On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 02:23:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
Honestly, this is this first time that I've ever seen anyone try to argue that conferences like this are a bad idea.
I argued it (though I don't remember how vigorously) back when the kickstarter was done. I still think there's far more useful things we could have spent that money on.
So, I literally just got home - as in about 20 minutes ago - from a work trip, an organization-wide retreat that consumed this whole week (and btw a LOT of money). I'll grant there was some value in the powerpoint presentations, but they were a tiny minority of the time.
The "talks" of this week were frequently intercut with questions, comments, arguments. The plan included various break-out sessions that mixed people across teams that don't usually mix in order to share more and see the other perspectives.
And, of course, before 9 and after 5, were the parts that most people felt were most valuable, just kinda hanging out and yes, even doing a little bit of work.
Overall, I'm actually still not sure it was worth the time and money that went into it... but there's a good case to be made that it was, even limiting it to just the 9-5 parts. But there were a few people saying they think it would have been more worth it if we cut out even more of the structure, to make the 9-5 more resemble the 5-9.
So when we criticize dconf, it is because the official time is devoted almost entirely to the most useless part of a meeting - the powerpoint presentations. (Like you could have just emailed that to me.)
And the powerpoints themselves btw are frequently trash. Really, the point of a talk like this is to market something - get people interested enough to read your book or use your project or whatever. Reading text or code off a slide is really pretty pointless, again, you could have just emailed that to me.
But anyway, if we are going to get people together, why not focus on the together aspects? Instead of having a traditional talk, try doing 5 minutes of talk to market interest in the idea, followed by 20 minutes of break-out interactive groups to collaboratively explore it, followed by conference share-outs and questions from those groups to the whole. And mix up the groups too. We did a fair amount of this at my work thing this week and I actually thought it worked fairly well. I actually rarely even had my computer out all week - we can youtube and email and IRC some other time, while in person, let's in person stuff.
Instead of having another talk immediately follow, just have some... together time. Make the lunch break 3 hours long instead of 1, so people have more of a chance to mingle and organically collaborate. You say the best part is what happens after the conference... so let's try to bring that after-conference stuff TO the conference itself!
If we're going to spend the money, let's not spend it on more powerpoints. Let's emphasize the parts you already like better, and actually focus on the unique benefits of in-person time.
