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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

I've been to tech conferences in San Francisco (Moscone specifically), Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and Boston.

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.

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Definitely not true that you can walk the length of the entire strip in ten minutes. The strip is not super great for pedestrians because you have to keep walking up, around, and through various escalators/bridges/casino entryways. The strip would be much more pedestrian friendly if they closed the main street to cars and let you simply walk at ground level in a direct line.

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.

Yeah, sometimes it takes 15 minutes to just walk to the casino next door.

And sometimes it’s like walking in an oven.

And then another fifteen minutes to get through the casino to the conference area of the hotel. I went to reInvent once and thought I would just walk everywhere and I literally put holes in my shoes doing so.

You're right that the strip is fairly long if you look at it from the airport to downtown, but the main part of it where conferences tend to be held is maybe a little over a mile long. So I should have said a 20 minute walk.

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.

Most of the hotels there have convention centers. A convention could be anywhere. I've been to conventions in Caesars and Tropicana, which are not close to each other, nor are they that close to LVCC.

Also, good luck walking anywhere outside the strip. I tried to explore a bit like I do other cities - on foot - but sidewalks end a block away from the strip.

It is a full mile from the entrance of the MGM Grand to the convention center. A full _mile_.

I agree that Las Vegas is a good convention city, but please don't suggest that it's easy to get around.

So a fifteen minute walk?

At least 20 minutes, given that it's through a casino. With you probably carrying a backpack full of conference swag.

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.

I've never understood this obsession in the tech industry with holding small to medium sized conferences in major cities.

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.

You hold a small to mid conference in SF and the plurality of your audience and presenters will not need to pay for a place to stay. That means the quality of your conference will increase significantly.

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.

I run some events and hear opinions from both sides often. My take on this is there are basically two types of conferences. A more remote location helps people have more fun hanging out with each other, but a big city venue enable more people to attend. Both have value and there are middlegrounds, the choice depends entirely on what you’re looking for.

Most conferences are field-trips/paid-vacation for businesspeople. A large part of the attraction is being in a fun destination.

> I've never understood this obsession in the tech industry with holding small to medium sized conferences in major cities.

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.

I used to do trade shows in Orlando and Vegas. Everyone hated Orlando because attendees would bring the entire family, show up for the first half-day, then leave for the parks. The place would be a ghost town by day 3.

At least with Vegas everyone left the families at home. Sure, they would be all hung over every morning but at least they came.

> you can complete the entire walk underground

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)?

Mandalay - Luxor - Excalibur is one for example. Can’t remember if it crosses Tropicana into NY or not.

Not really an “underground tunnel” but definitely an indoor connector

EDIT - just looked at streetview, I think they are actually underground.

There are around 30 casinos (most with hotels) on the strip. If three are connected by tunnels, that’s pretty well short of the original claim: “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.”

Well that's just one one specific connection that sprang to mind. Also I think OP was exaggerating a bit generally ("PRETTY MUCH any other strip hotel") and I think the 10 mins is definitely an exaggeration unless you're going to an adjacent hotel.

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?

Fully agree.

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

Logistically, it may be optimal. But from my perspective, it creates suboptimal conference experiences.

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.

> It's a 10 minute Uber to get from the airport to the strip.

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).

It's certainly one of two main metrics, the other being that once I'm at the location everything from the conference to the hotel where I'm staying to dinner options are all walkable.

I only attended one conference in SF, VMworld. We were a vendor. We stayed at a really nice hotel ~15 minutes walking distance from Moscone (picked by our sales VP, I'd never pay that much for a hotel ;) ). I had a good experience. There's no shortage of places to eat or sit around there as well. SF does have fairly reasonable transit as well. This was a pretty long time ago though.

They still have smoking though.

Though some of the more informative conferences (pre COVID) that I attended were smaller lower key ones held in Facebook/Google HQ. Most attendees were local anyway. I also enjoy hangouts like B-Sides in smaller venues.

Fully agreed. We threw company offsites in a bunch of different locations around the US and Vegas was by far most affordable and convenient of them all once you got to a certain size.

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