On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 09:39:14 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
On 10/1/18 11:26 PM, Joakim wrote:
[snip]
I disagree.
It is not clear what you disagree with, since almost nothing you
say has any bearing on my original post. To summarize, I suggest
changing the currently talk-driven DConf format to either
1. a more decentralized collection of meetups all over the world,
where most of the talks are pre-recorded, and the focus is more
on introducing new users to the language or
2. at least ditching most of the talks at a DConf still held at a
central location, maybe keeping only a couple panel discussions
that benefit from an audience to ask questions, and spending most
of the time like the hackathon at the last DConf, ie actually
meeting in person.
Since both of these alternatives I suggest are much more about
in-person interaction, which is what you defend, and the only big
change I propose is ditching the passive in-person talks, which
you do not write a single word in your long post defending, I'm
scratching my head about what you got out of my original post.
There is much more to the conference than just a 4-day meetup
with talks. The idea that it's just the core 8-15 people with a
bunch of hangers-on is patently false. It's not about the
conversations I have with the "core" people. It's
Schveighoffer, or Atila, or Jonathan, or any of a long list of
people who are interested enough in coming. Remember these
people self-selected to invest non-trivial treasure to be
there, they are ALL worthy of conversing with.
Since both my mooted alternatives give _much more_ opportunity
for such interaction, I'm again scratching my head at your
reaction.
Is it a "mini-vaction"? Yea, sure, for my wife. For her it's a
four day shopping spree in Europe. For me it's four days of
wall-to-wall action that leaves me drop-dead exhausted at the
end of the day.
So it's the talks that provide this or the in-person interaction?
If the latter, why are you arguing against my pushing for more of
it and ditching the in-person talks?
Every time I see somebody predicting the end of "X" I roll my
eyes. I have a vivid memory of the rise of Skype and
videoconferencing in the early 2000's giving way to breathless
media reports about how said tools would kill the airlines
because people could just meet online for a trivial fraction of
the price.
People make stupid predictions all the time. Ignoring all such
"end of" predictions because many predict badly would be like
ignoring all new programming languages because 99% are bad. That
means you'd never look at D.
And yes, some came true: almost nobody programs minicomputers or
buys standalone mp3 players like the iPod anymore, compared to
how many used to at their peak.
However, it's 2018 and the airlines are reaping record profits
on the backs of business travelers (ask me how I know).
Airlines are even now flying planes with NO standard economy
seats for routes that cater specifically to business travelers
(e.g. Singapore Airlines A350-900ULR). The order books (and
stock prices) of both Airbus and Boeing are at historic highs.
You know what is much higher? Business communication through
email, video-conferencing, online source control, etc. that
completely replaced old ways of doing things like business travel
or sending physical packages. However, business travel might
still be up- I don't know as I haven't seen the stats, and you
provide nothing other than anecdotes- because all that virtual
communication might have enabled much more collaboration and
trade that also grew business travel somewhat.
There are more conferences, attendees, and business travelers
than there has ever been in history, in spite of the great
technological leaps in videoconferencing technology in the past
two decades.
The market has spoken. Reports of the death of
business/conference travel have been greatly exaggerated.
You are conflating two completely different markets here,
business versus conference travel. Regarding conferences, your
experience contradicts that of the iOS devs in the post I linked
and the one he links as evidence, where that blogger notes
several conferences that have shut down. In your field, it is my
understanding that MS has been paring back and consolidating
their conferences too, though I don't follow MS almost at all.
The reason for this is fundamental to human psychology and, as
such, is unlikely to change in the future. Humans are social
animals, and no matter how hard we have tried, nothing has been
able to replace the face-to-face meeting for getting things
done. Be it the conversations we have over beers after the
talks, or the epic number of PR's that come out the hackathon,
or even mobbing the speaker after a talk.
It is funny that you say this on a forum where we're
communicating despite never having met "face-to-face," discussing
a language where 99.999% of the work is done online by people who
don't need any "face-to-face" meetings to get "things done." :)
Also, my suggestions are about enabling more face-to-face time,
not less, so there's that too.
Additionally, the conference serves other "soft" purposes.
Specifically, marketing and education. The conference provides
legitimacy to DLang and the Foundation both by it's mere
existence and as a venue for companies using DLang to share
their support (via sponsorships) or announce their products (as
seen by the Weka.io announcement at DConf 2018) which further
enhances the marketing of both the product being launched and
DLang itself.
Don't make me laugh: what part of this marketing/legitimization
couldn't be done at either of the two alternatives I gave?
I have spoken to Walter about DConf numerous times. He has
nothing against, and indeed actively encourages, local meetups.
But they do not serve the purpose that DConf does. My
understanding from my conversations with Walter is that the
primary purpose of DConf is to provide a venue that is open to
anyone interested to come together and discuss all things D. He
specifically does not want something that is only limited to
the "core" members. As this suggestion runs precisely counter
to the primary stated purpose of DConf it is unlikely to gain
significant traction from the D-BDFL.
Wrong, both of my suggestions fulfil that purpose _better_. What
they don't do is limit attendance to those who have the passion
_and_ can afford the time and money to travel 2-20 hours away to
a single location, just so they can get all the in-person
benefits you claim.
Yes, it is expensive, but in all the years I've attended, I
have not once regretted spending the money. And indeed, coming
from the west coast of the US, I have one of the more expensive
(and physically taxing) trips to make. I know a number of
people who found jobs in D through DConf, would that not make
the conference worth it to them?
How many people got jobs versus how many attended? Would that
money to get 100 people in the same room seven times have been
much better spent on other things? Run the cost-benefit analysis
and I think it's obvious my two suggestions come out better. At
best, you can maybe say that wasn't the case at the first DConf
in 2007, when high-speed internet wasn't as pervasive and Youtube
was only two years old, but not for every DConf since.
Something is only expensive if you derive less value from it
than it costs. And for many people here, I understand if the
cost-benefit analysis does not favor DConf. But calling for an
end to DConf simply because it doesn't meet someones
cost-benefit ratio is inconsiderate to the rest of us who do
find the benefit.
I don't care about your personal cost-benefit ratio. I care about
the cost-benefit analysis to the language and ecosystem as a
whole.
Nobody is making you go, and, since you already get everything
you want from the YouTube video uploads during the conference,
why do you care if the rest of us "waste" our money on
attending the conference? That is our choice. Not yours.
Try reading the older forum thread I originally linked, Jonathan
and I have already been over all this. D is a collective effort,
and it's a colossal waste of the community's efforts to spend all
that time and money on the dying conference format that DConf has
been using.
It signals to me and many others that D is not a serious effort
to get used as a language, but simply a bunch of hobbyists who
want to have "fun" meeting up at an exotic locale once a year, in
between hacking on an experimental language that they're fine if
nobody else uses.
If that's D's focus, fine, just own it. Put it on the front page:
"This is a hobbyist language, please don't bother using it in
production. We are much more focused on where we can vacation
together next year than trying to spread awareness and improve
the language."
Regardless of whether you post that notice or not, that is what
continuing the current DConf format advertises, given that others
have already been moving away from it.
Note: Limiting anything to "core" members is a guaranteed way
to create a mono-culture and would inevitably lead to the
stagnation of D.
Good, then you agree with me that we should avoid such stagnation
by broadening DConf to be a bunch of meetups in many more cities?
Which is why anybody can post to all NG's, even the internals
NG.
This is not actually true. There are two newsgroups that seem to
have that designation, which show up separately as `internals`
and `dmd` at forum.dlang.org, and the latter doesn't allow me to
post to it without registering somewhere, unlike the rest of the
web forums.
Guess what the current DConf format does to most people who don't
attend too...
I'm done responding to these irrational responses that ignore
everything I wrote. I'll just link them to this long debunking
from now on.
