What's Up With RevCon West?

[Dan Shafer]

By now, you've probably seen the quasi-announcement from RunRev that they
are planning some sort of conference activity this year. It may (or may not)
have occurred to you to wonder what that means for RevCon West in Monterey.

Chipp and I took a long, hard look at RevCon after the last show and decided
not to hold it, at least this year. There were a lot of reasons, some
financial, some personal, some work related, and some driving from the
feeling tha we weren't serving a very broad community need with our
offering. We had not decided whether we would pick up the conference again
in 2008, perhaps at a different location (though everyone who has attended
has been consistent in urging us to keep it in Monterey).

As soon as we had decided to cancel this year's show, we notified Kevin and
Lynn at RunRev. We did not want to announce our decision in a way that could
harm the community's perception of the ongoing value we place on the
technology. They asked us to hold off until they could make their own
conference plans clearer. That was the first we'd heard that they were
planning to do a (potentially competitive) conference this year and it
further reinforced our decision. Obviously this community is not large
enough to make multiple multi-day conferences profitable in the U.S. We
agreed, somewhat reluctantly because we really felt our primary obligation
was to you, the members of this outstanding community, to hold off on our
announcement so we could all effect an orderly transition.

The mention yesterday of RR's intent to do something in the conference space
rendered that delay no longer operable.

So now you know. No RevCon West next year. If RR goes ahead with its own
conference, that will probably effectively kill RevCon West for future years
as well.

It was fun.

Dan