BeCpp2026 - The Symposium
The symposium had a max capacity of 300 people… and they sold out! This was a pretty fantastic turnout considering this is the first year of the symposium. I say first, because it did sound like the organizers were entertaining the idea of doing another one next year… Nothing confirmed obviously :)
From what I heard, I think the symposium was so successful in drawing people in for 3 main reasons:
- The speakers - BeCpp was able to get an amazing set of speakers together… plus me. This could have been partially due to the fact that the Croydon C++ Meeting (You can read about it on Herb’s trip report) was on just before BeCpp, so all the big names of C++ were nearby. And, as mentioned in the previous section, traveling to Kortrijk from the UK is pretty easy!
- The pricing - Tickets were €30 + VAT. So pretty damn cheap, especially when you consider the speaker line up.
- The duration - It was a single day symposium. A very long day of 9am - 7:30pm to be fair, but 1 day nonetheless. A week can be hard to justify to some people and companies. But most people would agree that 1 day is nothing to worry about. A fair number of people I got chatting to had just taken the day off to go.
When tickets are only €30-ish, and it will only take a day of your time, and there is a great line-up of speakers, then it is a really easy to justify trip regardless of whether you can convince your employer to send you or not!
One of the great parts about speaking at the symposium were the gifts provided by the organizers:
Each speaker was gifted this bottle of beer, and box of chocolates. Two things that Belgium, do VERY well. Speaking at the symposium was fun enough, but getting these lovely gifts was the cherry on top!