Some concerns about the future of YAPC::NA were recently brought to my attention on IRC. The ensuing discussion revealed some people had valid concerns about the future of Perl conferences and particularly concerning to me, YAPC::NA.
Most of these concerns stem from a lack of supervision of the various organizing groups, and a lack of overall policy direction from the TPF level. Policy decisions (such as, for example, Codes Of Conduct) are left to the individual organizers or organizing groups, who are already overwhelmed with organizing their conference, let alone dealing with all aspects of gender politics in the modern American IT industry. Additionally, I've personally witnessed the inefficient transfer of institutional knowledge when organizing YAPC::NA 2011. I think that with an improved retention of knowledge from one year to another, YAPC::NA conferences could be organized much more effectively.