Biography | Zoë Kooyman — The Hall on Berkeley Street That Never Opened for Her Conference

People treat March 2020 as the month conferences simply vanished.

This one had a building, a suite name, and a livestream circuit already paid for.

On 27 January 2020 the Free Software Foundation announced that LibrePlanet 2020 would leave MIT and open in the Dorothy Quincy suite of the Back Bay Events Center, 180 Berkeley Street, at the corner of Berkeley and Stuart.

The theme was Free the Future.

Registration listed 14 and 15 March, 09:00 to 18:15.

The venue promised its own entrance and a dedicated line for the stream, a few blocks from the Foundation's Franklin Street office.

Zoë Kooyman was the lead organizer for the second year running.

A week before the doors, the program was set and the new logo was on the site.

Then the pandemic closed the room.

The Foundation cancelled every sanctioned in-person event tied to the conference and moved the two days onto a live stream.

The FSF later wrote that the switch was planned and built in five days.

Kooyman delivered the closing remarks for the online edition.

A recording of that close sits on the Internet Archive under her name, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

The building on Berkeley Street still stands.

John Hancock Hall and the Dorothy Quincy suite continue to take other bookings.

What did not happen here is the point of the pin.

The chairs were reserved for a free-software meeting that never sat down.

The conference that did run, from 14 March 2020, ran from laptops instead.

Photo: Ruben Rodriguez, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.