Major tech conferences moving north as policies by Trump leave bad taste
On Tuesday, the Collision Conference, one of North America’s most influential technology gatherings, posted the following message on its official Twitter account: “We’ve got some news. It’s about Toronto. But we’ll let Justin Trudeau tell you about it.”
What followed was a video in which the prime minister announced that Collision, which typically boasts 25,000 attendees, will be coming to Canada in 2019.
“I’m happy you chose Toronto to host North America’s fastest growing tech conference for the next three years, but I have to say, I’m not completely surprised,” Trudeau said. “Toronto is a key global tech hub and an example of the diversity that is our strength.”
Collision is not alone in coming north. At least two other major technology conferences have made the decision to relocate to Canada, lured in part by Toronto’s burgeoning tech sector, but also driven by travel restrictions imposed by U.S President Donald Trump, policies that have left organizers scrambling to accommodate those who can’t visit the United States.
In mid-April, Creative Commons, an international non-profit dedicated to the legal sharing of digital content, held their global summit in Toronto for the second year in a row. “The political climate in the U.S., specifically the open hostility from the current administration towards many international communities, and the anxiety from those we work with about how they might be treated was definitely a deciding factor,” said Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons. “What’s most unfortunate is that this approach is so inconsistent with the views of the many collaborative communities we work with every day in the U.S.”
At Access Now, a non-profit that organizes the RightsCon digital rights conference, Trump’s travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries hit close to home.
“One of our interns at the time was an Iranian citizen with a U.S. green card, and she wasn’t able to leave the country to go to Brussels to help us organize the (2017) event,” RightsCon director Nick Dagostino said.
For years, RightsCon has alternated
between San Francisco and a series of global venues, and after last year’s event in Brussels, heading back to California would have been the natural choice. But then, people started telling Access Now that if the event happened in the U.S., they wouldn’t show up.
Green Card holders are no longer covered by Trump’s travel ban, but Dagostino said that Access Now is actively working with Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian rights activists and that those people would still be barred entry to the U.S. because of the policy.
He said it made sense to move RightsCon to Toronto since it has a strong tech hub.
And then there’s Collision. In April, Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave published an article on LinkedIn about the company’s Collision Conference, headlined “Justin Trudeau wants us to move Collision to Canada. Should we?”
Cosgrave said that Trump’s travel ban is one of the factors causing them to relocate from the U.S.
The event is expected to draw 25,000 people to the city.
Abdullah Snobar, executive director of Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone incubator, said the conferences coming to the city represent a chance for local start-ups, and a chance to showcase the city’s tech talent. But at the same time, Snobar said Canada should sell itself on its own merits, instead of relying on people fleeing the U.S.