[AsiaBSDCon Announce] Updates on AsiaBSDCon 2025

[Hiroki Sato]

Dear AsiaBSDCon supporters,

We know that many people have been wondering about the status of this
year's AsiaBSDCon and we apologize for the lateness of our
communication and the message it must convey.

Due to a confluence of circumstances: financial, logistical, and
personal we are unable to hold the conference as planned this year.
We deeply apologize for this and are sad that we will not be able to
meet in Tokyo this year, as we had planned.

AsiaBSDCon has weathered financial downturns, an earthquake and other
very real challenges since it was started 20 years ago.  For the
conference to have a vibrant future some things must change and we are
undertaking these changes presently, and are also going to be asking
for help from the community.

Changes with immediate effect:

 - Cancelation of AsiaBSDCon 2025

 - Creation of a Transition Organizing Committee including: Li-Wen
   Hsu, Philip Paeps, George Nevill-Neil, and myself.

 - Li-Wen Hsu to lead AsiaBSDCon 2026 which was already planned for
   Taiwan.  This will allow for a smooth transition into next year's
   conference.

 - Call for recruitment to the 2026 AsiaBSDCon PC (George has agreed
   to head the PC and recruit people but volunteering now will greatly
   aid our work for the 2026 conference).

 - Call for financial support of the conference.  The biggest
   challenge to AsiaBSDCon has been inconsistent funding, sometimes
   due to internal issues within the Project and at times due to the
   vagaries of global finance including fluctuations in the rate of
   exchange between the currencies used.  As many of you know
   AsiaBSDCon pays for travel and lodging for speakers and this is a
   significant part of our costs, and we do not see that changing.
   Travel to Asia for many of our speakers is costly and cannot be
   evenly borne by all speakers.  The conference needs to have a
   cushion of at least $100,000 USD in the bank in order to make sure
   that people and vendors are paid on time.

The Transition Organizing Committee started discussions on how to
solve this situation.  Please contact <committee at asiabsdcon.org>
directly if you can help by joining the AsiaBSDCon PC, recruitment of
speakers, or financing, which are always the two top priorities when
running a successful conference.

The web site will be updated this weekend with these details and the
transition committee.

We know that this may all come as a bit of shock to the community but
we believe that this shock and reset of the conference will make it
stronger and give it the ability to provide excellent papers, talks
and hallway discussions for another twenty years.

Sincerely,
Hiroki, Li-Wen, Philip and George
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