San Francisco loses 2 big conferences
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
While I'm not ordinarily a fan of Las Vegas, it is hands down the absolute best place for conferences, logistically. It's a 10 minute Uber to get from the airport to the strip. Tons of hotels on the strip. If the conference is at one strip hotel and you are staying at pretty much any other strip hotel, you can walk to your conference in 10 minutes or less, and you can complete the entire walk underground. Tons of food, cafes, etc. along the walk. Entertainment venues everywhere (obviously, it's Vegas).
SF/Moscone is the absolute worst for getting around. The other cities are ok-ish but only if you're staying at the hotel where the conference is being held.
Anyway, it takes over an hour to walk from one end of the strip to the other. You really do need to pick a nearby hotel, not any strip hotel. And no idea what you're talking about re: walking underground. That's not true for most strip hotels.
But yes, on your overall point, I agree that Las Vegas is a good spot for conventions.
There's definitely an indoor walkway connecting the casinos that at times is underground, at least on the southern end. I remember pre-Covid staying at the Luxor (the pyramid looking one) and the conference was 3 or 4 casinos down and I never actually had to go outside. The underground walkway was full of stores and restaurants.
I agree that Las Vegas is a good convention city, but please don't suggest that it's easy to get around.
And that's from the front entrance -- not counting getting from one hotel to another.
I've gone to dozens of conferences in Las Vegas -- so much so that I know the name and location of the meeting rooms in many of the hotels. I can compare that to attending several dozen conferences elsewhere, from Hanover to San Francisco to Orlando to ohgeez so many other places. Las Vegas has benefits, but the travel issues cause me to ALWAYS stay at the conference hotel whenever possible.
It's such a pain to Uber back and forth multiple times a day to Moscone (can never get a hotel close by since the prices are beyond insane during large conferences), plus that's about 100 USD of Ubering daily if you do the back and forth twice
What? I’ve been to Vegas dozens of times (conferences and pleasure) and I’ve never seen nor heard of this. What specific casino pairs have underground walks between them (intended for public use, not stormwater or utility tunnels)?
Not really an “underground tunnel” but definitely an indoor connector
EDIT - just looked at streetview, I think they are actually underground.
But are you really saying that you've been to Vegas dozens of times and you didn't know the hotels were connected like this?
At least with Vegas everyone left the families at home. Sure, they would be all hung over every morning but at least they came.
For something truly humongous you need a Las Vegas, but as a participant I'd much prefer the conference just book a hotel somewhere in the woods, or in a relatively small town.
The usual counterargument is airport connectivity etc.
But in most cases you can simply drive for X amount of time away from the urban center the airport is serving, instead of towards it, and find a perfectly serviceable venue that could host a conference of the same size.
Place it in another major city and they can easily fly there and find a place to stay there. Being a major city their companies may have subsidiaries there so they may be able to do other company work and add this onto a company trip.
And if you’re an international conference, you should probably limit yourself to something like 5 cities or else everyone from outside the US will likely struggle and not be able to make a real trip outside of it.
Holding conferences anywhere outside major cities does not seem to make any sense to me.
It's because there are advantages to major cities: (1) connectivity; (2) incumbent audience; (3) capacity; (4) entertainment;
LV mostly wins on 3 and 4 but loses on 1 and 2. NYC and Chicago win on all 4.
Large crowds. Everything hotel/conference room smells like smoke (terrible for asthmatics). Lots of distractions that are especially bad for those with addictions.
If I'm at an event for work, I don't want those things. I want an event that keeps me focused and engaged with the material and the connections.
When a conference is held in Vegas, I know it's going to be more of a party than an educational experience, so I tend to write it off simply because of the location choice.
if that's your metric for fitness... Milan has recently opened a subway line that goes straight from the Linate airport to the city centre, and you can get a fairly big congress centre (MiCo, Milano Congressi -- big enough to host the AWS Summit) very easily, and with a single subway ticket (which costs 2,20€ at the moment and is also valid for buses, trams and regional treins within the city).
Why is there such strong denial among city leadership and many individuals?
[1] https://sfist.com/2023/07/06/san-franciscos-chief-economist-...
He's not right, but he's not in a political position that will economically benefit the people of the city by being candid.
Getting bombed by their own police probably didn't help either.
And no real consequences?
Well, if you criticize the police, then they stop prosecuting criminals, and then Fox News talks daily about how your city has become a crime-infested third world hell-hole.
Which would seem to end the discussion.
I can't speak to the economics of the area, and it is certainly expensive, but most of the jabber I've seen online seems overblown. I never felt any more at risk there than I do in any other large city.
But the conference center, Moscone Center, is in one of the neighborhoods where the action is. And a lot of people live in or visit these areas also.
> I had seen claimed.
The comments like are part of the problem. So the fact that my neiborhood is going to shit does not matter: The wharf wasn't even overrun as I had seen claimed so be quiet. And please do not think I have anything aginst your opinion. It is 100% correct.
And my question is: why? Why people (leaders and ones who can live near marina) dismiss the problems parents and mortals like me experience? Is it because they think this is some republican's vs democrats issue? Just wondering. Maybe if I understand why we can work on platform to fix this.
But putting that aside, I feel sad that remote work + the tech downturn means that employers have slashed all conference travel budgets. Conferences were a great way for me to meet professionals outside of my workplace. Even if it was just an excuse to get drunk and party, I think the industry benefitted as a whole from the networking.
Conferences in 2023 are just sad. The vendor/prospect ratio is way off, and you can really feel the tension on vendors’ faces. Some of these today make RSAC and BlackHat look like stodgy academic conferences.
There are a few decent talks at BlackHat, but most of it is mind numbingly stupid.
The data is not encouraging
SF is relatively safe because you only had one bad criminal experience in 15 years.
Or
SF is relatively unsafe because you had >0 bad criminal experiences in 15 years.
I was only assaulted once the first time I was in Vancouver, BC.
What's your point?
We may be four blocks apart which colors our respective experiences quite differently.
My primary reason for commenting was simply to add my anecdote. People tend to overvalue anecdotes, and I thought it unfair that my experience was not represented in the anecdotes already in the thread. So I added it. There was no "argument" present except to add perspective.
> Are you seriously arguing as someone that lives there that it’s not a shitshow?
As somebody who lives here, I do have my gripes. Commuter foot traffic has not fully recovered, and that has impacted local businesses and public transit significantly. I don't care too much about the Nordstroms of the world, but the smaller local businesses were hard hit, and that was tough, as many of my favorites went out of business. Homelessness and open drug use seems to have increased a bit, though it looks worse due to the lower foot traffic. It's always been a heartbreaking issue and so it's always been important to me to vote and donate in a way that I believe will help.
But like I said, I've had no issues with actual crime personally. I know that SF's violent crime rates are trending down. I know there's issues with car break-ins and some property crime, but again, nothing that I've experienced. If anything, when I walk outside my apartment, I'm far more worried about getting hit by a driver than I am about being a victim of that sort of crime. (Driving behavior seems to have gotten far more dangerous in the area since the pandemic)
As for the positives: the location is central to all SF public transit, so it's easy to visit all the excellent neighborhoods SF has to offer. Golden Gate Park in particular has improved dramatically since JFK was closed to cars, and it's easy to visit. The new T subway is excellent to get to Chinatown quickly! It's also easy to visit/commute to the greater Bay Area via regional rail. Chase Center and Oracle Park are conveniently located, so there's opportunities to go see the games. Not to mention that the area gets a nice vibe when the Giants are playing a home game. There's convenient access to the highway when you do need to drive. Despite the pandemic-driven small business closures, there have been new local businesses opening up that are real gems, so that's been exciting to see. The new Salesforce Park is absolutely beautiful too. And there's been recent facelifts to a lot of the local streets to make them more bike-friendly, which has been really welcome: it makes getting to the Ferry building (another great local perk) easy.
So I guess what I'm saying is: yes, there are ways that the area has gone downhill. But it started out great, and continues to improve in other ways, mostly ones that don't get flashy HN posts. So no, I don't think it's a shit show.
Why are you bringing up stuff about Vancouver in Canada?
Because anecdotes are not useful for anything other than making strangers indignant on the internet.
HN posters used to strive to be better than the comment section of a newspaper web site.
Speaking personally, I love hearing about people’s actual experiences instead of a bunch of armchair experts telling other ppl how to live.
SF - 715
Orlando - 744
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...
Is anyone talking about the state of Conferences in Orlando, FL?
Yeah, it has been in the news repeatedly in the past few months, although for a different cause.
Then again what surrounds Moscone is mostly not "violent crime" as per this classification.
Edit: clarified news vs police reporting
so quite bad decline for foreseeable future.
what a rhetoric gymnastic to mislead it's "ok".
"SF Travel said Red Hat is scheduled for events at Moscone in 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2032" in one of the fine articles.
They also seem to be "not cancelled" long in advance. But that makes sense, if you want a specific venue on a specific date, there is no alternative to early options.
Big downtown conferences rely on a network of hotels and retail and restaurants to support them.
The hotels also rely on the retail and restaurants for support.
The retail and restaurants rely on constant foot traffic.
SF made the subtle mistake of over building commercial office in its downtown, which meant that much of the foot traffic was office workers, and due to circumstance, the bias of office workers was heavily oriented toward the tech sector.
As the pandemic hit and office pivoted toward WFH, suddenly all this foot traffic, a requirement for a healthy downtown evaporated.
Unfortunately for SF, the bias toward tech is hurting its recovery, as tech in particular seems more likely to let the pandemic WFH status quo continue.
Now we're starting to see the network of the healthy downtown unravel as things become untenable for those who rely on foot traffic, and those higher up the chain that require the amenities that rely on foot traffic. No surprise to see conferences start to pull out.
In contrast other cities with less tech workers have seen more of a return to the office, and so their downtown life has picked up. As well with cities with more residential downtown, as there's a more resiliant foot traffic mix, we've seen them more easily rebound as well.
I think where SF went wrong though was over emphasis of commercial in a single district. They should have known better, but likely didn't want to touch existing residential neighbourhoods at all, so here we are.
I'm scheduled to go to a conference in October and seriously thinking about canceling, there's really nothing attractive about the idea in any way.
Remote sessions with small gatherings in major cities? Transition to a YouTube channel with consistent weekly live stream talks? A "tour of talks" with multiple city stops? Monthly themed topic events?
The existing format has become stale and ineffective. Would love to discuss alternatives with others.
Maybe they'll cancel those too, but it's worth noting that Red Hat and Meta have not said anything like "we're done with San Francisco", they just both backed out of a conference booking at around the same time. Could be a coincidence. We don't know. Feels premature to draw conclusions though.
I think SF could do the same thing. At least until the homeless & crime crowd outnumber the others. Only then would all hope be lost.
I didn't see that in the article.
My guess is either shrinking demand for the conference (vs the cost) and or location desirability.
One option for commuting conferencegoers is to take transit into the conference to beat the traffic and take Uber or Lyft back after having dinner near the conference, when there is less traffic. Except some would take it on the way back as well because the traffic got them to familiarize themselves with public transit.
The issue with Caltrain is it ends about 1.5 miles short of downtown.
Moscone now has a subway stop, which may help with downtown connectivity (but I won't hold my breath).
It takes the better part of half a mile to get from platform to platform, and originally I thought the connections weren't timed. Turns out it's worse. BART refuses to do timed connections on the weekends, and on the weekdays they pretend to time it. Connections from Caltrain to BART are 15–20 minutes. Going from BART (e.g. the airport) to Caltrain is not "timed" and is a 20–30 minute transfer. Icing on that shit cake is that BART doesn't run when the first few and last few Caltrain runs are made. So, yeah, nobody will do that. There's no reason to unless BART isn't running, in which case you're reliant on taxis/ubers or one of the scarce SamTrans buses that was gutted to pay for BART to get to the nearest Caltrain station (Millbrae).
If they're coming from the airport they'll take BART to Powell and walk to Moscone or do the ridiculous transfer at Powell to the subway to nowhere and get off at Moscone station.
It's all moot though as BART's not even stopping at Millbrae today because reasons.
The conference attendees when at the airport have their luggage. The airport hotel is a more realistic scenario. Or a CalTrain accessible hotel. And some of the airport hotels have good access both to CalTrain and the airport. I think more would if this extension were made.
people who live next to a CalTrain station
Or a CalTrain accessible hotel
Even if there were shuttles to Caltrain, it's a much shorter walk from Powell at 4th and Market (or the Moscone station at 4th and Folsom) than 4th and King or the transbay terminal.
Please note that we offer a fee-based shuttle to San Francisco International
Airport SFO, from 5AM-10AM and 5PM-10PM. Please reserve the shuttle using
the link below.
RedHat have moved their conferences to Florida, so I highly doubt cost is a big reason. Florida itself is much cheaper, but a decent chunk of RedHat employees live in Cali, so flying them across the continent is not that much cheaper.
EDIT: I was wrong, RedHat is mostly east coast, I'm sorry.
(of course, your hotel is probably farther.)
Except I've never been to Moscone. Just past it, dozens of times.
I like Chaat Corner. That's more of a landmark for me than Moscone.
Edit: wow, I've heard your voice before. You did an interview w/ Nassim Nicholas Taleb that I watched.
It's really quite bad and it's an impression someone ought to do something about.
I'm convinced there isn't any kind of immediate solution to these problems. Not that we should give up on mental health and addictions treatment. I just think the solution is way broader. Reduce income inequality, improve schools, keep up the drug treatment so the children of people with drug problems stand a chance, better research about when opiate prescriptions are appropriate (like 24 hours post surgery at most then just acetaminophen), universal healthcare and childcare to stop people falling into poverty... Then wait a good 20 years for those things to ripple through society.
I know HN loves solutioning and grand projects, but at least consider that this isn't always the way. Consider the article from a couple of days ago about letting ACL tears heal on their own rather than doing surgery. You cannot engineer your way out of everything and often it makes things worse.
And of course there is an immediate solution: remove the people violating the social contract from society at large. It’s up to the people of San Francisco to either find a politically palatable way to do that or continue to live in a kind of fecal anarchy.
Edit: in case it’s not clear I’m not euphemistically suggesting incarceration as the only option, although it is one. Some kind of supervised halfway house SRO type thing would be another option among many. Drug rehabilitation also.
Probably how NYC recovered from the 70s and 80s is instructive, or the decades long overall decline in violent crime in major cities. SF for all the crap it gets is still near an all time low in violent crime. Was it acute treatments, or did general conditions just change?
In other words, it's a lot of work to get the a homeless addict to be a net-neutral for society, if that's even possible.
The current "treatment" is to hand out free drug paraphernalia and what has been proposed in cities like SF and Seattle are taxpayer-funded "safe injection sites" fully staffed with nurses. An analogy would be to try and cure a rat problem by sitting on a park bench tossing them pieces of bread. It's irrational and it doesn't work.
The problem being inherently human, you have to come up with solutions that at the very least treat them as such.
RedHat moved their conferences to other states in the US, but still plan on holding future conferences in SF. Which, to me, also sounds like a temporary cost saving measure. I highly doubt it's because of safety or homelessness, if that was the case then they wouldn't be commiting to hold future conferences in SF.
Poorly informed comments like this by otherwise intwlligent people hurt hn. Meta is minting money right now.
> Meta and Red Hat, called off 2024 conferences that were set to be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center
The article does not say whether Meta is moving its conference elsewhere or just canceling it.