On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:32:13 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Friday, June 29, 2018 10:50:52 Joakim via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
I coincidentally just read this blog post, that summarizes a
lot of my thoughts against conferences and meetups:
https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
Maybe a good first step would be a mostly online DConf geared
towards Asian timezones? I could help out with arranging those
online talks.
That article seems to pre-suppose that the only benefit from
conferences is the talks. A _lot_ of good comes from having a
bunch of the key developers in the same place for a few days
where they can talk in person.
It "pre-supposes" nothing, points like yours are specifically
addressed:
"But all of that media can’t really replace the socializing,
networking, and simply fun that happened as part of (or sometimes
despite) the conference formula."
Some communities (e.g. the BSD community) even have developer
meetings connected to conferences where they specifically put a
bunch of developers in a room together to discuss stuff. The
talks are valuable, but in some ways, those face-to-face
interactions are worth far more than the talks. So, while
there's certainly value in finding ways to get more talks
online, I think that it would be a huge mistake to try and push
for online stuff to replace physical conferences where
developers actually interact with each other in person.
I don't, I think it would be a huge improvement. There are very
few benefits to getting people together in person in our
hyperconnected age, and while "key developers in the same place"
may be one of those, that excludes almost everybody else at DConf.
Honestly, getting everybody together in a room and having them
stare straight ahead at a speaker is a blindingly stupid waste of
time these days. The only advantage of everybody being together
in a room is the heightened communication bandwidth, and then you
all sit next to each other staring straight ahead silently. The
conference format made sense when pretty much everybody attending
didn't have high-speed internet and connected video displays
decades ago, but they make no sense now, as that blog post notes.
