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IMO online vs in-person isn't the only comparison to make. In 2024, you also have to compare against podcasts & Youtube. Beyond simply starting your own content

IMO online vs in-person isn't the only comparison to make. In 2024, you also have to compare against podcasts & Youtube. Beyond simply starting your own content channels, there's a speaker circuit for interview format podcasts, who have the audience and logistics already nailed down. Using the author's own criteria: 1. Coordination. Podcasts solve this by fitting into various niches. Audiences self-select by topic pretty effectively. Expert speakers can easily see various proxies for audience: downloads, ratings, subscriptions, comments, etc, and review past guests and topics for matching suitability. Whereas with this conference you really have no idea about the audience size. 2. Distillation. Most podcasts I listen to are an interview between a host and a series of subject matter experts. This format substantially lowers the participation barrier for the expert: hop on a webex and chat for 60 minutes. On YouTube I think there's probably room for an "invited talks" format, like a tight ten - fifteen minutes on a topic, without the usual banter. Arguably HYTRADBOI is a concentrated version of that, but none of the videos are findable anywhere other than it's own site, and hasn't really seen traction on HN. Which brings up to... 3. Serendipity. YouTube kinda does this by default, though admittedly watching a KubeCon video is likely to recommend another KubeCon vid that was uploaded at the same time than something from a different tech conf. The author seems to lean heavily on the value of community chat but frankly, annual conference communities are kinda bad at it. Either there's too many people trying to talk to The Expert or not enough and the moderator has to beg for participation. I kinda prefer the discord / slack / IRC 24x7x365 community discussion model, where there's more incentives to help each other out versus the transactional conference window after which you will likely never see these people again.

jamii 2y ago
I agree with some of this. My experience of tech podcasts though has been that it's often the same old people being interviewed, and that a 60 minute interview is often less interesting than a 10 minute talk where the speaker spent a bunch of time thinking about how to explain a subject. The latter is definitely more work, but I've had no problem finding speakers. Outside of tech, I've seen a few podcasts avoid this pattern. The host of https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/ https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/ is really good at picking interesting speakers, preparing questions, ans gently but persistently pushing back when they try to gloss over a weak point in their argument. I'd love to listen to a tech version of that podcast. Not being on youtube might be a mistake. I definitely don't want to use youtube for the conference itself because I don't want attendees to have to sit through ads. But maybe I should mirror to youtube afterwards. I'll think about it. The chat at the last hytradboi was pretty dense. That may have been down to having quite a high ratio of experts in the audience though. I'm not sure if that will continue to be the case. I have mixed experiences with discords. The persistence is much better for community building, but in big discords it's rare to have an actual conversation because everyone is only half paying attention. The ones that do feel interesting are again the ones with a high ratio of experts who are actively engaged in the subject. Or small invite-only discords that also hold regular mini-confs, which is maybe a kind of sweet spot. I'm definitely not tied to running a conference. Last time was kind of a whim, but people enjoyed it and wanted to do it again. So this post is less an argument in favor of conferences and more me trying to figure out what I accidentally did right so I can do more of it.
- jldugger 2y ago
  > I definitely don't want to use youtube for the conference itself because I don't want attendees to have to sit through ads. Does Youtube show ads if you disable monetization? I feel like most conference presentation uploads don't have ads, but I also switched to YT premium last year and maybe I'm just misremembering.
  - jamii 2y ago
    It's definitely possible to get rid of them but: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/updates-to-youtubes-terms-of-service/ https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/updates-to-youtubes-ter... > ads can now appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), and we will begin gradually placing ads on brand safe videos You have to be eligible for ads and sign up for an ad account in order to turn ads off on your own videos. Youtube also often shows ads if they misdetect part of the video as copyrighted material, which seems to happen more and more often.

jamii 2y ago

I agree with some of this. My experience of tech podcasts though has been that it's often the same old people being interviewed, and that a 60 minute interview is often less interesting than a 10 minute talk where the speaker spent a bunch of time thinking about how to explain a subject. The latter is definitely more work, but I've had no problem finding speakers. Outside of tech, I've seen a few podcasts avoid this pattern. The host of https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/ https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/ is really good at picking interesting speakers, preparing questions, ans gently but persistently pushing back when they try to gloss over a weak point in their argument. I'd love to listen to a tech version of that podcast. Not being on youtube might be a mistake. I definitely don't want to use youtube for the conference itself because I don't want attendees to have to sit through ads. But maybe I should mirror to youtube afterwards. I'll think about it. The chat at the last hytradboi was pretty dense. That may have been down to having quite a high ratio of experts in the audience though. I'm not sure if that will continue to be the case. I have mixed experiences with discords. The persistence is much better for community building, but in big discords it's rare to have an actual conversation because everyone is only half paying attention. The ones that do feel interesting are again the ones with a high ratio of experts who are actively engaged in the subject. Or small invite-only discords that also hold regular mini-confs, which is maybe a kind of sweet spot. I'm definitely not tied to running a conference. Last time was kind of a whim, but people enjoyed it and wanted to do it again. So this post is less an argument in favor of conferences and more me trying to figure out what I accidentally did right so I can do more of it.

jldugger 2y ago
> I definitely don't want to use youtube for the conference itself because I don't want attendees to have to sit through ads. Does Youtube show ads if you disable monetization? I feel like most conference presentation uploads don't have ads, but I also switched to YT premium last year and maybe I'm just misremembering.
- jamii 2y ago
  It's definitely possible to get rid of them but: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/updates-to-youtubes-terms-of-service/ https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/updates-to-youtubes-ter... > ads can now appear on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), and we will begin gradually placing ads on brand safe videos You have to be eligible for ads and sign up for an ad account in order to turn ads off on your own videos. Youtube also often shows ads if they misdetect part of the video as copyrighted material, which seems to happen more and more often.