Exploring the Possibility of NixCon North America — We Need Your Help!
I’m excited to share that we’re starting to think about organizing a NixCon event in North America! The idea is still in its infancy, and we’re tossing around ‘NixCon North America’ as a working title. While nothing is set in stone, we’d love to gather the community’s thoughts on the idea.
Location
We’re currently considering the Eastern United States and Canada as potential locations. But we’re open to suggestions—so if you have a venue in mind, we’d love to hear about it!
Time
About 6 months from now
Call for Volunteers
Pulling off an event like this would be a monumental task and we’re going to need all the help we can get. If you’re interested in helping make this event a reality, please let us know! There’s plenty of work to go around, from logistics to marketing and program curation.
Why NixCon North America?
To strengthen the Nix community in North America.
To provide a space for contributors and users to collaborate and learn from each other.
Relationship with Core NixCon in Europe
It’s crucial to note that this potential NixCon North America event is not intended to replace or overshadow the main NixCon that occurs annually in Europe. The European event is the formal, core gathering of the Nix community, and we wholeheartedly support its continuation and prominence.
Rather, we envision NixCon North America as a complementary event aimed at strengthening the Nix community in this part of the world. We believe that having more localized events can only serve to enrich the global community as a whole.
Next Steps
Feedback: Please comment below with your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.
Join the Team: If you’re interested in volunteering, please get in touch.
Virtual Meetup: Depending on the interest, we’ll organize a virtual meetup to further discuss plans and tasks.
I’m interested in attending, and potentially volunteering.
A couple of us started some initial discussions in Discord about arranging a get together on the Kent State University campus where I work, but I suspect such an out of the way location in Ohio would be displeasing to many.
I don’t think I can volunteer in any significant manner, but I have reasons to think, in a more worldwide accessible way, that access to Canada may be easier than to the USA for some.
On the east coast, it would likely mean the airport hubs, so Toronto and Montréal. Toronto is closer by landmass to more of the USA, I believe.
That’s for the east cost, it doesn’t have to be for the first one, but the West Coast (not necessarily California) may or may not be easier for people across the Pacific, as another worldwide outreach possibility to keep in mind.
(Also I’d like to say that I have no idea for Mexico, or other southern north-american areas; people from there or with experience may chime-in for future possibilities.)
For eastern USA I think it should probably be somewhere along the eastern corridor. I think that would be Roanoke, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, or their surrounding metro areas. They all share a rail line and also have airports. Canada would probably be Toronto or Montreal. But I think it could be beneficial to start an interest survey that included anonymized low resolution location info before we settle on the north east. I’d rather not guess at where people might be only to find out most of the attendees are on another coast or in another country, or both.
I’m interested in the general idea of a North America gathering as well as both volunteering my time/labor and sponsoring the event. I can additionally host 2-3 people if this is held in Boston or Vancouver.
access to Canada may be easier than to the USA for some
Absolutely this; visitor visa access to Canada is in general easier to acquire than to the US, and if we’re going to hold international gatherings, they should be maximally accessible given the other constraints.
Some bikeshedding, with love:
Naming this proposed event “NixCon North America” and distinguishing the location in the title privileges the European event (this is intentional per “The European event is the formal, core gathering”); what happens if the North American event becomes dominant? And what if multiple events are held per year? “NixCon North America 2024Q2”? (To be a bit cheeky: it would be more on-brand to call the current event “NixCon 23.09” )
Its about time! I’d be interesting in volunteering.
One thing I’d like to mention is Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) which takes place in March in Pasadena, California each year (next year: March 14-17, 2024) and does offer Co-Located Events like: DevOps Days, MySQL, etc.. So it could be worth considering having NixCon NA be co-located at SCaLE.
Regardless, I just made an announcement for the current SCaLE CFP since a few of us are heading up a new Reproducible and Immutable Software track this coming year’s SCaLE: SCaLE 21x (2024) - CFP for Reproducible and Immutable Software so there should be plenty of events in North America with nix content
I guess that this is a joke, but don’t forget North America is more than the USA.
It’s also better to consider “travel difficulty” in time/frequency with some weight on the farther travels. So that will likely favour the major North American travel hubs, and accessible locations nearby. Considering the size of the continent, and desire to make it more international than continental, it makes sense to favour one coast, each time (assuming it would repeat).
Virtual hugs! <3 and thank you for already starting to provide thoughts into the different areas we need to consider!
I’ll send out requests for times after I get back home next week to find us an initial sync slot, setup an open matrix channel, and set up some forms of fully async collaboration mechanisms like a brainstorm doc. Open to more ideas on the meta logistics!
