I think people are just getting tripped on the fact that it's called a conference or how can you possibly get value from 12 people having fun and talking on wha

I think people are just getting tripped on the fact that it's called a conference or how can you possibly get value from 12 people having fun and talking on what looks like a vacation trip. The problem is that on HN I would gather most people are tech workers or startup folks and have gone to "real" conferences which are big with tons of people, where Brian Casel fits more into the content marketing, consultant, life-style business sphere, which is usually for self-employed consultants, or 1-2 person bootstrapped SaaS or service businesses. In that sphere, there is so much value to be had talking to another successful person doing something similar to you and how they manage a solo 6 figure business and/or 100k+ mailing list empire. As mentioned in the article, it's probably more akin to a mastermind group (again which seems like it only fits into that latter sphere, unless you are a high level operating exec), but with some variability into who gets in and who stays. As someone who went from startup world into consulting world, reading and listening to the folks in that sphere, this kind of stuff is pretty common and is actually super valuable, perhaps 1000x more value then I've ever seen in another conference I've attended, especially since I'm more shy and dislike talking to rando's and going to strange parties knowing no one after hours, but this is a small group of people in an intimate setting where everyone can meet each other and get a chance to talk, like forced networking. I don't think a group of friends or colleagues going skiing to discuss dev-ops or NodeJS would be that relevant or worthwhile in this type of case, but perhaps a group of founders running companies with 5-10 employees facing the same challenges might be.