You're already on the Pacific coast. Not everyone on the planet is.

Under optimal circumstances, not including airport time which can be considerable, flight time between New York and Shanghai is 15 hours.

Add in a few hours to check-in, clear customs, plus other nonsense and you're up to 18. Under ideal circumstances.

I'm not sure what Shanghai has to do with a discussion about travel time to Beijing. New York to Beijing is about 13-13.5 hours.

You claimed 20 hours. I'm asked 'from where' and you weren't able to answer.

I'm not suggesting Beijing is the ideal conference location, even though I live there, but there's no need to spread FUD about how it can take such a long time for a developer to reach there.

Oh, and it takes me the same time to get to SF as it takes an SF-based developer to get to Beijing. Hotels are cheaper in Beijing. Salaries are higher in SF.

A lot more people on the planet live near Beijing than near Iceland.

If you're talking about India and China, sure.

If you're talking about America and Europe? Nope.

Yes, India and China are indisputable giants but also consider Japan (still the #2 or #3 economy in the world depending on the metric), Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore—all advanced economies with extremely educated and technical populaces.

Then there's Vietnam, which is very poor but growing over 10% / year and highly educated despite the poverty. There are also hundreds of millions of people in Indonesia and Malaysia.

I was speaking not of the US or Europe but the world in general. We don't live in the Eurocentric world of 150 years ago. The center of gravity now spans the Pacific.

It will. It does not right now if you're talking about conferences. Participants are still largely from the Americas and Europe.

Also this entire argument is utterly absurd. If you're upset about brutal domestic policies the last place you should be arguing in favor of is China.

China has very sane, good government, come actually experience it and stop believing CIA lies. The firewall is a rational way to keep the US deep state out.

While I'll grant you Chinese government officials are probably more educated and experienced than your average American ones, there is no justifying the pervasive political censorship in China.

The CIA is not responsible for suppressing the Tiananmen Square incident. Stop spreading bullshit.