7 ms·

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like

by Svoka 8y ago

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

ddingus 8y ago
Oh I don't know about that. I've gotten a lot out of every one I've ever attended. It is possible to go to one of those in waste a lot of time, and party. For some people that's a once-a-year relief valve nothing wrong with that. It's also possible to go have a lot of really meaningful, relevant conversations with people that are valuable to you.
guachesuedehack 8y ago
There is barely even a community for it, the c language itself like golang has.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  Because, yeah, that would be like an "air breathing community."
  - guachesuedehack 8y ago
    I mean we have CPPconn which talks abt frameworks and design patterns mostly
portal_narlish 8y ago
What about hackathons? Open source sprees? Meeting people from your language/framework/trade IRL and forming relationships?
steveklabnik 8y ago
A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences.
Swizec 8y ago
> best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people. That is the point of conferences. Meeting like minded people and having interesting conversations.
whatshisface 8y ago
Socializing with like-minded people is a pretty valuable thing, actually. In fact I would say that it's the only reason conferences ever existed.
- biggusdickus 8y ago
  Unless you make a joke about forking repo.
macspoofing 8y ago
No. Conferences will have learning and training sessions. Conferences will have reps from customers, partners and vendors you work with or are thinking of working with. And yes, you can use this time to also connect with like-minded people.
crispyambulance 8y ago
Sure, why would anyone want to waste time lifting their nose briefly from their employer's grindstone to get exposed to new colleagues, new ideas, and new business opportunities?
- badpun 8y ago
  They are a waste of your employer’s time. For you they’re great, you’re still getting paid, but don’t have to work.
  - dclowd9901 8y ago
    Quite a myopic view. My employer is pushing hard right now to sponsor lots of meetups and conferences to reach new (read: diverse) recruits.
    - badpun 8y ago
      I was talking about employee being sent to a conference. Employer organizing local conference as a hiring honeypot is a different case.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    If you’re looking at conferences from the point of view of “a way to improve programming skills” it really isn’t. It’s the equivalent of workforce training in other fields.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    I tentatively agree with the idea that conferences reduce the amount of work that someone gets done for a few days (you can see this by how much work free software maintainers like myself generally get done during conferences), but I absolutely disagree that it is a net negative for your employer. In my view, as someone who contributes to free software as my job (though the rest of this is somewhat related to proprietary developers too), conferences are a great opportunity to have IRL discussions over current development topics as well as meet people from other free software communities (who might work for proprietary software companies). And arguably that is getting work done (and I have written patches side-by-side with someone while at conferences quite a few times). Having connections in your field, as well as being well-known by your field (perhaps by submitting talks to conferences) is very useful for both you and your employer. In most cases, a lack of conference attendance by a company is seen as a "bad smell" in some communities (it indicates that they don't have an interest in the community around something they use -- maybe because they think that interacting with their community through conferences is a waste of time). It also potentially gives you access to more recruits, because people looking for work often attend conferences to expand their connections. Not to mention that most medium-and-larger companies can spare a few thousand dollars a few times a year to send their employees to a conference to act as both a marketing tool and as a form of training at conferences. I'd bet that medium-sized companies spend more on stationary and tea+coffee supplies yearly.
ketzu 8y ago
Can you back this up? This doesn't seem to be as true as your "Lets be honest" introduction claims it is. Even more, it seems like a needlessly polarizing cynical opinion to me.
jVinc 8y ago
Sometimes a 30 min conversation with an experienced developer can save you 3 months of work. Conferences can be extremely productive, but it's just like everything else, it depends on how you personally do it. For some developers its "nothing productive gets done after lunch" and for some like you it's "nothing productive gets done on conferences" but that's a very individual thing and definitely not true in general.
chrisseaton 8y ago
I find I’m super-productive at conferences and for a week afterwards, due to the buzz.
quickthrower2 8y ago
You've been to the wrong conferences.
EliRivers 8y ago
In theory, I can get from watching the recordings most of the value I get from attending. CPPCon's YouTube channel is excellent. In practice, I just don't seem to get round to watching them. Going to the conference means watching a whole bunch of them with no distractions. Very useful.
Apocryphon 8y ago
WWDC is like, the only time Apple deigns to expose their own developers to the wider world to share their inside expertise and answer questions.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Not really. Apple developers are regularly seen at other conferences and events. It's just a PITA to get Legal approval to give presentations.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    They do? I didn't think they'd be holding workshops and answering SDK questions at other conferences. Certainly Apple devs attend conferences like any other engineer.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      They do, occasionally. At least, there are a couple where Apple engineers have given talks.
dilyevsky 8y ago
If you think that making connections with people working on same things you do is waste of time you’ve got another thing coming. But yeah nobody writes code at conferences, I thought that was pretty obvious.
- macintux 8y ago
  > But yeah nobody writes code at conferences Depends on the conference, I suppose, but most I've been to include a healthy dose of that. Certainly writing production code for work is rare, but for fun? Lots of it gets written there.
  - scruple 8y ago
    I've absolutely seen people from well-known companies and consulting groups sitting in a conference talk hacking on their work projects. Very frequently. For the past decade, easily. And as recently as last week, at RubyConf.
    - macintux 8y ago
      I was mentally distinguishing between "code that gets written at a conference because it's a conference" and "code that gets written at a conference because the person is bored/on a deadline/unable to persuade their employer that they need to have time to learn".
- robocat 8y ago
  > But yeah nobody writes code at conferences steveklabnik in another comment: "A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences".
  - dagw 8y ago
    I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized academics pontificating on highly esoteric subjects, some are places where people go to do million dollar deals, some are just thinly veiled excuses for people to expense their holiday to their company and some involve half dozen hackers sitting around a table knocking out code. And at some conferences all these things are going on at the same time. Basically any statement to the effect of "everybody does/nobody does X at conferences" is almost certainly false.
ngngngng 8y ago
Lets be honest: lunch exists to waste time. Nothing productive gets done at lunch and best thing you can take out from them is to socialize with like-minded people.
- mattkevan 8y ago
  Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
- Svoka 8y ago
  you need nutrition to stay alive and function. It is essential to being productive.
voltagex_ 8y ago
I wouldn't be as good a programmer or as happy with my life without conferences. Maybe you're attending the wrong ones?
capkutay 8y ago
Sad that this is a highly upvoted comment on HN. Some of the best things that happened in my career spawned from networking at good conferences.
outside1234 8y ago
Here is how I approach conferences: 1. Decide up front what sessions I am going to attend. All of these things should be stuff that I know very little about or take my knowledge from 200 to 300. Don't go to sessions that you know the answer to. Be super selective on sessions as well: skip vendor shills and affirmative action placements. 2. Look AND SCHEDULE casual between-session coffee meetings with folks I know are attending. This both deepens my relationships with them and you also tend to meet people most effectively this way that happen to be with that person. 3. Go to birds of a feather (if possible). People are much more likely to want to meet other people at these things. 4. Ask everyone you can "How their conference is going?" and "What are you working on in this space?". I make it a goal to ask at least ten people this a day between the coffee station lines, lunch, happy hour. At a great conference people love talking about what they are passionate about. 5. Drop out of late night events and drinking sessions if you are just there for the music or the beer and not getting knowledge or connections out of it. This is business, not party time. If you can't do these things, yes, it is a waste of time. But if you can, I find that I can leverage all of the info and contacts out of this relentlessly at my $DAY_JOB to get a lot done the rest of the year.
lgleason 8y ago
For a while we had some quality conferences around topics such as Ruby, Javascript etc. with great technical talks that were open to anybody who had an interest and wanted to attend. These days many, if not most of them are thinly veiled political/social justice action get togethers that actively ban people who do not share in the ideology.

by Svoka 8y ago

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

ddingus 8y ago

Oh I don't know about that. I've gotten a lot out of every one I've ever attended. It is possible to go to one of those in waste a lot of time, and party. For some people that's a once-a-year relief valve nothing wrong with that. It's also possible to go have a lot of really meaningful, relevant conversations with people that are valuable to you.

guachesuedehack 8y ago

There is barely even a community for it, the c language itself like golang has.

Koshkin 8y ago
Because, yeah, that would be like an "air breathing community."
- guachesuedehack 8y ago
  I mean we have CPPconn which talks abt frameworks and design patterns mostly

portal_narlish 8y ago

What about hackathons? Open source sprees? Meeting people from your language/framework/trade IRL and forming relationships?

steveklabnik 8y ago

A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences.

Swizec 8y ago

> best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people. That is the point of conferences. Meeting like minded people and having interesting conversations.

whatshisface 8y ago

Socializing with like-minded people is a pretty valuable thing, actually. In fact I would say that it's the only reason conferences ever existed.

biggusdickus 8y ago
Unless you make a joke about forking repo.

macspoofing 8y ago

No. Conferences will have learning and training sessions. Conferences will have reps from customers, partners and vendors you work with or are thinking of working with. And yes, you can use this time to also connect with like-minded people.

crispyambulance 8y ago

Sure, why would anyone want to waste time lifting their nose briefly from their employer's grindstone to get exposed to new colleagues, new ideas, and new business opportunities?

badpun 8y ago
They are a waste of your employer’s time. For you they’re great, you’re still getting paid, but don’t have to work.
- dclowd9901 8y ago
  Quite a myopic view. My employer is pushing hard right now to sponsor lots of meetups and conferences to reach new (read: diverse) recruits.
  - badpun 8y ago
    I was talking about employee being sent to a conference. Employer organizing local conference as a hiring honeypot is a different case.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  If you’re looking at conferences from the point of view of “a way to improve programming skills” it really isn’t. It’s the equivalent of workforce training in other fields.
- cyphar 8y ago
  I tentatively agree with the idea that conferences reduce the amount of work that someone gets done for a few days (you can see this by how much work free software maintainers like myself generally get done during conferences), but I absolutely disagree that it is a net negative for your employer. In my view, as someone who contributes to free software as my job (though the rest of this is somewhat related to proprietary developers too), conferences are a great opportunity to have IRL discussions over current development topics as well as meet people from other free software communities (who might work for proprietary software companies). And arguably that is getting work done (and I have written patches side-by-side with someone while at conferences quite a few times). Having connections in your field, as well as being well-known by your field (perhaps by submitting talks to conferences) is very useful for both you and your employer. In most cases, a lack of conference attendance by a company is seen as a "bad smell" in some communities (it indicates that they don't have an interest in the community around something they use -- maybe because they think that interacting with their community through conferences is a waste of time). It also potentially gives you access to more recruits, because people looking for work often attend conferences to expand their connections. Not to mention that most medium-and-larger companies can spare a few thousand dollars a few times a year to send their employees to a conference to act as both a marketing tool and as a form of training at conferences. I'd bet that medium-sized companies spend more on stationary and tea+coffee supplies yearly.

ketzu 8y ago

Can you back this up? This doesn't seem to be as true as your "Lets be honest" introduction claims it is. Even more, it seems like a needlessly polarizing cynical opinion to me.

jVinc 8y ago

Sometimes a 30 min conversation with an experienced developer can save you 3 months of work. Conferences can be extremely productive, but it's just like everything else, it depends on how you personally do it. For some developers its "nothing productive gets done after lunch" and for some like you it's "nothing productive gets done on conferences" but that's a very individual thing and definitely not true in general.

chrisseaton 8y ago

I find I’m super-productive at conferences and for a week afterwards, due to the buzz.

quickthrower2 8y ago

You've been to the wrong conferences.

EliRivers 8y ago

In theory, I can get from watching the recordings most of the value I get from attending. CPPCon's YouTube channel is excellent. In practice, I just don't seem to get round to watching them. Going to the conference means watching a whole bunch of them with no distractions. Very useful.

Apocryphon 8y ago

WWDC is like, the only time Apple deigns to expose their own developers to the wider world to share their inside expertise and answer questions.

threeseed 8y ago
Not really. Apple developers are regularly seen at other conferences and events. It's just a PITA to get Legal approval to give presentations.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  They do? I didn't think they'd be holding workshops and answering SDK questions at other conferences. Certainly Apple devs attend conferences like any other engineer.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    They do, occasionally. At least, there are a couple where Apple engineers have given talks.

dilyevsky 8y ago

If you think that making connections with people working on same things you do is waste of time you’ve got another thing coming. But yeah nobody writes code at conferences, I thought that was pretty obvious.

macintux 8y ago
> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences Depends on the conference, I suppose, but most I've been to include a healthy dose of that. Certainly writing production code for work is rare, but for fun? Lots of it gets written there.
- scruple 8y ago
  I've absolutely seen people from well-known companies and consulting groups sitting in a conference talk hacking on their work projects. Very frequently. For the past decade, easily. And as recently as last week, at RubyConf.
  - macintux 8y ago
    I was mentally distinguishing between "code that gets written at a conference because it's a conference" and "code that gets written at a conference because the person is bored/on a deadline/unable to persuade their employer that they need to have time to learn".
robocat 8y ago
> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences steveklabnik in another comment: "A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences".
- dagw 8y ago
  I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized academics pontificating on highly esoteric subjects, some are places where people go to do million dollar deals, some are just thinly veiled excuses for people to expense their holiday to their company and some involve half dozen hackers sitting around a table knocking out code. And at some conferences all these things are going on at the same time. Basically any statement to the effect of "everybody does/nobody does X at conferences" is almost certainly false.

ngngngng 8y ago

Lets be honest: lunch exists to waste time. Nothing productive gets done at lunch and best thing you can take out from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

mattkevan 8y ago
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Svoka 8y ago
you need nutrition to stay alive and function. It is essential to being productive.

voltagex_ 8y ago

I wouldn't be as good a programmer or as happy with my life without conferences. Maybe you're attending the wrong ones?

capkutay 8y ago

Sad that this is a highly upvoted comment on HN. Some of the best things that happened in my career spawned from networking at good conferences.

outside1234 8y ago

Here is how I approach conferences: 1. Decide up front what sessions I am going to attend. All of these things should be stuff that I know very little about or take my knowledge from 200 to 300. Don't go to sessions that you know the answer to. Be super selective on sessions as well: skip vendor shills and affirmative action placements. 2. Look AND SCHEDULE casual between-session coffee meetings with folks I know are attending. This both deepens my relationships with them and you also tend to meet people most effectively this way that happen to be with that person. 3. Go to birds of a feather (if possible). People are much more likely to want to meet other people at these things. 4. Ask everyone you can "How their conference is going?" and "What are you working on in this space?". I make it a goal to ask at least ten people this a day between the coffee station lines, lunch, happy hour. At a great conference people love talking about what they are passionate about. 5. Drop out of late night events and drinking sessions if you are just there for the music or the beer and not getting knowledge or connections out of it. This is business, not party time. If you can't do these things, yes, it is a waste of time. But if you can, I find that I can leverage all of the info and contacts out of this relentlessly at my $DAY_JOB to get a lot done the rest of the year.

lgleason 8y ago

For a while we had some quality conferences around topics such as Ruby, Javascript etc. with great technical talks that were open to anybody who had an interest and wanted to attend. These days many, if not most of them are thinly veiled political/social justice action get togethers that actively ban people who do not share in the ideology.