Wow, this looks significantly worse than how I thought it would look like at the moment for folks from applying for visas. Some of my friends had repeated refusals with petty reasoning provided behind them but the process has been slowly improving in its speed - alas, that was news from about a quarter ago so I am not quite sure how reliable that information would be in this scenario.
I would have to check for more details on the visas but from the top of my head, things have not been as bad as the wait times have been for the appointment to obtain a visa for the so I see some semblance of a possibility there for those of us flying from . Some recent[1] reports state an average wait time of 14-28 days with stamping taking another 14-21 days to proceed.
How long back was it, @mattdm, that you learned that it was difficult for Indian citizens to obtain visas? Unfortunately, most of my information sources are tertiary with a few of them being secondary but with details from around a quarter or two back so if you have a more recent set of information from someone’s experience - I suppose we’ll have to rely on that and move forward.
As recent as a couple of quarters back from the time of writing this response ↩︎
There were 100 people unable to get Visas for OpenInfra Summit in Vancouver this past June but I think a tight timeframe for applying played a big part. If we give enough notice to people it will help.
If the intent is for sure to come to Canada for Flock 2024, then I would happily help get together with government individuals to see what steps a Canadian community member can do to help make the process easier. We have had recent immigration changes WRT International Students since that was a sore point for some of them getting here to study. I know some of the temporary visa rules were revamped recently as well. @spotz is correct though that we should start soon if we want to avoid road bumps for community members. Not trying to pressure though, just saying if it’s Canada it wouldn’t hurt to check with GoC.
Well … technically it is north of either of them, but sort of “in between”. What is attractive for the Ottawa area to me is the potential for group activities like white water rafting for instance.
Hat in for Pittsburgh, PA, US. An international airport, middling weather just about year round. Lots of universities and colleges, including Pitt and CMU. Plenty of public transportation, Amtrak and major bus coaches. Plenty of venue options with lots of access to good dining, entertainment, walks, bikes. Heck, come into Washington DC, and bike in to Pittsburgh. It’s only ~300 miles on rails-to-trails. Catch a “local” game of “sport” including american football and football to the rest of the world. Learn to blow glass, take in several well kept gardens, ride an incline, kayak the three rivers. The list goes on.
It is not a major airline hub, but does have a lot of connecting flights to locations with international flights on most US and some international companies.
Yeah… bear in mind that that means passing through customs and rechecking any luggage at the port of entry. Non US travelers would need to allocate at least 4 hours transit to be safe, taking into account potential secondary checks and delays.
Great inputs and very valuable advises. I would be +1 for Boston (all the reasons Mo has listed) and +1 for Rochester, NY (all the reasons Marie has mentioned).
For visas - they will always be complicated. Sooner we decide, and start applying better it can be.
I would +1 Mexico, Fedora has a vibrant community there and it would be great to have Flock there. After I am not sure how that plays in terms of visa etc …
As a representative from the Rochester Institute of Technology, I’d also like to recommend Rochester. RIT has Open@RIT (where I currently work) which does lots of open source work and has a long history with Fedora. We also have a vibrant student community, many of whom are active fedora users. They have even historically maintained a Fedora spin specifically for RIT students called TigerOS.
Open@RIT’s director, Stephen Jacobs is on the board of the Strong Museum of Play and while I cannot promise anything, with these connections I bet it might be possible to do some sort of event there. Rochester is also likely cheaper than many other large metropolitan cities but still has a fairly well-connected regional and international airport.
@jflory7 ,
I think you are now approaching the point to do a poll with a large list of potential sites now being offered. Possibly a staged one that is used to help pare down the list to a smaller selection for the community involved. WDYT?
As part of Fedora Mexico will be a pleasure to host the next Flock, My proposal is Guadalajara (@jflory7 already knows the place from GUADEC last year) and CDMX, both places are well-connected and with locals happy to help, and as far I know, most of the countries are visa-free to visit.
Unfortunately, I think this is far from being political bullshit. I can see why it would look like from the ground, but in the end, that’s not exactly where it would matter.
For a start, due to local laws (HB 1557), if the event is hosted in a university (like Flock 2014 in Prague, or various proposal in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), this would prevent a D&I meeting , or at least, would be limiting some topics. I want to point that we have a newly formed Pride group, and it wouldn’t be able to meet (if that’s in a university or school, due to local regulation)
And I am sure RH Legal wouldn’t be thrilled dealing with the risk of being in the cross-hair of a Republican controversy during a election year.
Then there is plenty of research on the impact of anti-LGBT rethoric (which is hard to deny in Florida) and increase of violence for LGBT folks.
Another example, 10 years ago in France, the protest against same sex marriage resulted in a documented increase of homophobic violence (source in French among others ).
And since we are speaking of Orlando, FL, I want to point that the last time I heard about the city, it was for this news yesterday. Yes, I know that’s a minority, and I have been to Orlando, folks were nice.
But I do not think we want to take the risk of the same groups deciding to up their game and disrupt a small event like Flock. If their goal was to be a mix between a cosplay group and a hiking club and nothing more, I think they would wear more practical outfits.
I agree than during the event itself, that’s unlikely anything happen. If Fedora pay for it, money will talk. But attendees tend to go out after the event (or at least, we did when i was going to Flock), and that’s usually where things can go wrong.
And finally, it would also be bad for the image of Fedora. I kept track of that kind of discussions in various communities (Wikipedia, OSM, etc) for a talk I gave this year at Devconf.cz. And my conclusion is that the push for accountability increase year after year.
For example, in 2008, few people protested when Wikimania (the Flock of Wikimedia movement) was in Egypt, while it was still under a dictatorship (and LGBT rights weren’t better than now).
This year, the event was in Singapore, and the location was announced around beginning of august 2022. At that time, homosexuality was still illegal in the city state. So people from the community started to plan making a real life protest during the event. I was in the chat room where it was discussed, but as the law changed a few weeks after the announce, nothing happened. Had it not changed, I am sure the event team wouldn’t have been thrilled to deal with that.
In fact, i say nothing happened, but there was a online controversy due to toilets changes for diversity. That’s a change I have seen in several events in the past such as Write The Docs, OSS Summit, Chaos Computer Congress, and one that is popular because that’s a inexpensive way to be inclusive.
There was plenty of people protesting Linux Foundation choice to have a even in Texas last year on Twitter/X. Again, the organizers had to quickly react before it became a problem and people started to contact sponsors (which would result in budget issues). Again, I am sure they would have preferred not having to deal with the controversy, but they had no choice due to contracts being signed before.
So there is plenty of risks increase on various axes.
But even without that, that would also go contrary to the value we push, and undo lots of hard work made by people since years.
Some US states are becoming toxic and create reputational risks, and that’s a unfortunate fact.
Yes, that’s deeply unfair for people living there who are most likely fine and welcoming in their majority.
But that’s also unfair for people who would feel unsafe during a whole event (or more likely, just not come due to a problem that could have been avoided ). That would be unfair to subject the event team to extra stress and more work. That would be unfair to have one group be potentially unable to do a meetup. That would be unfair to undo the work done to be inclusive.
In the end, we can’t just handwave around “diversity” and “being safe” and not add it to the processes somewhere, and have this discussion every year (because yes, I can predict we will have it year after year and louder and louder, because that’s what happened everywhere.
We say we want to be welcoming so it is time to show it. Because even with inflation, talk is still cheap.
applying for 
visas. Some of my friends had repeated refusals with petty reasoning provided behind them but the process has been slowly improving in its speed - alas, that was news from about a quarter ago so I am not quite sure how reliable that information would be in this scenario.
visas but from the top of my head, things have not been as bad as the wait times have been for the appointment to obtain a visa for the 
Ottawa, Ontario