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A few years ago I raised the idea (on Twitter) of Iceland being a nice "neutral" venue that's equally (in)convenient for both US and European attendees, very li

A few years ago I raised the idea (on Twitter) of Iceland being a nice "neutral" venue that's equally (in)convenient for both US and European attendees, very liberal and progressive, and, at the time, cheap for a Nordic country. I have since seen a handful of industry conferences take place there, but it hasn't really blown up (one reason, I suspect, is it's reasonably expensive to stay there now - Iceland's decline did not last long!)

xiaoma 10y ago
The next most important start-up hub after SF is Beijing. It's much more affordable than SF, but there are other concerns with hosting conferences there such as pollution, speech and media controls and a lot of regulation in general. edit: I had no idea there was so much China hate here. I'm no fan of certain policies of the government, believe me. I hate the GFW with a passion. But the entrepreneurial community is incredible. There's a lot of skill at the high end and awe-inspiring levels of fearlessness and ambition.
- logical42 10y ago
  ..like being able to use unfiltered internet?
- sharemywin 10y ago
  pollution?
- astrodust 10y ago
  Like the 20+ hours of travel to get there?
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    From where does it take 20 hours to get to Beijing? SFO to Beijing is just over half that.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      You're already on the Pacific coast. Not everyone on the planet is. Under optimal circumstances, not including airport time which can be considerable, flight time between New York and Shanghai is 15 hours. Add in a few hours to check-in, clear customs, plus other nonsense and you're up to 18. Under ideal circumstances.
      - xiaoma 10y ago
        A lot more people on the planet live near Beijing than near Iceland.
        astrodust 10y ago
        If you're talking about India and China, sure. If you're talking about America and Europe? Nope.
        xiaoma 10y ago
        Yes, India and China are indisputable giants but also consider Japan (still the #2 or #3 economy in the world depending on the metric), Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore—all advanced economies with extremely educated and technical populaces. Then there's Vietnam, which is very poor but growing over 10% / year and highly educated despite the poverty. There are also hundreds of millions of people in Indonesia and Malaysia. I was speaking not of the US or Europe but the world in general. We don't live in the Eurocentric world of 150 years ago. The center of gravity now spans the Pacific.
        astrodust 10y ago
        It will. It does not right now if you're talking about conferences. Participants are still largely from the Americas and Europe. Also this entire argument is utterly absurd. If you're upset about brutal domestic policies the last place you should be arguing in favor of is China.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  In what way is Beijing a legitimate counterpoint to an American lurch toward despotism?
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Sorry, mods can be real asshats on here.
  - grzm 10y ago
    That only mods are 'dang and 'sctb. Are you referring to them? Or do you mean members who are downvoting? If the latter, please don't refer to them as mods. And regardless, kindly don't resort to name calling.
- nrjdhsbsid 10y ago
  That would be great for conferences if it wasn't for everything you mentioned plus high levels of govt corruption and IP theft. The lack of open Internet alone is enough that the vast majority of conferences simply cannot be held there. It's not "China hate" when there's legitimate reasons.
- hueving 10y ago
  I've been to a conference in mainland China. The firewall made it completely miserable (it was a tech conference). People from the west expect to be able to use Google/gmail/hangouts/github/ssh for more than 5 minute random bursts of connectivity. You can't expect people to go to tech conferences in those garbage conditions.
  - patrickk 10y ago
    DevCon2? Lots of people on /r/ethereum were upset that videos of the talks were not available for weeks afterwards because it was in Shanghai.
    - hueving 10y ago
      No, it was for developing infrastructure tooling (e.g. K8s, docker, etc), all of which was mainly hosted on github. Sounds like it's not an uncommon problem. Frankly I think the conferences are only as successful as they are because of the volume of mainland Chinese citizens and the novelty of a trip to mainland China for people outside of the country.
labster 10y ago
While the idea of Iceland is great, being in the middle of the Atlantic. But this means that it's close to no one, including likely conference organizers.
- danaliv 10y ago
  Iceland is only a four-hour flight from Boston or Berlin. It's really quite a convenient location.
widforss 10y ago
While it is a great location, Iceland is not "cheap for a Nordic country" anymore. They picked up, and isolation does not come for free.
deong 10y ago
I've actually organized a machine learning conference in Iceland (AISTATS and MLSS 2014), and I can probably shed some light on this. One, it's hideously expensive now, for almost anyone in the world. Second, it's incredibly small -- 320,000 people in the entire country, and maybe 220,000 of those in the Reykjavik area. Due to the "big fish in a small pond" aspect of Reykjavik being the capital, there's more infrastructure than you'd expect from a city of 200,000 people, but not that much more. NIPS draws something like 3500 attendees now. I'm not sure there are 3500 hotel rooms in the country of Iceland. I struggled to find a venue that could host 10% of that for AISTATS. AISTATS is single-track which requires one big room, but there would have been very few options for finding a room big enough for just the deep learning breakaways at NIPS. Aside from that, it's great. We did draw more people from the US than typical AISTATS European years had done, and it's a beautiful country for visitors to enjoy. But I don't think it's capable of becoming a major world conference center at the moment.
- petercooper 10y ago
  Fantastic response and insights. Thanks!

xiaoma 10y ago

The next most important start-up hub after SF is Beijing. It's much more affordable than SF, but there are other concerns with hosting conferences there such as pollution, speech and media controls and a lot of regulation in general. edit: I had no idea there was so much China hate here. I'm no fan of certain policies of the government, believe me. I hate the GFW with a passion. But the entrepreneurial community is incredible. There's a lot of skill at the high end and awe-inspiring levels of fearlessness and ambition.

logical42 10y ago
..like being able to use unfiltered internet?
sharemywin 10y ago
pollution?
astrodust 10y ago
Like the 20+ hours of travel to get there?
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  From where does it take 20 hours to get to Beijing? SFO to Beijing is just over half that.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    You're already on the Pacific coast. Not everyone on the planet is. Under optimal circumstances, not including airport time which can be considerable, flight time between New York and Shanghai is 15 hours. Add in a few hours to check-in, clear customs, plus other nonsense and you're up to 18. Under ideal circumstances.
    - xiaoma 10y ago
      A lot more people on the planet live near Beijing than near Iceland.
      - astrodust 10y ago
        If you're talking about India and China, sure. If you're talking about America and Europe? Nope.
        xiaoma 10y ago
        Yes, India and China are indisputable giants but also consider Japan (still the #2 or #3 economy in the world depending on the metric), Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore—all advanced economies with extremely educated and technical populaces. Then there's Vietnam, which is very poor but growing over 10% / year and highly educated despite the poverty. There are also hundreds of millions of people in Indonesia and Malaysia. I was speaking not of the US or Europe but the world in general. We don't live in the Eurocentric world of 150 years ago. The center of gravity now spans the Pacific.
        astrodust 10y ago
        It will. It does not right now if you're talking about conferences. Participants are still largely from the Americas and Europe. Also this entire argument is utterly absurd. If you're upset about brutal domestic policies the last place you should be arguing in favor of is China.
stuckagain 10y ago
In what way is Beijing a legitimate counterpoint to an American lurch toward despotism?
CamperBob2 10y ago
Sorry, mods can be real asshats on here.
- grzm 10y ago
  That only mods are 'dang and 'sctb. Are you referring to them? Or do you mean members who are downvoting? If the latter, please don't refer to them as mods. And regardless, kindly don't resort to name calling.
nrjdhsbsid 10y ago
That would be great for conferences if it wasn't for everything you mentioned plus high levels of govt corruption and IP theft. The lack of open Internet alone is enough that the vast majority of conferences simply cannot be held there. It's not "China hate" when there's legitimate reasons.
hueving 10y ago
I've been to a conference in mainland China. The firewall made it completely miserable (it was a tech conference). People from the west expect to be able to use Google/gmail/hangouts/github/ssh for more than 5 minute random bursts of connectivity. You can't expect people to go to tech conferences in those garbage conditions.
- patrickk 10y ago
  DevCon2? Lots of people on /r/ethereum were upset that videos of the talks were not available for weeks afterwards because it was in Shanghai.
  - hueving 10y ago
    No, it was for developing infrastructure tooling (e.g. K8s, docker, etc), all of which was mainly hosted on github. Sounds like it's not an uncommon problem. Frankly I think the conferences are only as successful as they are because of the volume of mainland Chinese citizens and the novelty of a trip to mainland China for people outside of the country.

labster 10y ago

While the idea of Iceland is great, being in the middle of the Atlantic. But this means that it's close to no one, including likely conference organizers.

danaliv 10y ago
Iceland is only a four-hour flight from Boston or Berlin. It's really quite a convenient location.

widforss 10y ago

While it is a great location, Iceland is not "cheap for a Nordic country" anymore. They picked up, and isolation does not come for free.

deong 10y ago

I've actually organized a machine learning conference in Iceland (AISTATS and MLSS 2014), and I can probably shed some light on this. One, it's hideously expensive now, for almost anyone in the world. Second, it's incredibly small -- 320,000 people in the entire country, and maybe 220,000 of those in the Reykjavik area. Due to the "big fish in a small pond" aspect of Reykjavik being the capital, there's more infrastructure than you'd expect from a city of 200,000 people, but not that much more. NIPS draws something like 3500 attendees now. I'm not sure there are 3500 hotel rooms in the country of Iceland. I struggled to find a venue that could host 10% of that for AISTATS. AISTATS is single-track which requires one big room, but there would have been very few options for finding a room big enough for just the deep learning breakaways at NIPS. Aside from that, it's great. We did draw more people from the US than typical AISTATS European years had done, and it's a beautiful country for visitors to enjoy. But I don't think it's capable of becoming a major world conference center at the moment.

petercooper 10y ago
Fantastic response and insights. Thanks!