North America Blender Conference Interest Survey

General Forums Events
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North American Blenderheads,

This survey is to gauge interest in a potential North America Blender conference to be held in Los Angeles on April 26-27 2024.

Several of us in the Blender Community (CG Cookie, LA.Blend, Theory Studios, etc.) with support from the Blender Foundation are discussing a two day in-person event in Los Angeles (venue TBD). This small but exclusive event would cost around $250 per person, would be catered and will include talks from Blender artists, developers, and studios on cutting edge Blender-based projects and techniques.

Please take a moment (~120 seconds) to answer our brief 4 question survey:

https://sprw.io/stt-jTFapYmah1WCKwKXbGp25X

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I like the idea overall, but I do have some concerns.

What does “support from the Blender foundation” mean? That could mean anything from “this is an official event” to “I brought this up to one of the developers at a bar and they thought it was a good idea”.

Who is in charge of this? Who is making sure the profits are being used responsibly? If the venue is TBD, how do you already have a set ticket price? Is this a non-profit or profit event, and if profit, who is profiting from it?

Who chooses the presentations and on what grounds? How many presentations are you planning on having? Are there any events beside presentations (like the animation festival at the proper Blender conference?) What will an attendee be getting for their $250?

What does “small but exclusive” actually mean? How many tickets are you planning on selling and how did you come to that decision?

Why does your survey ask for volunteer work if this is a paid event? Assuming this is confirmation this is a non-profit event, this redoubles the importance of my financial questions above.

How did you determine the dates? If the venue is TBD, how can you be sure the venue you choose will be available on those dates? Are the dates then variable and open to change?

Lastly, why does “the Blender community” not include this site? Theory Studios has 45 members, this site has 160,000. Why is some small studio part of the “Blender community” but the largest collection of Blender users online isn’t? (And why is a for-profit studio one of the three groups behind a Blender conference, a free and open source software that is not for profit?) Shouldn’t leadership from this site be involved in planning this?

On that note, do you have any non-commercial entities involved in this? All that you’ve listed are, which leads me to assume this is actually a promotional event for these companies. Have you included any segments of the “Blender community” that aren’t looking to make a profit from this?

The final, ultimate, wrap-up question is this: How does a commercial promotional event like this- given the information we have, you’re welcome to refute this- fall in line with the spirit of the open source movement and Blender itself?

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Please don’t interpret this as an attack- I think it’s extremely important to be as transparent as possible about upcoming events (I’m the perfect age to vividly remember Dashcon and FyreFest), and your clear experience with event planning from your post history means you know what you’re doing, I can only assume you already have the answers to all these questions written out in your planning documentation, and I’m just asking you share some of that :slight_smile:

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I wish more BA members, and people in general, would apply skepticism like this. I see likely scams on BA and elsewhere fairly often. While largely ignored there is a disappointing procession of trusting unquestioning victims too.

I have no knowledge of the OP and I’m not accusing him of anything.

Of course there are legitimate events, sales, requests, that look like scams but aren’t. Even if one is not a scam the lack of appropriate information, such as you noted, would make something a “no go” for me due to lack of professionalism, reliability, maturity, transparency or things like that.

Profit is good. Commerce is good. Honesty is good. Respect is good. Nothing wrong with making profit from an event such as this. Plenty wrong with deceiving, stealing, scams …

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It’s a hobby of mine to critically analyze announcements and surveys like this, it’s an important skill that I think people should apply more often :slight_smile: It helps that I got my degree in Strategic and Organizational Communication and my wife got hers in Public Relations (yes, we are lots of fun at parties :wink: ), but learning to ask analytical questions doesn’t require a degree, it’s a very easy skill. I agree, I think everyone should make an effort to approach things from a critical-thinking perspective.

And I’m also not accusing OP of anything, this seems like a good-natured event that could be really cool. But without a lot more information, I have no interest in it

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A bit late to the part here, but I feel I should probably pipe in here with a bit of a response.

For anyone who doesn’t know, @FutureHack is part of the organizational team behind World Blender Meetup Day (as is Theory Studios). Also, I’ve been involved with some of the planning for this potential event, though it’s been in my capacity as being part of Orange Turbine (which, in turn, is part of CG Cookie) and not officially as a representative of BlenderArtists.org. That said, the community here is something that’s always on my mind when we’re having these discussions and trying to figure out if this is an event that can and should happen.

I do want to specifically address some of the notes and questions that @joseph brought up about how this event tastes a bit more commercial than maybe it should. They’re valid concerns, so they should be address with the right level of seriousness.

The start of this is that events cost money… especially live events. This isn’t the first time that a North American Blender Conference has been discussed. I’ve actually had the privilege of being part of early conversations as well. There was talk about putting together a North American non-profit organization to umbrella the event, but there’s a non-trivial amount of time in setting those up and we’d still need to gauge interest in the thing. Part of that comes from a survey like this one. Part of that is actually hosting an event to see if people actually show up. If they do, then a lot of the setup and paperwork starts to make sense. Until then, commercial entities are the ones that are best equipped to put up the initial funds to make this kind of thing happen.

In fact, it’s worth remembering that the organizations around Blender aren’t entirely non-commercial, either. Yes, the Foundation exists and is a steward for the IP and those things… but unless I’m mistake, the conference other things of that nature are largely supported by the Blender Institute/Studio, which is a commercial entity.

It’s also worth mentioning that even large events with much higher price tags (like SIGGRAPH) have volunteer help, often with the benefit of free admission. Of course volunteers need to be managed, so including that question is a way to determine if there would even be enough people interested in volunteering to dedicate time to managing that part of the event.

The biggest thing, though (and I know I’ve written quite a lot here, so thanks if you’ve made it this far) is that even though there are commercial entities working to put this event together, it isn’t meant to (and shouldn’t) be a vehicle for promoting those companies any more than the Blender Conference would be. This event is about promoting Blender and continuing to drive interest in this application that we all love. That’s the main benefit of an event like this. Every artist, studio, and tool maker that’s involved with Blender will benefit by increasing the awareness and number of people using Blender.

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Thanks for your input here, I feel a lot better about this event with this kind of information :slight_smile:

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I will say, having been to a number of small conferences: $250 for 2 days, catered is not that expensive.

Venues aren’t cheap, and neither is food. A 3 day conference I attend annually costs $350, and the organizers just barely break even, without needing to travel

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No problem at all with asking questions! Jason nicely covered the spirit of the event but here is some additional context since you asked:

As we are at the very earliest stages of event planning and simply gauging event market interest, we don’t have a detailed event plan to share. Please note the following information may be subject to change.

“What does “support from the Blender foundation” mean?” We are speaking directly with Ton who has initially offered forms of support, the details of which hopefully we can share later.

“Who is in charge of this?” Our current small volunteer team includes a cross-section of people from the organizations mentioned above who love Blender and the vibrant North American Blender community. The team includes project management experience, event hosting experience, good connections to the Blender community and to LA, etc.

“What does “small but exclusive” actually mean?” The team agreed that we would rather produce a small event with high caliber speakers and sessions with the option to modestly grow in subsequent years.

“How did you determine the dates?” The group agreed on the proposed dates after considering other events in LA, weather, being opposite on the calendar to BConf Amsterdam, etc. Initial venue search is active now and thus dates may be subject to change.

Regarding session selection, number of sessions, volunteers, sub-events, virtual events, pricing, etc. Much of that detail has yet to be planned but we are using guidelines from similar events (e.g. EU BConf) but with the unique value that an NA event could bring. With the substantial media and entertainment industry in NA, we have the opportunity to include excellent speakers in VFX, animation, game studios, etc.

Speaking for myself, I can say that I would not be involved if the event was not intended to celebrate the spirit of Blender and the open-source movement generally. The team is reviewing survey results thus far but the early view is that respondents are excited for it. If you are reading this and would like to sway the decision, repost the survey request to your favorite social media so we have the clearest picture of interest.

To reiterate, the proposed event is at early stages of planning and thus most details have yet to be decided and are subject to change.

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