Thank you to everyone who has participated in the conversation around BCON Austin. We have heard everything you are saying and wanted to send you a response. Please take some time to hear from Jonathan Williamson as he answers some of your questions and he and others from our community share why the human connection at a Blender conference is incredibly important in this moment.
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How’s everyone doing? Still hoping we pull BCON Austin off 
USA’s brand is fuuuuuuucked. BCONNA’s troubles are mirrored in so many other US examples right now. World Cup, GDC, the post-tariff economy, anything that previously was international about the USA is doing bad. To my fellow American blender users, if we were to pull this conference off, I’d love to have a bit of a roundtable about 1. How we are inexorably beneficiaries of an explicitly international software, 2. What that means right now as a community (some old fashioned “free as in freedom” Linux talk) 3. How blender people in the USA can meaningfully impact these threats to our community and, quite honestly, way of life, and 4. Show some leadership and some spine out there.
I dug up my professional development report from BCON LA in 2024, and this nugget was hard to read: “The 3D community (especially with Blender) is intensely international, and you know one of the best things about this trip? I saw America through the eyes of an international community. People from Germany, Colombia, Italy, Poland, Austria, Canada, Taiwan, the Netherlands of course, and so many other countries came to LA, and I got to feel their absolute excitement and joy at American things we take for granted: big sodas, Hollywood, fast internet, basketball, tacos, hip hop, and a pretty huge chunk of the world’s cultural exporting. These days, it’s easy to spend too much time on the internet and come away thinking the world is a mess, but this world is amazing, and America’s amazing!” An authentically patriotic appreciation for my country when we’re not shooting ourselves in the face.
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It’s not looking good. They have 6 days to come up with 100 tickets, and they’ve only sold 150 in the last two months. At this point, they would need to sell nearly twenty tickets a day, but from what I’ve seen from the live tracker, a really good day is three or four. It’s really a shame but it doesn’t seem likely to happen
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Who’s the Marc Maron of the Blender scene and what’s he saying about the festival?
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Or in the back, multiple times…
Like it or not, this does of course get highly political, for very obvious reasons (which is a no go on this forum), so I just think they should pull the plug.
I’m not one for travel at the best of times, but if I was, there’s currently no way I’d set foot inside today’s America, let alone Texas (notwithstanding that my specific perception could be wrong).
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I think the event will go ahead as planned … they’ll eat the cost.
Funny, the font featured on BCON Austin site is branded by a local Austin house featuring their font called Perfora.
With a description as … Perfora is the typographic antidote to our relentlessly anxious and uncertain times.
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So around a straight up loss of $35k USD.
Tho it sounds like if it’s cancelled, they lose $17k on venue deposit, so I guess if half is lost no matter what, they may well just decide to eat the other half and go ahead, as you say.
And then hope nothing else goes wrong.
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As the mass-scale collapse in basic human communication and behavior progresses, I would say that we should enjoy using Blender while it lasts. At some point and unless things change, the fear of not being to afford future hardware and the like will become a non-issue as computing itself simply vanishes in the technological reset that will result from it.
Unfortunately, we do have historical analogues we can draw from, and this is without the presence of international platforms which will likely break apart eventually due to the mixing of views that are fundamentally incompatible with each other. There is clear evidence that things like video games, internet social platforms, and advanced digital creativity have served as a way to disconnect people from reality and cloud their minds, especially amid the fact that a lot of people rarely do things outside or disconnect anymore. It would suck for me since I am far better with Blender compared to painting on a canvas, but if we get to where we have to be forced back to the 19th century or even to ancient times to rediscover the basics required for society to function, so be it.
The great irony is that the internet with its ability to provide access to all of the world’s knowledge has largely done the opposite in what it was advertised to be when it debuted 30 years ago. The internet can give knowledge in spades, yet its ability to also provide wisdom is rather poor in comparison. The fact that communities all across the internet are breaking apart now is evidence of that.
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There’s some possibility of that kind of catastrophe, sure, but I would take a more optimistic view and say that this is an isolated problem on the global stage. From what I’ve gathered, the reason many people are unwilling to go (that we’re all (rightfully) tip-toeing around) is localized and temporary- the YouTube comments on the video in the first post provide some helpful context that I won’t restate here but are definitely worth a read 
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I just read them, the vast majority are shockingly civil compared to the average discussion on Youtube and other platforms these days.
That is also the unfortunate bit, we should not have to be surprised at the existence of civil discussion and graceful disagreement because ideally it would simply be seen as normal and commonplace. I would like to express optimism, yes, but yet at times it can be difficult though we may not approach that conclusion in the same way.
I’d love to attend a Bcon one day. More likely Amsterdam or Shenzhen since both are way closer (thus cheaper), but US is not out of the question… just not right now, only when things have settled down for good. Another hurdle is I would likely travel alone (for safety), which makes the trip somewhat less enticing.
Just as well I still have my HB’s and coloured pencil set, even though I was never all that great at hand drawing. I could somewhat do it, but it took me ages and a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. Nothing that one can discuss, but just where I am (Aus), I’m slowly starting to get the feeling that things are growing and spreading somewhat more.
Not saying it will full on happen, but based on current signs, there’s no way I could place a bet on it never happening here. Basically, over the past year or so, I’ve learned that some history lessons haven’t been learned and things are maybe somewhat more fragile then I would have thought them to be.
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Look at those guys baiting us into talking politics. I won’t bite. “Scalded cat is wary of cold water” !
(scalded, not boiled, lol)
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I imagine either state of cat would be wary 
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But what if it’s Schrödinger’s cat, then you’ll have no way of knowing what state it’s in, apart from it being in all states at once.
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Yeah the stickiness of this is really freakin’ annoying. It’s like the very VERY obvious reasons for why the conference is struggling is right there in the marquee, spraypainted in giant letters. Transcending politics, this is very real impact on market viability of the USA on a global scale, peoples’ livelihoods from the Autotroph team to anyone in the USA involved in the international market of Blender stuff. It’s real money, as real as blowing $3k on a Maya license, which we feel very comfortable discussing in good or bad terms. But we all gotta dance around it for fear of the repercussions, ranging from small (Blenderartists removes a post for politics, even as it intersects with a very Blendery real world Blender thing) to huge (A milquetoast statement like “frankly, we’re against the government kidnapping any BCON speakers” results in crazy escalation either by extralegal government attacks or some crazy lone wolf gun nut)
So, yeah, guess we’ll all just wallow in the stupid 
FWIW, if anybody tries to step to my international buddies in Austin, I shall human shield
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I get your frustration, and for this particular thread only, I’m willing to look the other way a bit (I mean, really, I already have been) because you’re right, it’s not possible to talk about why BCon Austin isn’t going to happen (they’ve sold 1 ticket in the last two days, they now must sell 99 in the next four) without acknowledging the fact that people don’t feel safe travelling to Texas. All I ask is that we stay on the factual side of that line (“people don’t feel safe going to Texas” is a fact evidenced by the YouTube comments) and avoid the opinion side
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Hard to say how much of it is ‘just’ Texas, vs the whole USA. I mean I think Texas is fairly ‘red’, while if the BCon was say maybe in LA, then sales maybe could be a little better, maybe…
Then I suspect there’s other factors, I mean $400USD for two days, along with likely travel/accommodation/food, etc, when so many (around the world) are just trying to cope with the cost of food, etc on an every day basis and it all adds up to a step too far.
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For the record, I live in America and have zero mental stress issues about traveling to Texas.
I had considered going to BCON, but after looking closely at ticket pricing (which costs more than the 3-day medical conference my company hosts at a Disney Orlando Resort each year) + airfare + hotel for 3 nights + dining… ultimately I have other things I’d rather spent $2K (or more) on.
So. Current political climate had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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Just wondering and don’t take this the wrong way, but are you a white, red blooded, english speaking male?
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