3 ms·

I wonder how people feel about making other aspects of their lives remote. Attending remote conferences? How about remote vacations? Remote schooling for their

I wonder how people feel about making other aspects of their lives remote. Attending remote conferences? How about remote vacations? Remote schooling for their kids?

sylens 4y ago
Being able to watch conference talks on a livestream without traveling to them has been one of the best parts of the pandemic for me
- asdff 4y ago
  There have been a number of conferences I've missed this year because they returned to in person. Sorry, I'm in it for a few talks, I'm not uprooting my week to fly to Portland and hunt for accommodations. A big slap in the face when they don't even offer recorded sessions online. Like, if the conference is about sharing knowledge with the world, don't you want to let the world access that knowledge?
  - mrcartmeneses 4y ago
    A slap in the face? Do you want them to put out free content that took a lot of money to co-ordinate and produce or do you want them to spend a lot of money setting up a paywall for access that very few people will buy?
    - seydor 4y ago
      academic conferences are not like that
    - Spivak 4y ago
      All these conferences have corporate sponsors and paid-for sessions by their employees as sales and recruiting tools. The content should be freely accessible, your ticket buys you renting out the conference space and food.
      - tcmart14 4y ago
        I bet for most of these conferences, those costs are rounding errors in the grand scheme. When Microsoft has Microsoft build, the cost of the space and food is nothing compared to the return they are going to get from companies who turn around a pour money into azure because of what they demonstrated at the conference. Same with other companies. The cases where this probably isn't true are going to be the conferences like Debconf or BSDConf. Mind you, these conferences have been hosting all their sessions on youtube for years.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  This part has been great. Unfortunately "networking" at remote conferences has been terrible. Most of my conferences are predominantly about networking, so overall it's been a net negative.
  - sylens 4y ago
    I agree about that. I think a nice balance would be localized meetups to watch the conference or an after hours event where you can discuss the content of the talks over a pint or hitting a few golf balls or something.
- wink 4y ago
  Online conferences have been a complete bust for me. They're on par with IRC or forums, background noise with bursts of activity. I loved going to conferences because the setting seems to often attract people that exactly are not the always-on-always-busy people, and you can go from tech talk to chitchatting back to tech talk. Also it was always a good excuse to visit another city and maybe add a day of sightseeing, or just break the habits the of every day work. I miss in-person conferences and I don't see myself participating in a lot of online ones. You have all the problems of bad cameras, bad microphones, bad remote conferencing software. Totally willing to accept these in order to save 30-90 minutes of commuting every day, and you can get yourself suited in your team... but not willing to accept that for twice a year events that used to be awesome and fun. Guess I have to clarify that I'm 95% happily WFH since March 2020 and I see no problems, given the right team and circumstances. I'm not one of these super extroverted people, but I do love conferences.
fdw 4y ago
I'm not sure what you mean to achieve by this comment. Do you want to imply that working remotely is the same as "remote vacations", and so people are hypocrits for only wanting one of these but not the other? But if you are serious about your question, please look at the context of each of these: Vacations are often defined by being in a different place. Working, however, is defined through achieving some result - for IT work, there is no necessary, physical "location" attribute. And if they have different relationships to a physical location, it isn't fair to compare them as if they did.
thiht 4y ago
What’s your point?
seydor 4y ago
Neuromatch is a conference and "summer" online school that was created due to the pandemic. It is spectacular, with thousands of lectures and hours of teaching online. It has now become an organization > https://neuromatch.io/ https://neuromatch.io/

I wonder how people feel about making other aspects of their lives remote. Attending remote conferences? How about remote vacations? Remote schooling for their kids?

sylens 4y ago

Being able to watch conference talks on a livestream without traveling to them has been one of the best parts of the pandemic for me

asdff 4y ago
There have been a number of conferences I've missed this year because they returned to in person. Sorry, I'm in it for a few talks, I'm not uprooting my week to fly to Portland and hunt for accommodations. A big slap in the face when they don't even offer recorded sessions online. Like, if the conference is about sharing knowledge with the world, don't you want to let the world access that knowledge?
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  A slap in the face? Do you want them to put out free content that took a lot of money to co-ordinate and produce or do you want them to spend a lot of money setting up a paywall for access that very few people will buy?
  - seydor 4y ago
    academic conferences are not like that
  - Spivak 4y ago
    All these conferences have corporate sponsors and paid-for sessions by their employees as sales and recruiting tools. The content should be freely accessible, your ticket buys you renting out the conference space and food.
    - tcmart14 4y ago
      I bet for most of these conferences, those costs are rounding errors in the grand scheme. When Microsoft has Microsoft build, the cost of the space and food is nothing compared to the return they are going to get from companies who turn around a pour money into azure because of what they demonstrated at the conference. Same with other companies. The cases where this probably isn't true are going to be the conferences like Debconf or BSDConf. Mind you, these conferences have been hosting all their sessions on youtube for years.
gnicholas 4y ago
This part has been great. Unfortunately "networking" at remote conferences has been terrible. Most of my conferences are predominantly about networking, so overall it's been a net negative.
- sylens 4y ago
  I agree about that. I think a nice balance would be localized meetups to watch the conference or an after hours event where you can discuss the content of the talks over a pint or hitting a few golf balls or something.
wink 4y ago
Online conferences have been a complete bust for me. They're on par with IRC or forums, background noise with bursts of activity. I loved going to conferences because the setting seems to often attract people that exactly are not the always-on-always-busy people, and you can go from tech talk to chitchatting back to tech talk. Also it was always a good excuse to visit another city and maybe add a day of sightseeing, or just break the habits the of every day work. I miss in-person conferences and I don't see myself participating in a lot of online ones. You have all the problems of bad cameras, bad microphones, bad remote conferencing software. Totally willing to accept these in order to save 30-90 minutes of commuting every day, and you can get yourself suited in your team... but not willing to accept that for twice a year events that used to be awesome and fun. Guess I have to clarify that I'm 95% happily WFH since March 2020 and I see no problems, given the right team and circumstances. I'm not one of these super extroverted people, but I do love conferences.

fdw 4y ago

I'm not sure what you mean to achieve by this comment. Do you want to imply that working remotely is the same as "remote vacations", and so people are hypocrits for only wanting one of these but not the other? But if you are serious about your question, please look at the context of each of these: Vacations are often defined by being in a different place. Working, however, is defined through achieving some result - for IT work, there is no necessary, physical "location" attribute. And if they have different relationships to a physical location, it isn't fair to compare them as if they did.

thiht 4y ago

What’s your point?

seydor 4y ago

Neuromatch is a conference and "summer" online school that was created due to the pandemic. It is spectacular, with thousands of lectures and hours of teaching online. It has now become an organization > https://neuromatch.io/ https://neuromatch.io/