Topic: Assistance Needed for 2012 Bitcoin Convention - San Antonio, Texas - page 3. (Read 6848 times)

It would also be interesting to see some presentations from outsiders: tech journalists, venture capitalists, past tech innovators, financial experts, economists, law enforcement representatives, politicians, currency traders, forex operators, pundits, historians, and anybody else who could potentially comment on bitcoin from an interesting angle.

Right now I'd be interested in hearing a presentation from any exchange, anyone running a bitcoin business, anyone developing a bitcoin business, and anyone who has a compelling vision and can make an interesting intelligent presentation about the problems and potential of bitcoin. I'm not interested in hearing presentations from pretenders, scam artists, or idiots, but it may be difficult to screen them out.

I love our bitcoin developers, but the overlap between developers and visionaries is very small, and bitcoin is no exception. Satoshi was the only truly visionary developer in this little world. The remaining group of (very talented) programmers is basically just trying to keep his creation running without falling apart. I imagine that future distributed currency innovations will probably be imagined by non-developers and implemented by developers who follow their vision. Consequently, bitcoin developer presentations should not (IMHO) be the centerpiece of a conference.

Who do you consider "big players"?

I second Las Vegas.  Cheap decent rooms during midweek, cheap airfare, plenty to do.

I vote for the west coast. Silicon valley would be fantastic, or vegas would be cheap (though a prude like me probably wouldn't go).

As long as you aren't choosing a city based on the quality of the gay nightlife there, I think you will already be way ahead of your competition.

It also helps if the conference organizer is not on record as committing fraud, is not trying to start their own competing bitcoin forum where they can silence critics, and is not accused of any horrifying acts of sexual violence.

But I digress.

The next conference location should be based on proximity: to money, to software developers, to bitcoin users, to cheap lodging and facilities, etc. I don't see how we can stray very far from the Silicon Valley by those criteria.

As for what it should be like, I'd like to see more of a trade-show feeling, with lots of presentations by lots of people about lots of interesting things. Just having the developers stand up and review their bug-list can be interesting, but it's not particularly inspiring or visionary.

Also, it would be cool to have a theme, like "where is bitcoin going?", with presentations of competing visions of what bitcoin could become, including at least one naysayer arguing that bitcoin is headed for the dumpster

I'd love to see the big players pitch the future of what their services will look like, and some big new services and features revealed.

oh thanx for the link. Prague is really perfect for me Lets see ...

reasonably priced places to stay for a few days
culture or other attractions (might as well get a twofer)
good location to actually have the event at
airport with in 10-20 miles (20-30km)
public transit

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that everyone has an opinion about where a bitcoin convention should be, especially with all the recent drama, but I was really hoping for some more constructive suggestions.

Once more: Other than location, what / who does the next Bitcoin Convention need?

I think you missed the anouncement of the euro bitcoin conference:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/european-bitcoin-conference-2011-prague-nov-25-27-40272

sure all the talk about virtual conference is nice but the socializing and getting together with like-minded people to start new biz only works when seeing live for a beer for one on one talks.

i would vote for european cities. london is fine with me.

i would love to see people running btc businesses or just success stories of people that also accept btc on their $ business. on youtube please so i can show those success stories to others.

I am thinking of and could dedicate one of my shows to talking about bitcoin.  I have unlimited bandwidth so there would be no outages, I have pro video & audio equipment, and people or vendors or whoever could skype in, call in via phone, or chat in the chat room. No one would have to travel anywhere and ideas could be discussed live in real time.  It's not a convention.. no... but it doesn't require anything big as I already have the needed setup and most of the bitcoin crowd I think can figure out skype.  The bitcoin show was more of a live to tape thing and not really live nor interactive - this would be live and interactive.

Kind of. More like a whole bunch of mini-conventions to defray the costs. I've actually seen this "virtual corner" and it's a lot better than video chat. It would be sweet to have every wall covered with virtual windows to 30 cities all real time HD and lifesize.


I should add people would go just to experience it and get exposed to BTC in the process.

Just putting a vote in for Hong Kong.  香港!

I don't have enough invested in bitcoin to justify flying off to somewhere else at this point, but if another conference is held in NYC I will offer my film / live streaming production services for both pc / mac video and shoutcast radio and android and iphone apps.  If the location is other than NYC and some donations can be raised to get me and my equipment to the destination, that's also a possibility.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.486378

So you're suggesting we just hold a really large-scale video chat?

Well fist off , I think we should follow the decentralized model. A multi-site location connected using something like this.
http://www.johnewing.org/VirtualCorners/about.php

As a long-time Las Vegas resident, I can definitively tell you that this place was MADE for conventions. You will have precisely zero problems laying your hands on every last thing you need and you'll have no issues drawing attendees from anywhere in the U.S. since flights to Vegas are made often and cheap, we have massively developed taxi/public-transit infrastructure, etc. (Just don't hold it during the summer, that's suicidal)

I've begun contacting some of the more prominent members of the bitcoin community about participating in this event but I'd like everyone's feedback:

Who do you want to see at a Bitcoin Convention?

This is why I like San Antonio. I have five years of experience working with these types of events and have lived here my entire life, so I have a lot of contacts. Our convention center has more than 1.3 million square feet of usable space and is within walking distance of dozens of hotels, the newest of which is right next door with 1000 sleeping rooms. The convention center also has:

67 meeting rooms
4 exhibit halls with over 440,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space
3 elegant ballrooms including Ballroom C with approximately 40,000 sq. ft.
Full service UPS Business Center
36 loading docks, including 24 covered docks

Not to mention the Alamo, the Riverwalk, all the great shopping, the restaurants, and the many theme and amusement parks, including the world's largest SeaWorld.

Hmmm, looks like March 4, 5, and 6, of 2012 might be a good time, right after FIRST has their robotics competition (March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd). The weather will be great at that time, too. Let me see what kind of room rates are available.


In any case, how does March 2012 sound to everyone?

that would be the logical way, but most everything else is not logical, so why not this