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In my experience, conferences are a very nice to have, unique experiences, interesting people. But productivity? No. When it comes to being productive, I get

In my experience, conferences are a very nice to have, unique experiences, interesting people. But productivity? No. When it comes to being productive, I get far more done sitting at my desk at home. I totally understand that conferences are a really nice thing to go to for contributors. But its more a sort of compensation for unpaied work. At some point, you are invited to go to a foreign country, and you get a sort of geek-holiday. Thats nice. But I never considered it essential for my contributions. In fact, my impression actually turned around when the "bring your children" thing started to be normal. I vividly remember a few talks at DebConf where I was not able to follow the speaker because of verbal small children in the talk room. Since then, I really really prefer to listen to talk recordings at home.

baby 5y ago
I always find conferences to be a real boost for productivity personally. You always come out full of ideas and papers to read or implement. The motivation and passion of others can be contaminating as well.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > You always come out full of ideas and papers to read or implement. is it really what GIMP needs though ?
  - prokoudine 5y ago
    We don't go to face-to-face meeting for papers. We come for live interaction, major release level decision-making etc. We tried video conferencing a few times. It's fun but hard to organize (timezones), too messy, and time-consuming. So are chats.
johannes1234321 5y ago
> productivity? No. When it comes to being productive, I get far more done sitting at my desk at home. It depends. For creating production-quality code certainly true. But for design discussions, feature priotisation etc. an in person meeting often is better. Also such events /can/ lead to interesting results from hacking sessions where people collaboratively spin out ideas and code stuff. That code typically needs cleanup, but can spark ideas. Way home from a conference for me often was the time where I had creative new ideas :)

baby 5y ago

I always find conferences to be a real boost for productivity personally. You always come out full of ideas and papers to read or implement. The motivation and passion of others can be contaminating as well.

jcelerier 5y ago
> You always come out full of ideas and papers to read or implement. is it really what GIMP needs though ?
- prokoudine 5y ago
  We don't go to face-to-face meeting for papers. We come for live interaction, major release level decision-making etc. We tried video conferencing a few times. It's fun but hard to organize (timezones), too messy, and time-consuming. So are chats.

johannes1234321 5y ago

> productivity? No. When it comes to being productive, I get far more done sitting at my desk at home. It depends. For creating production-quality code certainly true. But for design discussions, feature priotisation etc. an in person meeting often is better. Also such events /can/ lead to interesting results from hacking sessions where people collaboratively spin out ideas and code stuff. That code typically needs cleanup, but can spark ideas. Way home from a conference for me often was the time where I had creative new ideas :)