, making it easily accessible from Europe or the US
- Whether you would be interested in coming to an ILC-style Lisp conference in Vancouver (3-4 days costing about US$500-700)
- Whether you would be interested in coming to a European-style Lisp conference in Vancouver (one day costing about US$50-100)
Update-2006-02-12: It was suggested to me that it might be worthwhile to mention what Canada's immigration regulations are for visitors. This page has more info on visiting Canada; however, generally speaking, entry into Canada is much easier than entry into the USA. There is no need to provide fingerprints or biometric data (something that has put off several people from coming to the last ILC conference in the US) and you are not required to hand over your first born as security ;-).
