I attended BSDCan 2004 last month and I’ve been remiss in not speaking about it. In my view it is an example of a conference “done right”. Here’s why:
- Inexpensive (registration fees were $150)
- Excellent speakers
- Good crowd, from developers to administrators to plain old users and students
There’s really not much more than that to ask for at a conference. Lots of FreeBSD developers attended; among them, Wes Peters, Robert Watson, Poul-Henning Kamp, Jacques Vidrine, and so on. It just proves that you don’t need to charge an arm and a leg to demonstrate how “professional” your conferences are, or to attract quality speakers.
The full text of all the papers presented is here.