Thank you for voicing concern about the City's efforts at keeping OSCON at our Convention Center. As is standard with large conferences and convetions, OSCON relocated this year to offer a new experience to the conference's attendees. In discussions with Travel Portland, which aggressively attempted to keep the conference in Portland, O'Reilly Media (the organizating firm) suggested that conferences have to "change things up every once in a while."

International conferences typically rotate their locales to cater to the diverse needs of their attendees. For eight years, OSCON brought individuals from all over the world to Portland - an open-source mecca. With a large contingent of software firms in the Bay Area, O'Reilly made the decision to accomodate that community. Still, OSCON attendees are continually impressed by and engaged with the open-source community in Portland and O'Reilly certainly plans to have OSCON return to our city in the future.

If you have further questions, please contact me at 503.823.4128 or email: clay.neal@ci.portland.or.us

Clay Neal
Small Business Project Manager