10 ms·

End of the conference era?

159 points by jonny_eh 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago
>Or maybe we’ve already solved these problems with social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube, and we just haven’t fully realized it yet. All of those things are irrelevant, as the allure of conferences was something else, including getting to know like-minded people, networking, time off work, meeting with some of the major people working in your platform/language face to face/having a coffee/drink after the sessions, etc, etc. We had YouTube and social networks and podcasts for more than a decade now when conferences were still doing fine. It's more about the money than anything else.
andrewstuart 9y ago
>> Or maybe we’ve already solved these problems with social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube, and we just haven’t fully realized it yet. Aren't the plethora of technical meetups a constant round of conference presentations nearby and for free?
- whafro 9y ago
  Assuming the presentations are equally high quality (in terms of communicating ideas) and the presenters are equally expert (in terms of the ideas themselves). That's certainly not always true. But my sense is that the era of strong and plentiful tech meetups is a thing of the past as well. While there are obviously still many of them, big company employees seem to rely more on their employers to bring in top speakers. That doesn't help small company folks, but it removes a chunk of the audience that the meetups depend on to thrive. Even then, organizing community meetups can be a major job – getting venue/food/drink sponsors, herding presenters, etc. – and it's easy to lose steam. Like Marco said – there's no single factor, but my sense is that both have been affected over the last decade or so.
hjnilsson 9y ago
Problem with online methods of learning, is it's much harder to take a day off your day job to watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts. Conferences are like a vacation from regular work, where you can focus on learning. Also, the ability to see people in person, and discuss ideas with them directly is a very different experience from watching a YouTube channel. On a conference, you can meet new people, get job offers, meet new clients etc. directly. Conferences are far from only about educating the audience (author is entirely correct in the if all you care about is learning a new tech, it's more efficient to look up a tutorial on YouTube).
- watwut 9y ago
  Taking an hour a day to listen to podcast over seven days is much more easier then taking day off work and is much more effective for learning then seven hours of listening one day.
- dandare 9y ago
  Yes and no, while is it difficult to take time off for learning while at work, conferences as a learning tool have ridiculously low information density. Sometimes you get equal amount of information just from watching a couple videos during your lunch break.
- djhworld 9y ago
  I think this is the key really, conferences are like a dedicated period of time you can totally devote yourself into learning without being pulled into the trappings of the daily grind.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    I like conferences like Hope and Defcon because they aren't just informative..they are entertainment. Lets be honest, when you want to learn something, text will have a way bigger information density than a slide talk watered down to appeal to the poor taste of the public..
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      The first conference I ever attended was Defcon. I went for several years running and had a great time. Then I went to GDC (for work) and good lord, was it boring. I think I viewed the conference as more of a way to party with people who had similar interests than to actually learn. Defcon 101 even tells you not to go to too many talks.
- baldfat 9y ago
  > get job offers That right there might be the big negative to companies sending people to conferences. OR you find out that you work at a bad place. When I worked in Student Life Department my Universtiy never sent anyone to the National Student Life Conference. They sent two from my office and whent they came back all kind of chaos happened. They found out we were overworked and underpaid. They said when at a workshop of around 200 people that when asked what your position requiers from you the speaker brought them up to the front when everyone in their small group was freaking out at our workload. The next year I moved to the Library and my co-workers lasted one more year. They highered a new Vice-President of Student life and she rehired for every position and cleared house. Than for one year they had new titles for every position and switched back to the old system the following year. My former University never does Student Life Conferences. P.S. The University was sued for unpaid Overtime by someone in the Student Life Department and went to trial. The judge ruled against the University without going to his chambers.
juskrey 9y ago
Sufficiently large conference can kill any discipline.
jakozaur 9y ago
I would love some online version of informal conference-like conversations. Conference are a big commitments, most of ideas in talks are online anyway. I'm not coming for lecture style experience, but for interactions with other attendants. Exchange of ideas and experience, meet new people/clients/vendors... Maybe some online version of speed dating/chatrulett would just do fine? E.g. Gather critical mass of some sort (e.g. 50 engineers interested Serverless functions) have 5 minute lightning talk, follow by 1-5m talks with each other. Than with an hour you can meet 5-30 new ppl.
- Swizec 9y ago
  Semi private chatrooms is where it’s at right now. The kind where somebody assembles a group of a few hundred individuals to hang out on Slack or Telegram around a particular loosely-ish defined interest. Invite only of course. I’m in a couple and it’s honestly amazing. Small enough to feel safe and cozy, big enough to have lots of activity and a range of ideas and personalities. It’s like putting the community conference hallway track online and making it last for months and years on end, not just a day or two.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    Interesting! What kind of topics? E.g. topics that also have active forums, blogs, stack overflow, twitter traffic? Can existing members recommend new members? How long does the group last? Do people get evicted for any reason?
  - qznc 9y ago
    How would I get in there?
  - christophilus 9y ago
    How do you find them? I work remotely, and would love to join some good tech discussion groups every once in a while.
    - djhworld 9y ago
cf 9y ago
There are ideas that only get expressed in person. Either because they are still a work in progress or because they are not interesting enough to warrant a video or a blog post. Conferences are really great for learning about that sort of stuff. Additionally, most online communication is intrinsically asynchronous. It's hard to have a chat online that's anywhere as fluid as what happens in person. Even the flurry of twitter replies doesn't quite compare.
teebot 9y ago
I feel that I get much more connections and information out of small local meetups than big conferences. In a small local meetup I'll occasionally pop my laptop open and start geeking out on some new tech with another attendee. Big conferences feel too corporate and impersonal to me. The ticket price of the biggest conferences is reaching absurd levels too.
empthought 9y ago
This idea is pretty old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference
ilamont 9y ago
I worked for a company that (among other things) organized multiday tech conferences aimed at IT managers at large companies. I was surprised to learn how low the margins were. The top conferences were selling well, and had big-name sponsors at different tiers, yet one year the P&L for the group showed a profit in the low single digits. I later learned that the cost structure was high, and some of the events (particularly less established events or those with lots of competition) struggled to get signups.
- jasonjayr 9y ago
  Venues + supporting services, are obnoxiously expensive too. My company works closely with conference organizers, and I've seen a quote that was in the mid-5 figures, for 4 days of internet access (and related network services). This was for data services to meeting rooms + conference wifi for about 5k-7k attendees.
farnsworthy 9y ago
I'm not sure about some of the reasoning in this article. Perhaps the author is referring to a particular sort of conference, with which he is most familiar? Would an appropriate analogy be the era of stadium rock concerts, versus smaller, more intimate venues (and the economics of one versus the other)?
jlebrech 9y ago
"small conferences exclude people" this is a fallacy, the more small conferences there are the less people are excluded.
dankohn1 9y ago
My organization runs KubeCon + CloudNativeCon [0] and we have events in 2018 in Copenhagen (May), Shanghai (November) and Seattle (December). Our Austin event last month grew 300% from the year before to 4,200 people. I believe that conferences are extraordinarily valuable for open source communities. They give an opportunity for new people to get involved and connect with the existing leaders. A common concern is which talk to attend when there's overlap. I always advise to choose the one where you want to talk the speaker or other attendees afterwards. Since all of the sessions are posted to YouTube [1], you can see the other talks later (and can watch them at 125% of normal speed, if you want [2]). >But all of that media can’t really replace the socializing, networking, and simply fun that happened as part of (or sometimes despite) the conference formula. The real reason to attend a conference is the hallway track. (Disclosure: I am executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.) [0] http://kubecon.io http://kubecon.io [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2P-3-xqvmWaZbbI1sW-ulZb https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2P-3-xqvmWa... [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...
- rospaya 9y ago
  Love your organization. I was just recommending the Copenhagen conference to my colleagues yesterday, although it's a bit out of our budget. > The real reason to attend a conference is the hallway track. Exactly. Asking a question during a session acts like a mating call once you're out of the room, people with interests in what you've asked form a certain discussion group around you. That would be great to formalize in some way.
  - dankohn1 9y ago
    We schedule 35 minute sessions with 10 minute breaks in between to try to increase the time available for the hallway track. Please check out our diversity scholarships [0]. We awarded $250 K worth in Austin [1]. [0] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2018/attend/scholarship-opportunities/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativ... [1] https://www.cncf.io/blog/2018/01/17/look-back-kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america-2017-part-2/ https://www.cncf.io/blog/2018/01/17/look-back-kubecon-cloudn...
jmkd 9y ago
Newsgeist.org has an incredibly productive approach to conferences. 1. Invite-only. Any attendee can recommend a future attendee to be invited, so this is not about elitism rather that attendees add to to a two-way conversation, not simply sit and receive information. 2. Unconference format. On the first night everyone sits down to dinner, figures out the most important topics to discuss, and volunteers themselves to lead or join workshops on the topic. The conference schedule only comes into being on the first day. 3. Suburban location. The venues are invariably 40-60 minutes outside a major city, easy for international guests, yet harder for attendees to wander off into the city during the day (or even at night). 4. Free to attend. The events are sponsored by Google and The Knight Foundation who do a pretty good job of hanging back, being supportive and not imposing any agenda. Attendee costs are limited to travel and accommodation. 5. Weekend timing. Starting on a Friday ending on a Sunday ensures an informal approach and gets people out of their work and home comfort zones. 6. Werewolf. Daytime discussions invariably merge into dinner and then on to organised games of Werewolf to the late hours, hugely increasing camaraderie, intensity, socialization, truth-telling (eventually) and so on.
- phireal 9y ago
  Honestly, this sounds awful to me. 1. Invite-only increases the likelihood of an echo chamber, in my mind. I go to conferences to find out about things that arean't already on my radar. 2. This approach means only topics championed by those loud enough to speak up are discussed. There's no possibility for niche topics to get an airing if noone else knows anything about them since there's less likely to be a consensus to add them to the agenda. 3. One of the best aspects of attending a conference in my mind is the ability to combine it with a bit of tourism. I suppose that's a personal preference. 4. That's good for now, but when Google an The Knight Foundation stop supporting it, who's going to pay? 5. This is terrible. Work is for the week, weekends are my time and my work does not get to encroach on that. 6. Great, so at the end of the day, I can't even relax in the hotel room. So the next day, I'm wiped before we even start.
  - thecupisblue 9y ago
    Completely agree with all of the above.
moxious 9y ago
Conferences also exist to concentrate people so that vendors can market and sell. I don't think that will go out of style. Add person to person networking, people's desire to get a break from work...
megaman22 9y ago
The whole point of conferences is to be a paid vacation junket, no? Sure, there's usually some training and networking and marketting of products tied in. But there's a reason they are often hosted in Las Vegas or Orlando.
- djhworld 9y ago
  Vegas is probably the only place that has the capacity to host 30,000+ attendees of the big conferences, e.g. AWS Re:Invent
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    Huh? Houston hosts multiple conferences that size every year (the Offshore Technology Conference and International Quilt Fair are just two I can think of off the top of my head). Orlando, Dallas, and Denver can all do it as well (though I am not familiar with specific examples there).
  - x0rg 9y ago
    But does it still make sense to have conferences so big? re:invent is so big it is extremely hard to actually attend sessions and there are logistics problems like sessions being in different far away locations. Small conferences seems usually more useful to actually connect with people that those kind of massive events.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      It makes sense for the companies involved. If someone is attending primarily just to go to sessions, then no. (Although if you're just going for the sessions, I'm not sure most conferences really make sense.)
yawgmoth 9y ago
I've attended two styles of conferences: large conferences organized by the single company featured in all discussions (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon - all hosted in a large city), and smaller polyglot conferences in the Midwest. CodeMash in Sandusky, OH is a relatively small, relatively inexpensive conference. It mostly attracts people from Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland metros, but further into the midwest (St Louis, Omaha, KC). During a talk, there is large variation in participation, but there's generally 4-5 things per time slot a person would like to attend and it is acceptable/encouraged to leave a talk if it turned out it isn't right for you. There are (optional) social activities baked in. There are soft-skills and unrelated activities (lazer pong, sessions on things like creative writing, mindfulness). One of the last contributing factors is that there are ALWAYS places to sit in group fashion and meals are generally at a shared table (round tables of 8 or something). The result is conversations with strangers who come from varying backgrounds. The result of the non-pretentiousness is conversations during a talk (it's much less intimidating to ask questions of the lead engineers from Kroger in a room of 150 than the lead engineers of Microsoft in a room of 1000 - Kroger has a very impressive technical presence, mind). DevOpsDays actually has a period after the keynote where people come up and suggest topics for breakout groups, resulting in wildly contrasting sizes and specificities of discussions. Seems clear that there are plenty of ways to have a fantastic conference as long as you're not attending to get the coolest big ticket swag gift via attendance.
- macintux 9y ago
  The problem with CodeMash is that it’s only viable thanks to people who are willing to devote huge amounts of time and effort into preparing for and running it. It’s an exception that proves Marco’s point: > Planning and executing a conference takes such a toll on the organizers that few of them have ever lasted more than a few years.
- ataturk 9y ago
  I didn't find the DevOps Days format to be all that effective, however. A lot of conversations, but it didn't appear that any great technical depth was there at all. I may have unrealistic expectations having gone to mostly developer conferences before that one. I have to admit that I have never enjoyed conferences all that much. I don't easily meet new people, which is one reason, but it's more than just that. The culture of software development is simply odd, and the people are mostly odd, too.
deleted 9y ago
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zelos 9y ago
sitting there listening to blocks of talks for long stretches while you’re trying to stay awake after lunch is a pretty inefficient way to hear ideas. Pretty much this. I'm constantly pushed to use my training budget to go to conferences, but the information density is generally so low.
- isolli 9y ago
  I was always told networking opportunities, not presentations, made it worth going to (maths) conferences.
- djKianoosh 9y ago
  the general/all purpose conferences are certainly like this with the exception of a few that arent taken over by marketers. the single language/platform ones are better in that they are usually shorter and more focused. ymmv
taikahessu 9y ago
Open Space anyone? http://www.openspaceworld.org/files/tmnfiles/2pageos.htm http://www.openspaceworld.org/files/tmnfiles/2pageos.htm
ghaff 9y ago
As someone who attends a huge number of events as a speaker, an attendee, and as media, a few comments: 1. In terms of attending sessions, IF a conference does a good job of recording video of all sessions (which costs a LOT of money), physically attending the conference still serves as something of a forcing function. Virtually attending events and watching sessions on YouTube etc. definitely still play a role but it's often hard just to set the time aside. 2. The hallway track is huge. This is probably the main reason I attend events. Discussions about ideas, meeting people (including those at my own company who I otherwise never see). 3. Beyond informal hallway tracks, bigger conferences are just a good opportunity to schedule a lot of F2F meetings when a lot of people are in one place. 4. Yes, they're something of a perk (for most people).
kgilpin 9y ago
I’m hoping that, along the lines of the article, not only are conferences fading in relevance and popularity but business travel itself will start to become obsolete. Business travel is incredibly expensive and inefficient, it’s polluting, and it has a negative impact on people’s health, well-being, and family life.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Overall, both conferences and business travel are very healthy. They're not declining overall.
- cat199 9y ago
  also: bah humbug.
jcadam 9y ago
In my 10+ year career I've been to exactly one conference: JavaOne in 2016. That's one of the biggest tech conferences (put on by Oracle) I'm aware of and it covered such a broad array of topics at only a surface level that I really didn't get much out of the lectures (my favorite sessions were the small-group lectures on niche topics (alternative JVM languages, etc.) - Java in general is extremely uninteresting to me). Now, it was the one time I've actually been to San Francisco, so I was able to do some sight-seeing, and the concert Oracle put on was nice - only time I've seen Sting live. Personally, I think I'd much prefer smaller, more focused conferences. Problem is, employers in my industry (Defense) almost never send employees to conferences (I once asked an employer if I could attend a small local conference on a topic directly relevant to the project we were working on - it would have been something like $150 plus two days of overhead for my time. Nope). The only reason I went to JavaOne is someone managed to sneak a 'conference budget' into a contract, so the customer paid for it (Weird things happen when you actually involve engineers in the contracting process).
angarg12 9y ago
This article seems to be based on observations about Apple-centric conferences, is it true for the broader industry, though? I work in DevOps and, if anything, DevOps conferences seem to be popping around like mushrooms. Maybe it's related more to the popularity of an specific topic, than that of conferences themselves.
drej 9y ago
It's very expensive for me to go to a conference, because there are very few in our region, so most of the cost is travel and forgone revenue due to time off work. Luckily, we have a thriving meetup community, with different companies hosting these every other week or so. Obviously, these are not conference quality gatherings, but you still get all the networking and in-person lectures, all at a cost of a bus fare. For conference talks, I just watch YouTube recordings. The good thing there is that you can skip irrelevant parts, rewatch interesting bits and, last but not least, multitask. I watch most conference talks while working out.
SyneRyder 9y ago
I think Marco missed the point. He's taken a decline in Apple & iOS specific conferences, then assumed that means all conferences in general are over. But web development conferences are still going fine. PyCon & DjangoCon & JSConf & Laracon all seem to be doing okay, and even have regional conferences. Indie developer conferences like FemtoConf are selling out. Business Of Software is still going strong. Even niche conferences like the Xojo programming language are holding annual conferences on multiple continents. There's still plenty of conferences for digital nomads & travel bloggers & Etsy makers & songwriters & authors out there. It's Apple-specific conferences that are disappearing. (I tweeted that last October [1] and I'm now kicking myself for not blogging about it instead.) Some of the Apple conferences pivoted to include Android and web-dev - for example, iOSDevCamp became Developer Camp and was hosted at Google premises. Maybe this is just part of a cycle, Apple-related conferences have disappeared before (like Wolf Rentzch's C4 conference did in 2010, [2] [3]). Or perhaps it's an early indicator that developers are moving on from Apple to other platforms. [1] https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/919474979086798848 https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/919474979086798848 [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/1151210/c4_end.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1151210/c4_end.html [3] http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/592949476/c4-release http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/592949476/c4-release
- ghaff 9y ago
  These things always go in cycles. There were once huge Unix conferences. Then Linux World tried to become all things open source and then imploded. Comdex was once, I think, the biggest conference in the world. The dynamics around Apple-related conferences is probably different but these things come and go. Personally, I do a lot in the cloud-native, containers, DevOps, etc. space and pretty much everything event-related I see there is growing enormously.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  That gets me thinking of how things seems to have creeped up the stack, so to speak. First one have hardware conferences, as the hardware is the platform. Then one get OS conferences. And now one have language conferences, because languages, thanks to the net, have adopted things like package managers that used to be the responsibility of the OS. It is almost frustrating to install a python based program these days, as the documentation will rarely list any dependencies. Instead the install step will just pull in a pile of packages via pypi or similar, with little chance of review or control.
ghaff 9y ago
As a general statement, this post doesn't fit with what I personally observe. As I mentioned elsewhere, I attend a lot of events and many of these are growing between 20 and 100% year-over-year. Maybe iOS is down for some specific reasons such as it's no longer the new thing. I'd also say that there's been a big increase in Meetups generally. These aren't conferences per se but I could see them cutting into conferences in areas where there are a lot of them.
therealmarv 9y ago
Most unproductive time are conferences. It's like a work-holiday but you never get really serious stuff done. It's fun though and I think it's good for humans to do something like this from time to time. It's also important if you are working in a area where networking is crucial and important. But when looking at my day to day job as a web and backend developer I see all conferences a waste of time (I've been to a lot in the past) and only see really important topics in my pyjamas on weekends mainly on youtube. It really depends what sort of job you have... for some people conferences are the best thing ever and for other it's like "naaah, too much time and money wasted to go there"
mcbits 9y ago
Although I've never been to a developer conference in person, probably a majority of my YouTube time is listening to conference talks that are the best (or only) multimedia available about a topic. They do seem to give certain people the motivation to put together presentations that they aren't finding elsewhere. (Err, motivation that they aren't finding elsewhere.) I hope that either conferences survive or the experience of self-producing multimedia content can somehow evolve to fill the motivation void that would be left behind.
Tepix 9y ago
Well, I'm very much looking forward to FOSDEM two weeks from now. It doesn't suffer from the high prices either - it's free.
draw_down 9y ago
I guess I’m just a weirdo, because I do enjoy the talks (if they’re good), and the socialization and networking, such as it is, has never appealed to me much. I’ve never gotten a job or even an interview after going to a conference. And, I’m sorry, but nerds are not fun or interesting people to be around. Pretty sure I’ve never been to what I would describe as a good party as part of a conference. If you live in a place where conferences often happen you can save on the airfare and hotel costs and just get the ticket.
reboog711 9y ago
In my version of the world, podcasts and YouTube video tutorials were alive and thriving 10 years ago; I'm not sure why they would suddenly kill conferences.
douglaswlance 9y ago
Conferences will move to VR. There's no reason to invest so much time in traveling when you will be able to get 90% of the benefit in VR within 5 years.
- thijsvandien 9y ago
  I already get 90% of the benefits watching the talks on YouTube, so for me that would be 90% of 10%.
mattferderer 9y ago
Conference talks are 90% worthless to me. Many popular conference speakers argue that the job of a talk is to introduce you to a subject. I agree with the author, that I would rather watch that online than pay to attend a conference. Being a really good speaker, is also a rare talent that most speakers (even a lot of the popular ones) don't have. Way to often, talks are created as annoying sales pitches as well. A popular trend that is much more valuable, are the "Open Sessions" where a large room has a bunch of chairs in circles. Anyone can create a "talk" that others can join. Everyone gets in a circle & discusses ideas around a topic. I've found these much more valuable. The "Open Sessions", random discussions in the hallways or during events, & having lunch with a bunch of strangers talking about anything & everything are the most valuable activities in my opinion.
erikb 9y ago
The headline should include the word Apple somewhere. And it's also not a surprise that the era of conferences ends around an environment of a single company. This is one of the things why some people go through the troubles one has outside of walled gardens. All the funding in the garden comes from one central source, at least indirectly. I think the general purpose conference world is still growing though. It's a better environment than the traditional fairs, at least for things that include a lot of software.
fbunau 9y ago
To me conferences are more like concerts. After you know all the albums and songs, you go there just so see the artist live
CameronBanga 9y ago
Doesn't seem like anyone is attributing this to the fact that while Apple seems to be touting the record profits of the App Store, it seems like I know less and less people who make a genuinely OK living by working on iOS apps. Could it be that iOS conferences are going away because less iOS developers have the money to spend on conferences?
jedanbik 9y ago
Conferences can be a great way to meet world renowned experts in your field, ask them questions, and network with them.
nu-world-odor 9y ago
Glad then I'm going to GOTO Chicago for my last conference ever... If you want real training productivity try this-- wait til about 1am, and you want to go to bed, you no longer want to surf news or do anything, but for some reason you have to slow format a couple USB drives. So you have to wait for them to finish... then only THEN do the online training you've been putting off. You'll be surprised and retain the information/experience. Then go to bed.. There has to be a mental strategy based on this that can be setup so you don't have to do it at 1am though...
mar77i 9y ago
how about developer camps: let's go outside in the wild and find a spot - close enough to the next transformer station so people can charge their many batteries. It would be like other festivals, except likely less alcohol, procedurally generated music, hiking, socializing, hacking. I'd be so in on this.
maxsavin 9y ago
> I don’t know how to fix conferences, but the first place I’d start on that whiteboard is by getting rid of all of the talks, then trying to find different ways to bring people together — and far more of them than before. It’s called Burning Man
lgleason 9y ago
Unfortunately the quality of many tech conferences has gone down to the point of them not being useful. At one point tech conferences focused on speakers that actually had tech chops and talked about tech. Now many have become pajama parties with un-qualified speakers (little to no tech experience) talking about non-tech or tech lite topics. I've seen this even affect some of the really large prestigious events.
_mrmnmly 9y ago
I think that there will be more conferences about mixed technologies, such as PolyConf (before: RuPy) - these days people want to broaden their knowledge behind known technologies and see how others work.
Dowwie 9y ago
I enjoy meeting people and learning about what kind of work they do. What I've found is that some of the best opportunities to have a meaningful conversation is during meals. Flights, too. It's a small world full of interesting people.

159 points by jonny_eh 9y ago

>Or maybe we’ve already solved these problems with social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube, and we just haven’t fully realized it yet. All of those things are irrelevant, as the allure of conferences was something else, including getting to know like-minded people, networking, time off work, meeting with some of the major people working in your platform/language face to face/having a coffee/drink after the sessions, etc, etc. We had YouTube and social networks and podcasts for more than a decade now when conferences were still doing fine. It's more about the money than anything else.

andrewstuart 9y ago

>> Or maybe we’ve already solved these problems with social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube, and we just haven’t fully realized it yet. Aren't the plethora of technical meetups a constant round of conference presentations nearby and for free?

whafro 9y ago
Assuming the presentations are equally high quality (in terms of communicating ideas) and the presenters are equally expert (in terms of the ideas themselves). That's certainly not always true. But my sense is that the era of strong and plentiful tech meetups is a thing of the past as well. While there are obviously still many of them, big company employees seem to rely more on their employers to bring in top speakers. That doesn't help small company folks, but it removes a chunk of the audience that the meetups depend on to thrive. Even then, organizing community meetups can be a major job – getting venue/food/drink sponsors, herding presenters, etc. – and it's easy to lose steam. Like Marco said – there's no single factor, but my sense is that both have been affected over the last decade or so.

hjnilsson 9y ago

Problem with online methods of learning, is it's much harder to take a day off your day job to watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts. Conferences are like a vacation from regular work, where you can focus on learning. Also, the ability to see people in person, and discuss ideas with them directly is a very different experience from watching a YouTube channel. On a conference, you can meet new people, get job offers, meet new clients etc. directly. Conferences are far from only about educating the audience (author is entirely correct in the if all you care about is learning a new tech, it's more efficient to look up a tutorial on YouTube).

watwut 9y ago
Taking an hour a day to listen to podcast over seven days is much more easier then taking day off work and is much more effective for learning then seven hours of listening one day.
dandare 9y ago
Yes and no, while is it difficult to take time off for learning while at work, conferences as a learning tool have ridiculously low information density. Sometimes you get equal amount of information just from watching a couple videos during your lunch break.
djhworld 9y ago
I think this is the key really, conferences are like a dedicated period of time you can totally devote yourself into learning without being pulled into the trappings of the daily grind.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  I like conferences like Hope and Defcon because they aren't just informative..they are entertainment. Lets be honest, when you want to learn something, text will have a way bigger information density than a slide talk watered down to appeal to the poor taste of the public..
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    The first conference I ever attended was Defcon. I went for several years running and had a great time. Then I went to GDC (for work) and good lord, was it boring. I think I viewed the conference as more of a way to party with people who had similar interests than to actually learn. Defcon 101 even tells you not to go to too many talks.
baldfat 9y ago
> get job offers That right there might be the big negative to companies sending people to conferences. OR you find out that you work at a bad place. When I worked in Student Life Department my Universtiy never sent anyone to the National Student Life Conference. They sent two from my office and whent they came back all kind of chaos happened. They found out we were overworked and underpaid. They said when at a workshop of around 200 people that when asked what your position requiers from you the speaker brought them up to the front when everyone in their small group was freaking out at our workload. The next year I moved to the Library and my co-workers lasted one more year. They highered a new Vice-President of Student life and she rehired for every position and cleared house. Than for one year they had new titles for every position and switched back to the old system the following year. My former University never does Student Life Conferences. P.S. The University was sued for unpaid Overtime by someone in the Student Life Department and went to trial. The judge ruled against the University without going to his chambers.

juskrey 9y ago

Sufficiently large conference can kill any discipline.

jakozaur 9y ago

I would love some online version of informal conference-like conversations. Conference are a big commitments, most of ideas in talks are online anyway. I'm not coming for lecture style experience, but for interactions with other attendants. Exchange of ideas and experience, meet new people/clients/vendors... Maybe some online version of speed dating/chatrulett would just do fine? E.g. Gather critical mass of some sort (e.g. 50 engineers interested Serverless functions) have 5 minute lightning talk, follow by 1-5m talks with each other. Than with an hour you can meet 5-30 new ppl.

Swizec 9y ago
Semi private chatrooms is where it’s at right now. The kind where somebody assembles a group of a few hundred individuals to hang out on Slack or Telegram around a particular loosely-ish defined interest. Invite only of course. I’m in a couple and it’s honestly amazing. Small enough to feel safe and cozy, big enough to have lots of activity and a range of ideas and personalities. It’s like putting the community conference hallway track online and making it last for months and years on end, not just a day or two.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Interesting! What kind of topics? E.g. topics that also have active forums, blogs, stack overflow, twitter traffic? Can existing members recommend new members? How long does the group last? Do people get evicted for any reason?
- qznc 9y ago
  How would I get in there?
- christophilus 9y ago
  How do you find them? I work remotely, and would love to join some good tech discussion groups every once in a while.
  - djhworld 9y ago

cf 9y ago

There are ideas that only get expressed in person. Either because they are still a work in progress or because they are not interesting enough to warrant a video or a blog post. Conferences are really great for learning about that sort of stuff. Additionally, most online communication is intrinsically asynchronous. It's hard to have a chat online that's anywhere as fluid as what happens in person. Even the flurry of twitter replies doesn't quite compare.

teebot 9y ago

I feel that I get much more connections and information out of small local meetups than big conferences. In a small local meetup I'll occasionally pop my laptop open and start geeking out on some new tech with another attendee. Big conferences feel too corporate and impersonal to me. The ticket price of the biggest conferences is reaching absurd levels too.

empthought 9y ago

This idea is pretty old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

ilamont 9y ago

I worked for a company that (among other things) organized multiday tech conferences aimed at IT managers at large companies. I was surprised to learn how low the margins were. The top conferences were selling well, and had big-name sponsors at different tiers, yet one year the P&L for the group showed a profit in the low single digits. I later learned that the cost structure was high, and some of the events (particularly less established events or those with lots of competition) struggled to get signups.

jasonjayr 9y ago
Venues + supporting services, are obnoxiously expensive too. My company works closely with conference organizers, and I've seen a quote that was in the mid-5 figures, for 4 days of internet access (and related network services). This was for data services to meeting rooms + conference wifi for about 5k-7k attendees.

farnsworthy 9y ago

I'm not sure about some of the reasoning in this article. Perhaps the author is referring to a particular sort of conference, with which he is most familiar? Would an appropriate analogy be the era of stadium rock concerts, versus smaller, more intimate venues (and the economics of one versus the other)?

jlebrech 9y ago

"small conferences exclude people" this is a fallacy, the more small conferences there are the less people are excluded.

dankohn1 9y ago

My organization runs KubeCon + CloudNativeCon [0] and we have events in 2018 in Copenhagen (May), Shanghai (November) and Seattle (December). Our Austin event last month grew 300% from the year before to 4,200 people. I believe that conferences are extraordinarily valuable for open source communities. They give an opportunity for new people to get involved and connect with the existing leaders. A common concern is which talk to attend when there's overlap. I always advise to choose the one where you want to talk the speaker or other attendees afterwards. Since all of the sessions are posted to YouTube [1], you can see the other talks later (and can watch them at 125% of normal speed, if you want [2]). >But all of that media can’t really replace the socializing, networking, and simply fun that happened as part of (or sometimes despite) the conference formula. The real reason to attend a conference is the hallway track. (Disclosure: I am executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.) [0] http://kubecon.io http://kubecon.io [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2P-3-xqvmWaZbbI1sW-ulZb https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6h78yzYM2P-3-xqvmWa... [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

rospaya 9y ago
Love your organization. I was just recommending the Copenhagen conference to my colleagues yesterday, although it's a bit out of our budget. > The real reason to attend a conference is the hallway track. Exactly. Asking a question during a session acts like a mating call once you're out of the room, people with interests in what you've asked form a certain discussion group around you. That would be great to formalize in some way.
- dankohn1 9y ago
  We schedule 35 minute sessions with 10 minute breaks in between to try to increase the time available for the hallway track. Please check out our diversity scholarships [0]. We awarded $250 K worth in Austin [1]. [0] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2018/attend/scholarship-opportunities/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativ... [1] https://www.cncf.io/blog/2018/01/17/look-back-kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america-2017-part-2/ https://www.cncf.io/blog/2018/01/17/look-back-kubecon-cloudn...

jmkd 9y ago

Newsgeist.org has an incredibly productive approach to conferences. 1. Invite-only. Any attendee can recommend a future attendee to be invited, so this is not about elitism rather that attendees add to to a two-way conversation, not simply sit and receive information. 2. Unconference format. On the first night everyone sits down to dinner, figures out the most important topics to discuss, and volunteers themselves to lead or join workshops on the topic. The conference schedule only comes into being on the first day. 3. Suburban location. The venues are invariably 40-60 minutes outside a major city, easy for international guests, yet harder for attendees to wander off into the city during the day (or even at night). 4. Free to attend. The events are sponsored by Google and The Knight Foundation who do a pretty good job of hanging back, being supportive and not imposing any agenda. Attendee costs are limited to travel and accommodation. 5. Weekend timing. Starting on a Friday ending on a Sunday ensures an informal approach and gets people out of their work and home comfort zones. 6. Werewolf. Daytime discussions invariably merge into dinner and then on to organised games of Werewolf to the late hours, hugely increasing camaraderie, intensity, socialization, truth-telling (eventually) and so on.

phireal 9y ago
Honestly, this sounds awful to me. 1. Invite-only increases the likelihood of an echo chamber, in my mind. I go to conferences to find out about things that arean't already on my radar. 2. This approach means only topics championed by those loud enough to speak up are discussed. There's no possibility for niche topics to get an airing if noone else knows anything about them since there's less likely to be a consensus to add them to the agenda. 3. One of the best aspects of attending a conference in my mind is the ability to combine it with a bit of tourism. I suppose that's a personal preference. 4. That's good for now, but when Google an The Knight Foundation stop supporting it, who's going to pay? 5. This is terrible. Work is for the week, weekends are my time and my work does not get to encroach on that. 6. Great, so at the end of the day, I can't even relax in the hotel room. So the next day, I'm wiped before we even start.
- thecupisblue 9y ago
  Completely agree with all of the above.

moxious 9y ago

Conferences also exist to concentrate people so that vendors can market and sell. I don't think that will go out of style. Add person to person networking, people's desire to get a break from work...

megaman22 9y ago

The whole point of conferences is to be a paid vacation junket, no? Sure, there's usually some training and networking and marketting of products tied in. But there's a reason they are often hosted in Las Vegas or Orlando.

djhworld 9y ago
Vegas is probably the only place that has the capacity to host 30,000+ attendees of the big conferences, e.g. AWS Re:Invent
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  Huh? Houston hosts multiple conferences that size every year (the Offshore Technology Conference and International Quilt Fair are just two I can think of off the top of my head). Orlando, Dallas, and Denver can all do it as well (though I am not familiar with specific examples there).
- x0rg 9y ago
  But does it still make sense to have conferences so big? re:invent is so big it is extremely hard to actually attend sessions and there are logistics problems like sessions being in different far away locations. Small conferences seems usually more useful to actually connect with people that those kind of massive events.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    It makes sense for the companies involved. If someone is attending primarily just to go to sessions, then no. (Although if you're just going for the sessions, I'm not sure most conferences really make sense.)

yawgmoth 9y ago

I've attended two styles of conferences: large conferences organized by the single company featured in all discussions (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon - all hosted in a large city), and smaller polyglot conferences in the Midwest. CodeMash in Sandusky, OH is a relatively small, relatively inexpensive conference. It mostly attracts people from Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland metros, but further into the midwest (St Louis, Omaha, KC). During a talk, there is large variation in participation, but there's generally 4-5 things per time slot a person would like to attend and it is acceptable/encouraged to leave a talk if it turned out it isn't right for you. There are (optional) social activities baked in. There are soft-skills and unrelated activities (lazer pong, sessions on things like creative writing, mindfulness). One of the last contributing factors is that there are ALWAYS places to sit in group fashion and meals are generally at a shared table (round tables of 8 or something). The result is conversations with strangers who come from varying backgrounds. The result of the non-pretentiousness is conversations during a talk (it's much less intimidating to ask questions of the lead engineers from Kroger in a room of 150 than the lead engineers of Microsoft in a room of 1000 - Kroger has a very impressive technical presence, mind). DevOpsDays actually has a period after the keynote where people come up and suggest topics for breakout groups, resulting in wildly contrasting sizes and specificities of discussions. Seems clear that there are plenty of ways to have a fantastic conference as long as you're not attending to get the coolest big ticket swag gift via attendance.

macintux 9y ago
The problem with CodeMash is that it’s only viable thanks to people who are willing to devote huge amounts of time and effort into preparing for and running it. It’s an exception that proves Marco’s point: > Planning and executing a conference takes such a toll on the organizers that few of them have ever lasted more than a few years.
ataturk 9y ago
I didn't find the DevOps Days format to be all that effective, however. A lot of conversations, but it didn't appear that any great technical depth was there at all. I may have unrealistic expectations having gone to mostly developer conferences before that one. I have to admit that I have never enjoyed conferences all that much. I don't easily meet new people, which is one reason, but it's more than just that. The culture of software development is simply odd, and the people are mostly odd, too.

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zelos 9y ago

sitting there listening to blocks of talks for long stretches while you’re trying to stay awake after lunch is a pretty inefficient way to hear ideas. Pretty much this. I'm constantly pushed to use my training budget to go to conferences, but the information density is generally so low.

isolli 9y ago
I was always told networking opportunities, not presentations, made it worth going to (maths) conferences.
djKianoosh 9y ago
the general/all purpose conferences are certainly like this with the exception of a few that arent taken over by marketers. the single language/platform ones are better in that they are usually shorter and more focused. ymmv

taikahessu 9y ago

Open Space anyone? http://www.openspaceworld.org/files/tmnfiles/2pageos.htm http://www.openspaceworld.org/files/tmnfiles/2pageos.htm

ghaff 9y ago

As someone who attends a huge number of events as a speaker, an attendee, and as media, a few comments: 1. In terms of attending sessions, IF a conference does a good job of recording video of all sessions (which costs a LOT of money), physically attending the conference still serves as something of a forcing function. Virtually attending events and watching sessions on YouTube etc. definitely still play a role but it's often hard just to set the time aside. 2. The hallway track is huge. This is probably the main reason I attend events. Discussions about ideas, meeting people (including those at my own company who I otherwise never see). 3. Beyond informal hallway tracks, bigger conferences are just a good opportunity to schedule a lot of F2F meetings when a lot of people are in one place. 4. Yes, they're something of a perk (for most people).

kgilpin 9y ago

I’m hoping that, along the lines of the article, not only are conferences fading in relevance and popularity but business travel itself will start to become obsolete. Business travel is incredibly expensive and inefficient, it’s polluting, and it has a negative impact on people’s health, well-being, and family life.

ghaff 9y ago
Overall, both conferences and business travel are very healthy. They're not declining overall.
cat199 9y ago
also: bah humbug.

jcadam 9y ago

In my 10+ year career I've been to exactly one conference: JavaOne in 2016. That's one of the biggest tech conferences (put on by Oracle) I'm aware of and it covered such a broad array of topics at only a surface level that I really didn't get much out of the lectures (my favorite sessions were the small-group lectures on niche topics (alternative JVM languages, etc.) - Java in general is extremely uninteresting to me). Now, it was the one time I've actually been to San Francisco, so I was able to do some sight-seeing, and the concert Oracle put on was nice - only time I've seen Sting live. Personally, I think I'd much prefer smaller, more focused conferences. Problem is, employers in my industry (Defense) almost never send employees to conferences (I once asked an employer if I could attend a small local conference on a topic directly relevant to the project we were working on - it would have been something like $150 plus two days of overhead for my time. Nope). The only reason I went to JavaOne is someone managed to sneak a 'conference budget' into a contract, so the customer paid for it (Weird things happen when you actually involve engineers in the contracting process).

angarg12 9y ago

This article seems to be based on observations about Apple-centric conferences, is it true for the broader industry, though? I work in DevOps and, if anything, DevOps conferences seem to be popping around like mushrooms. Maybe it's related more to the popularity of an specific topic, than that of conferences themselves.

drej 9y ago

It's very expensive for me to go to a conference, because there are very few in our region, so most of the cost is travel and forgone revenue due to time off work. Luckily, we have a thriving meetup community, with different companies hosting these every other week or so. Obviously, these are not conference quality gatherings, but you still get all the networking and in-person lectures, all at a cost of a bus fare. For conference talks, I just watch YouTube recordings. The good thing there is that you can skip irrelevant parts, rewatch interesting bits and, last but not least, multitask. I watch most conference talks while working out.

SyneRyder 9y ago

I think Marco missed the point. He's taken a decline in Apple & iOS specific conferences, then assumed that means all conferences in general are over. But web development conferences are still going fine. PyCon & DjangoCon & JSConf & Laracon all seem to be doing okay, and even have regional conferences. Indie developer conferences like FemtoConf are selling out. Business Of Software is still going strong. Even niche conferences like the Xojo programming language are holding annual conferences on multiple continents. There's still plenty of conferences for digital nomads & travel bloggers & Etsy makers & songwriters & authors out there. It's Apple-specific conferences that are disappearing. (I tweeted that last October [1] and I'm now kicking myself for not blogging about it instead.) Some of the Apple conferences pivoted to include Android and web-dev - for example, iOSDevCamp became Developer Camp and was hosted at Google premises. Maybe this is just part of a cycle, Apple-related conferences have disappeared before (like Wolf Rentzch's C4 conference did in 2010, [2] [3]). Or perhaps it's an early indicator that developers are moving on from Apple to other platforms. [1] https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/919474979086798848 https://twitter.com/syneryder/statuses/919474979086798848 [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/1151210/c4_end.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1151210/c4_end.html [3] http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/592949476/c4-release http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/592949476/c4-release

ghaff 9y ago
These things always go in cycles. There were once huge Unix conferences. Then Linux World tried to become all things open source and then imploded. Comdex was once, I think, the biggest conference in the world. The dynamics around Apple-related conferences is probably different but these things come and go. Personally, I do a lot in the cloud-native, containers, DevOps, etc. space and pretty much everything event-related I see there is growing enormously.
digi_owl 9y ago
That gets me thinking of how things seems to have creeped up the stack, so to speak. First one have hardware conferences, as the hardware is the platform. Then one get OS conferences. And now one have language conferences, because languages, thanks to the net, have adopted things like package managers that used to be the responsibility of the OS. It is almost frustrating to install a python based program these days, as the documentation will rarely list any dependencies. Instead the install step will just pull in a pile of packages via pypi or similar, with little chance of review or control.

ghaff 9y ago

As a general statement, this post doesn't fit with what I personally observe. As I mentioned elsewhere, I attend a lot of events and many of these are growing between 20 and 100% year-over-year. Maybe iOS is down for some specific reasons such as it's no longer the new thing. I'd also say that there's been a big increase in Meetups generally. These aren't conferences per se but I could see them cutting into conferences in areas where there are a lot of them.

therealmarv 9y ago

Most unproductive time are conferences. It's like a work-holiday but you never get really serious stuff done. It's fun though and I think it's good for humans to do something like this from time to time. It's also important if you are working in a area where networking is crucial and important. But when looking at my day to day job as a web and backend developer I see all conferences a waste of time (I've been to a lot in the past) and only see really important topics in my pyjamas on weekends mainly on youtube. It really depends what sort of job you have... for some people conferences are the best thing ever and for other it's like "naaah, too much time and money wasted to go there"

mcbits 9y ago

Although I've never been to a developer conference in person, probably a majority of my YouTube time is listening to conference talks that are the best (or only) multimedia available about a topic. They do seem to give certain people the motivation to put together presentations that they aren't finding elsewhere. (Err, motivation that they aren't finding elsewhere.) I hope that either conferences survive or the experience of self-producing multimedia content can somehow evolve to fill the motivation void that would be left behind.

Tepix 9y ago

Well, I'm very much looking forward to FOSDEM two weeks from now. It doesn't suffer from the high prices either - it's free.

draw_down 9y ago

I guess I’m just a weirdo, because I do enjoy the talks (if they’re good), and the socialization and networking, such as it is, has never appealed to me much. I’ve never gotten a job or even an interview after going to a conference. And, I’m sorry, but nerds are not fun or interesting people to be around. Pretty sure I’ve never been to what I would describe as a good party as part of a conference. If you live in a place where conferences often happen you can save on the airfare and hotel costs and just get the ticket.

reboog711 9y ago

In my version of the world, podcasts and YouTube video tutorials were alive and thriving 10 years ago; I'm not sure why they would suddenly kill conferences.

douglaswlance 9y ago

Conferences will move to VR. There's no reason to invest so much time in traveling when you will be able to get 90% of the benefit in VR within 5 years.

thijsvandien 9y ago
I already get 90% of the benefits watching the talks on YouTube, so for me that would be 90% of 10%.

mattferderer 9y ago

Conference talks are 90% worthless to me. Many popular conference speakers argue that the job of a talk is to introduce you to a subject. I agree with the author, that I would rather watch that online than pay to attend a conference. Being a really good speaker, is also a rare talent that most speakers (even a lot of the popular ones) don't have. Way to often, talks are created as annoying sales pitches as well. A popular trend that is much more valuable, are the "Open Sessions" where a large room has a bunch of chairs in circles. Anyone can create a "talk" that others can join. Everyone gets in a circle & discusses ideas around a topic. I've found these much more valuable. The "Open Sessions", random discussions in the hallways or during events, & having lunch with a bunch of strangers talking about anything & everything are the most valuable activities in my opinion.

erikb 9y ago

The headline should include the word Apple somewhere. And it's also not a surprise that the era of conferences ends around an environment of a single company. This is one of the things why some people go through the troubles one has outside of walled gardens. All the funding in the garden comes from one central source, at least indirectly. I think the general purpose conference world is still growing though. It's a better environment than the traditional fairs, at least for things that include a lot of software.

fbunau 9y ago

To me conferences are more like concerts. After you know all the albums and songs, you go there just so see the artist live

CameronBanga 9y ago

Doesn't seem like anyone is attributing this to the fact that while Apple seems to be touting the record profits of the App Store, it seems like I know less and less people who make a genuinely OK living by working on iOS apps. Could it be that iOS conferences are going away because less iOS developers have the money to spend on conferences?

jedanbik 9y ago

Conferences can be a great way to meet world renowned experts in your field, ask them questions, and network with them.

nu-world-odor 9y ago

Glad then I'm going to GOTO Chicago for my last conference ever... If you want real training productivity try this-- wait til about 1am, and you want to go to bed, you no longer want to surf news or do anything, but for some reason you have to slow format a couple USB drives. So you have to wait for them to finish... then only THEN do the online training you've been putting off. You'll be surprised and retain the information/experience. Then go to bed.. There has to be a mental strategy based on this that can be setup so you don't have to do it at 1am though...

mar77i 9y ago

how about developer camps: let's go outside in the wild and find a spot - close enough to the next transformer station so people can charge their many batteries. It would be like other festivals, except likely less alcohol, procedurally generated music, hiking, socializing, hacking. I'd be so in on this.

maxsavin 9y ago

> I don’t know how to fix conferences, but the first place I’d start on that whiteboard is by getting rid of all of the talks, then trying to find different ways to bring people together — and far more of them than before. It’s called Burning Man

lgleason 9y ago

Unfortunately the quality of many tech conferences has gone down to the point of them not being useful. At one point tech conferences focused on speakers that actually had tech chops and talked about tech. Now many have become pajama parties with un-qualified speakers (little to no tech experience) talking about non-tech or tech lite topics. I've seen this even affect some of the really large prestigious events.

_mrmnmly 9y ago

I think that there will be more conferences about mixed technologies, such as PolyConf (before: RuPy) - these days people want to broaden their knowledge behind known technologies and see how others work.

Dowwie 9y ago

I enjoy meeting people and learning about what kind of work they do. What I've found is that some of the best opportunities to have a meaningful conversation is during meals. Flights, too. It's a small world full of interesting people.