History

The first YAPC was held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on June 24 and June 25, 1999. Organizer Kevin Lenzo assembled 31 different speakers into the schedule on various Perl-related topics. The idea of a low-cost Perl conference quickly spread with a European version of YAPC starting in 2000, Israel in 2003, Australia in 2004, and Asia and Brazil in 2005. The only continents never to have hosted a YAPC are Africa and Antarctica.

Attendee Statistics

YAPC has a normal attendance of around 300 people who, on average, vary in age from 18 to 49, though we certainly have a few younger and a few older than that. And around 90% are generally from the United States, while the rest are from countries all over the world.

Over 70% who attend identify themselves as System Administrator, Developer, Architect, or Technical Manager. We also usually have a handful of business owners and C-level positions in attendance, as well as a smattering of other titles.

Around 45% identify themselves as using Perl in an IT or Internet industry. Generally around 8% identify themselves as belonging to one of: finance, government, education, or media related industries.

About 35% of attendees have never attended YAPC before. However, over 95% of attendees say that they'll come again. Those numbers bear out, because around 60% of people who attend a YAPC have generally attended more than one.

For more hard data on YAPC attendees, checkout YAPC Surveys.

Previous YAPC:NA's