The USENIX organization has announced its decision to discontinue the Annual Technical Conference (ATC), stating that the 2025 conference will be the last.

Despite the organization’s efforts to adapt the ATC and other conferences to “the ever-changing tech landscape and community,” attendance has declined to the point that USENIX says, “there is no longer a critical mass of researchers and practitioners joining us.”

USENIX, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, has witnessed countless technical developments through the years, many of which were first presented in talks at USENIX ATC. Examples cited by USENIX include:

• In 1982, DEC unveiled the creation of its Unix product.
• In 1983, Eric Allman presented the first paper on Sendmail.
• In 1985, Sun Microsystems presented the first paper on NFS.
• In 1990, John Ousterhout presented Tcl.
• In 1995, the first talk on Oak (later Java) was given as a Work-in-Progress report.
• In 1998, Miguel de Icaza presented “The GNOME Desktop Environment."

The final Annual Technical Conference will take place July 7–9 in Boston and will include a celebration of USENIX’s 50th anniversary. Learn more and register to attend at the conference website.