On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 09:51:58 UTC, Nicholas Wilson
wrote:
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 08:08:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 06:54:26 UTC, Russel Winder
wrote:
Others have cited Rust and Go. I shall cite Python, Ruby,
Groovy, Java, Kotlin, Clojure, Haskell, all of which have
thriving programming language oriented conferences all over
the world. Then there are the Linux conferences, GStreamer
conferences, conference all about specific technologies
rather than programming languages. And of course there is
ACCU. There is much more evidence that the more or less
traditional conference format serves a purpose for people,
and are remaining very successful. Many of these conferences
make good profits, so are commercially viable.
That's all well and good, but none of this addresses the key
points of whether there are less tech conferences being done
and whether they make sense in this day and age. There are
still people riding in horse and carriage, that doesn't mean
it's still a good idea. :)
You say that like some superior technology exists to replace
the conference.
It does, read the first link I gave in my first post above.
Yes, DConf may benefit from tutorials, workshops, BoFs,
whatever, but the value it brings to the community is very real.
It may bring some value, but that's not the question: the
question is whether we could get more value out of the
alternatives, particularly at a cheaper cost? The fact that you
and others keep avoiding this question suggests you know the
answer.
Thus I reject the fundamental premise of your position that
the conference format is dying off. It isn't. The proof is
there.
Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying.
Hardly. IME there are two kinds of conferences (or maybe they
form a spectrum, whatever) academic and industrial. Academic is
going nowhere, research needs presenting, organisation of
collaboration needs to happen.
Research conferences are irrelevant. I don't pay attention to
them and the fact that the Haskell link Atila gave above says
their conferences are for presenting research is one big reason
why almost nobody uses that PL in industry.
Industrial, there is project coordination, employment
prospectus, business opportunities, why do you think companies
sponsor conferences? They get their moneys worth out of it.
Clearly not in the iOS community, and according to a commenter in
my second link above, the Javascript community in his country, as
the number of tech conferences is going down a lot. It is my
impression that this is true across the board for pretty much
every tech community, but I presented that iOS link because he
actually tallies the evidence. That is a canary in the coal mine
for the conference format, that the largest burgeoning dev market
on the planet has a dying conference scene.
Perhaps you as an individual believe that they are not cost
effective for you, fine.
As I keep repeating, this is not about me. I'm pointing out
trends for _most_ devs, my own preferences are irrelevant.
But consider that the foundation reimburses speakers and I
personally would be very interested to hear what you have been
doing with Andoird/ARM and I'm sure many others would as well,
the question becomes: is it worth your time?
I don't understand what's so special about "speakers" that it
couldn't simply reimburse non-speakers that the foundation wants
at one of the decentralized locations instead. It seems like the
talk is a made-up excuse to pay for some members of the core team
to come, when the real reason is to collaborate with them. Why
not dispense with that subterfuge?
I see little value in a full talk about a port to a new platform
like Android, that is basically another linux distro with a
different libc. It's not a matter of my time, I don't think it's
worth the audience's time. I wish those organizing DConf would
focus on that more.
