Tech conferences moving north as Trump policies turn off attendees
business.financialpost.com
business.financialpost.com
The attendees are from all over the world anyways. The big selling point is going to be the difference of buying a plane ticket to Canada vs buying one to the US + having to deal with the hassles of US immigration and customs.
Exactly. I for one voted for Canada for exactly that reason.
That is a wonderful Freudian slip!
While it's rarely thought about or discussed - Toronto isn't a small little town in Canada. It's the 4th largest city in North America. Bigger than Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.
Combine that with the fact that the Canadian dollar is weak and you've got the perfect match for tech companies.
Your comparison is based on population within "city limits" which are arbitrary and widely varying as to how much of the urban area of a city they cover.
Your overall point isn't invalid, just pointing it isn't that big.
For example I would love to visit Iran, but that would future visits in USA very difficult.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/middle-east/ir...
I'm looking at you, San Francisco. :)
Also at first glace this conference looks like it was setup by big players just to have their "own" conference. You see, real conferences where where real innovation and tech happen at are not concerned with being "the fastest growing". Looking at the lineup this is clearly for something setup for what I would assume to be mostly executives to be brainwashed by much larger companies to use their products. Nobody wants to go and listen to the rubbish a bunch of CEOs have to say about stuff their engineers should actually be talking about. Just really feels like somebody figured out money influence and market control can be had with hosting a conference and so now we have "Collision" -- which sounds like a complete knock off of "disrupt"
But who knows, maybe somebody here has gone and will correct me.
EDIT I did not read every line of the article, and yes, 2 other conferences were mentioned, but the blurb about collision still stands.
I think not. This is just a chearleading article by a Canadian newspaper. Oh Canada! Our home and native land! Trump is bad and that makes us good by comparison for thee!
Seems a strange and disturbing choice that the US public has made but their willl should be respected.
Democracy provides for people to vote out the leadership if they don't agree, although the Google seems to suggest trump is currently looking good for reelection.
If the management of the Holtin Hotels said brown-haired people are no longer welcome in their hotel, would you hold your conference (which has some brown haired people attendees) there or would you hold it somewhere else?
Yes, exactly. You don't need the scare-quotes. The voters of the US have spoken, and their will should be respected. If they don't want to be a welcoming place, that's their right. It's the conference organizers' right to take their conference someplace more welcoming, and it isn't disrespectful for them to do this.
>If the management of the Holtin Hotels said brown-haired people are no longer welcome in their hotel, would you hold your conference (which has some brown haired people attendees) there or would you hold it somewhere else?
Exactly! There's plenty of places in the world where you can have a large tech conference.
That reads like ideological boilerplate attempting to pass as fact.
Can you back it up with something objective?
I didn't read it that way. I think the intent was to say that if anybody is to blame for this, it's the people who voted for Trump. And that their will will be respected when conferences are held somewhere else.
Sure. The US has, for now, chosen to adopt hostile immigration policies, which will incentivise international conference organisers to avoid it, like they do other countries with hostile immigration policies. I'm not sure where you see a problem?
> although the Google seems to suggest trump is currently looking good for reelection
Eh? How did Google do that?
This is an assertion, not a fact. There are plenty of ways in which systems which are not popular persist long after a majority, not to mention an overwhelming majority, support them. In fact one of the major intents and effects of propaganda, which is being used extensively today in the US, is to raise the level of apathy in a population.
Meanwhile, I can point to lots of popular support for other things, despite any "propaganda". Propaganda and apathy don't seem to have stopped various activists from pushing for marijuana reform, gay rights/marriage, gun law changes (in different directions), etc. Can you point me to ANY significant activist activity to change the voting laws? Any? Any at all? Can you point to any national-level candidate (or even state-level) who's made any noise about this issue?
(And before you try to claim that "propaganda" limits the choices and viability of candidates, I'll disprove that with one name: "Trump".)
No, this is misinformation. The purpose of propaganda and disinformation is to reduce a population's ability to discern the truth. To wear down cognitive abilities until people stop trying. You can't use apathy or lack of initiative as a "fact" supporting your pet conclusion.
As for your assertion that there is "no", "none at all" support for any such change it just happens that it's a well studied question.
You should acquaint yourself with the facts that studies have obtained. For instance, Gallup[1] tracks opinion in surveys.
In the recent past as much as 62% of the population supported a constitutional amendment eliminating the Electoral College. After the more recent election year, 2016, it is closer - 47% vs 49%, still in favor of change.
In short, your argument is just baseless noise - just like a lot of what's being emitted by disinformationists in our current environment.
[1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/198917/americans-support-elector...
There is a simple way to ensure that the popular vote winner becomes President, so one explanation for why there are no marches advocating "a new electoral system" is that the enlightened realize there is no need to change the Constitution.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Eh? No they don't. See http://news.gallup.com/poll/2305/americans-long-questioned-e...
For the last 50 years it has been divided with a majority favouring reform. It's just not something that most people care about _much_ (except in the immediate aftermath of an election where it has a grossly obvious effect), so it never attains the sense of urgency and permanency that might actually lead to a constitutional change.
Have you seen any groundswell of movement to try to change any of the election laws? Of course not. We've seen people pushing for new gun laws (in the wakes of shootings), we've seen people pushing for marijuana legalization or decriminalization or rescheduling, we've seen people pushing for gay marriage (and winning), we've seen people pushing for higher minimum wage laws, but we have NOT seen any real push for electoral reform.
Our gun laws have seen various changes (at all levels) over the decades, MJ was only banned in the 1930s IIRC, gay marriage only became an issue in the last couple decades, yet we've had these same election laws since the founding of the nation. If we really cared about changing them, we have done so by now. I, for one, certainly haven't seen any desire to change the Electoral College system on the right, since they benefit from it; instead, they steadfastly defend the system.
So yes, a majority of Americans do support this election system.
> Have you seen any groundswell of movement to try to change any of the election laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
I don't think that opposing a correction to the system should even count as an opinion, because the present system was not designed; it evolved, so any appeal to a worthwhile purpose is post-hoc reasoning.
I attribute the support for the current system entirely to people who must validate their feelings that the ends of getting Bush & Trump elected justified the means. This means it is plausible that it is in nobody's interest, when we look to the future.
Huh? Where'd you get this from? The Electoral College did not evolve, it was specifically designed by the Framers as a compromise between the rural and urban states.
>I attribute the support for the current system entirely to people who must validate their feelings that the ends of getting Bush & Trump elected justified the means. This means it is plausible that it is in nobody's interest, when we look to the future.
You're provably wrong here: The system was specifically designed the way it was to give more power to the rural (lower population density) states. That's exactly what it's done in elections where the popular vote winner lost. The people who support it continue to support it for that same reason: it's giving them the result they want, which is disproportionate power to rural states and rural voters like them.
It's absolutely in their interest to support that: they have different values than urban voters, and they want to win elections. The EC system helps them achieve this by tipping the scale in their favor, so of course they want it to remain unaltered.
Your assertion is that it's in "nobody's interest" is plainly wrong. You only think that because you're biased in favor of your own interests, which align with urban voters (like me), and you think that your interests should be all voters' interests, or that they're correct. Rural voters don't agree with you, and they think they should have more voting power per person than urban voters, so of course the current system is in their interest, even if it is inherently unfair.
Trump was not elected by a "majority of Americans". He was not even elected by a majority of Americans who voted. In fact, he did not even win by a plurality of Americans who voted.
Because of weirdness of the way the Presidential election process works in the US, it's possible to win the election with fewer votes than your opponent; you just need a majority of electors, but most states allocate electors in a winner-takes-all fashion.
> there should be such travel restrictions
Voting for someone does not mean that you agree with all of their policies. It's possible that a large number of Americans disagreed with those policies, but preferred other policies Trump held over Clinton, like lowering taxes and reducing regulations. Or that enough people were sufficiently uncomfortable with a woman as president. Or that enough people were convinced by the combination of Clinton conspiracy theories with the email scandal.
And, while there is a positive relationship between population and elector count, electors aren't even assigned proportional to population, so even if each state assigned electors proprtionately to the vote, you could still win with less votes than an opponent if your support is concentrated on low-population states.
Turnout was 55.7% and Trump got 46.1%, which means he got about 25.7% of the possible voters. Clearly not "almost" a majority.
I was going for "the strongest possible, but no stronger".
On the other hand, I heartily approve of the application of charity.
Maybe there was a line you could walk that does both, pointing it out as an aside rather than as direct criticism of what was presented? shrug Keep up the good commenting :)