Hi everyone,
The Blender conference is coming up. I would love to go and meet some of you guys for real.
Nevertheless, I see that the pass itself is not super cheap (feels right for a conference, but this remains an investment for an individual).
Are there people having gone there already who can share their experience?
I have moderate interest in the development topics, so is it worth it as an artist?
Thanks in advance for your answers and feel free indicating if you’ll be there so we can grab a drink if we make it 
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YES! It’s an amazing event to meet and connect with the rest of the community. I have always loved going even if I didn’t attend all the talks - just hanging out with everyone is great.
And remember you can win the trip + tickets 
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No! Don’t come, it’s horrible! Also Amsterdam is a boring boring ugly no good city! Look at how sad everyone and everything looks:
I never know how far I have to push to make it obvious enough that I’m joking.
Anyway, did you end up coming?
Sorry I’m replying literally right after it’s over, I clearly didn’t plan my attendance ahead properly this time 
. Will do better next time but let this be my personal shared experience/advice for any future BCON beginner, as someone who’s still only at his 3rd one:
In all seriousness it’s a bit pricy (for understandable reasons though) and so are hotels in Amsterdam, especially if you’re an indy artist trying to find your place in the professional network, or who knows, maybe in… 
the industry… ( ‾́︶ ‾́ ) mwahahahahah… (that was lame and wildly unnecessary, sorry about that)
However, there are ways to reduce the cost of your attendance. In 2018 I planned 6 months ahead and did the following:
- travel by coach (Flixbus was the cheapest transportation mode for me).
- volunteer at the conference. In my case I took photos of presentations and posted them on blender’s social media as they were happening. The organizers always welcome volunteers who either offer to do whatever is needed or have good ideas for newer things and they’ll certainly cut the price of your ticket if you end up volunteering. Obviously if it’s your first time you may not have so many ideas on what you could do, but connect with the foundation anyways, it can’t hurt. Do it long in advance though.
- find people on Couch Surfing instead of booking a hotel. That’s also a long process, as Amsterdam is saturated with Couch Surfers, so you have to send many (good) requests. There’s also bewelcome.org which I didn’t know at the time. May be worth trying.
Ngl 2018 was my favorite attendance. I met a very nice Amsterdammer who let me crash at his place and with whom I had awesome exchanges. He even nicely proposed to spend an afternoon with me going places in the city by bike which I gladly accepted (btw Amsterdam is very much a bike city and very very much the opposite of boring). And then I spent a conference as a volunteer and made connections with some of the best Blender heads, getting (and hopefully giving) advice I wouldn’t have thought of googling and ended up following.
Another good thing to think about and plan ahead is who you want to meet and what you want to ask/talk about. Maybe write some notes prior to coming.
So is it worth it for you?
If you love Blender and if you plan ahead, I can hardly imagine you coming back from it with a 
face. More like a 
one.
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Hey, great to hear and see news!
I couldn’t be there unfortunately, but that looks every bit as cool as expected.
Can you really call yourself a Blender guy when you recognize more people from these events than you do in a people magazine?
Thanks for the tips, and glad you had a good time.
Well, to be called a Blender guy you just have to use Blender. To be called a Blender head though, you have to be a pro. And if you’re the best you’re called the Blenderman. But that’s just a title for Ton Roosendaal.
I’m joking there’s no hierarchy, we just call ourselves whatever we like, because we’re free! … and everyone knows the true top label is “core developer”.
Ton is still technically the project lead, and the BF also has a project manager. A project the size of Blender pretty much requires a structure in terms of management if the momentum is to keep going.
What the idealists here do not realize is that a more organic and/or anarchic structure in terms of planning and development only works for somewhat small passion projects with a limited scope. That does not mean we need middle management and other corporate trimmings, but to not have management at all can, for starters, lead to feature creep and overly ambitious projects.
I just meant there’s no hierarchy in what nicknames we call ourselves. I was being silly because years ago I thought “blender head” was meant for the “elite”, which honestly I’m still not 100% sure about. But yeah of course there’s a real hierarchy at the foundation and the studio. Funny you’d mention that though because in this BCON22 podcast Pablo talks with Andrew Price about the future of Blender after Ton retires (because that’s how he’s going to go, very smoothly and heathlily, not anything worse okay?) and how after they had to talk about it at the studio in the dark and uncertain times when he was in the hospital, they concluded that no single person can fit in his shoes and the hierarchy may not be so clear cut as it is now and, well I’ll just let you listen to it, there’s a time code in the link.
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The last thing the Blender Foundation needs is leadership and direction from Andrew Price. Between his NFTs, snobbery, cash grubbing, and complete lack of direction lately, he is the worst possible person to have input on a free and open source software. Not that me complaining about it here will do anything about it, but seriously, he’s a sell-out. Sell-outs leading open-source software… I’ve seen that before, it does not go well
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Nobody mentioned Andrew being part of the Foundation or having any say in their decisions. He’s just hosting this podcast and asking the questions. You have nothing to worry about in that regard.
I suggest we try to get back to the OP’s topic of whether or not going to the conference is worth it or not. If you have experience to share about it, the stage is yours.
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Andrew is just incredable famous and it’s better to have a somekind of outsider for the moderator than just the blender foundations “employees”… because they know what they are talking about and so someone else could / would ask about some mentioned topics… like other perspective / viewpoint ( and i don’t meant this in the technical way 
).
Yes, I doubt Ton is going to pick a successor that is not as much a believer in FOSS culture as he is, or pick someone who does not already have a good reputation as a long time Blender user or developer.
The proof can already be seen in who he has picked for project manager previously (people who have been with the community at least since the Blender 2.3x days).
Did they confirm the 2023 edition yet? Can’t miss the next one…
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The Blender Conference is supposed to take place each and every year by the end of october (unless something bad happens like a virus or WW3).
BCON22 was announced on june 30th: https://twitter.com/BlenderConf/status/1542507189360701442
BCON23 might be announced around the same time next year.
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