ACCU On Sea 2026 trip report, still with AI!

I’m aware that I’ve have been writing less lately, partly for work reasons and partly for conference reasons. Speaking of, let’s talk about ACCU on Sea 2026. Bristol upon the Channel It’s been a tough time for conferences and trainers alike lately. Deluded by the sirens of AI, companies have lowered their training budgets, convinced that a chat bot is as good as a teacher (or at least, “good enough”). While the market for C++ conferences (and I’m sure other domains too) had already got some trouble going back to in-person events following the pandemic, this clearly didn’t help. And so some conferences have chosen to merge together, as was the case for the long running ACCU and the more recent (in relative terms) Cpp On Sea. They decided to go for the venue of Cpp on Sea in the town of Folkestone, on the Channel coast. Unlike Bristol it doesn’t have an airport you can fly to, but I’d consider this a minor loss given how bad BRS is at being an airport. Slightly more annoying is the fact…