Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 14:20:08 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote: On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:59:32 UTC, Joakim wrote: 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. You mean the one that says "I don’t know how to fix conferences"? Yes, obviously that would be the one that explains that superior online tech is what's killing the conference, before he tries to think of some way to keep the good parts around, as I'm doing too. 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. That really depends on the objective function you mean by "more value". "social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube" are all well and good but they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever) and technical expertise in the subject at hand. Huh, that's funny, because that's exactly what all my and Adam's suggestions are geared around: spending valuable in-person time communicating in "high-bandwidth low latency," rather than the low-bandwidth, outdated in-person talk format that is done much better online. It's almost like you agree with me. :) 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. I concede that I find PL theory useless, but not all academic conferences are PL theory, and I don't think that the potential scope for more academic talks of DConf is limited to PL theory. Novel applications of D in anything from physics to bioinformatics to optimisations based on immutability to DSELs enabled by D's meta programming are all possible in an academic setting. Sure, academic applications of D might be interesting, but that and most any talk would be better pre-recorded and watched at home. The only exception would be panels that require audience interaction, which is why I called those out in the linked forum thread. 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. I don't doubt those numbers and perhaps the other forms of communication do lessen the need for multiple conferences per year, but there is a large difference from many to one compared to one to zero, in person communication cannot be easily replaced. It's almost as though you don't understand the Engligh language: my suggestions are all about having _more_ in-person communication. Did you even read my suggestions? Industrial sponsorship is definitely real, take a look at the side column of http://llvm.org/devmtg/2018-10/ which I went to and talked to the authors of https://github.com/wsmoses/Tapir-LLVM for potentially targeting OpenMP and other parallel runtimes with dcompute, talked to the people developing the SPIR-V target of LLVM, the list goes on. I'm going to EuroLLVM (Brussels) to continue those conversations, followed straight away by ACCU (Bristol) to give a talk about meta programming with D in the context of developing and using DCompute. Then a few weeks later I'll be going to DConf for many reasons but principally to coordinate development, deal with the gripes that have accumulated. I'll probably return home via Boston for IWOCL (OpenCL). Heh, you're a conference junkie. :) I don't understand what your first statement has to do with anything else you wrote: what "industrial sponsorship" came out of any of this conference-hopping? You mention none. In any case, all my suggestions are about increasing outreach and communication, which would hopefully lead to _more_ such sponsorship. 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,
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On 12/23/2018 3:40 PM, Rubn wrote: I'll take that to assume you aren't paying for your own ticket, your own hotel expenses, etc. I wonder if you would feel differently about this if you had to pay for all these out of your own pocket. I paid my own expenses for DConf. So did many of the speakers (or the company they worked for). > I can only imagine what else could improve with those additional funds. Many people have donated generously to the D Foundation. The tickets sales do not cover the entire cost of the conference, the rest is made up for by the Foundation and the sponsor(s). We've kept the ticket prices low to enable more people to come. If there were profits, they'd accrue to the D Foundation, not me. If you have specific things you want funded, you can donate with the proviso that the donation go to that thing.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:07:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: BTW, another point for the presentations is that we cover the air fare and hotel expenses for the presenters. Quite a lot of people have been able to attend because of this. It's our way of giving a little bit back to strong contributors. I'll take that to assume you aren't paying for your own ticket, your own hotel expenses, etc. I wonder if you would feel differently about this if you had to pay for all these out of your own pocket. I'd be curious of the total expenses for DConf, all of the funds could be used to hire more developers. The pull request situation has improves significantly, I can only imagine what else could improve with those additional funds. I think it'd fair to outline how much does end up being spent on DConf and do a logical comparison of money being spent relatively. I know how you feel about owing people of the your community nothing though, so I guess it's a nice dream. Without those statistics to include with the argument it's pointless to argue with you, might as well be arguing whether unicorns exist.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On 12/22/18 12:22 PM, Joakim wrote: On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 17:13:06 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 16:57:10 UTC, Joakim wrote: I'm not trying to discuss it with you or the community. I'm asking the D team who're making this decision why it's being made, despite all the reasoning in that thread, and reiterating that it's a bad move. I suspect they're not thinking this through, but they can speak for themselves. The decision was made because your reasoning failed to convince anyone involved in the planning that maintaining the current format of DConf is a mistake. Nor do they agree with you that it's a bad move. We like the current format and see no need to change it at this time. I see, so you admit no reasoning was involved on your part? Because you present none, either there or here. Huh? It's their decision, not yours. Even if the decision has no reason at all, it's still theirs. What is the problem? Start your own D "conference competitor" if you think you can do better. If you would like to carry on another debate about this, please open another thread in thhe General forum. This one isn't the place for it. Thanks! As I just noted, I don't care to "debate" it with people who make no arguments. Instead, I'm asking you or whoever made this horrible decision why it's being made. Nobody cares to debate something that has already been scheduled and planned, the time to bring up concerns was earlier, when you brought it up before. But that failed to convince, now it's decided, time to move on. If it's such a great idea, that should be an easy case to make, compared to the alternatives given. Yet all I get is a bunch of stone-walling, suggesting no reasoning was actually involved, just blindly aping others and the past. It is easy, for those who have attended conferences and like them -- they work well. All past dconfs are shining examples. Just drop it and move on to something else. You lost the battle for this one, it's no longer up for discussion. -Steve
LDC "nightly" or latest CI build
Hi all, The dlang.org install.sh script is now able to install the latest successful CI build of LDC master, called "ldc-latest-ci" ! That should make it easier for you to test the newest of the newest of LDC master. On Travis, you can use "d: ldc-latest-ci" to test your project with it. On d.godbolt.org, you can find it as ldc latest CI (dmd nightly is there too). Note: the CI build includes assertions for extra testing, which means that the compiler will be much slower than normal releases. Cheers, Johan
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 at 16:05, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > > I'm not sure how a talk is supposed to inspire anything > substantive _before_ you've heard it, and pre-recorded talks > watched at home would fill the same purpose after. > No one is interested in watching pre-recorded talks. I think I've said this before regarding the failed experiment at GHM. > Perhaps this is a generation gap, as I see that you and Russel > are a couple decades older than me, so let me give my > perspective. I've probably watched a week or two of recorded tech > talks online over the last year, and maybe a couple hours in > person. Invariably, I find myself wishing for a skip-ahead button > on those in-person talks, like I have for the online videos. ;) > > I suspect there are many more like me these days than you two. > Nope, I reckon I'm of your generation, and even I don't understand you. :-) If you don't like human interaction, that's your problem. Don't tell others that they shouldn't meet up once yearly to talk about subjects that interests them greatly. Meanwhile, I'll be having fun at Dconf next year... -- Iain
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 at 15:40, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > > On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 14:20:08 UTC, Nicholas Wilson > wrote: > > they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth > > low latency personal communication with all the people that > > have an interest (business, technical, whatever) and technical > > expertise in the subject at hand. > > Then why don't we tweak the schedule to maximize the time spent > on this stuff?! When pressed, everyone says their favorite part > is what happens outside the talks... so I say we bring more of > that inside the talk time too. > > I'd be pretty happy if we just experimented with more interactive > stuff during the talks, like I proposed in my last message. We do > that kind of stuff at my day job in-person retreats and it is > pretty successful. (Though I'd prefer to go further away, this > acts as a kind of compromise position.) Perhaps it would be nice to have two tracks running. One with talks, the other with BoFs, so you can switch between talk / group conversation depending on which interests you. -- Iain
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:07:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: On 12/22/2018 10:20 PM, Joakim wrote: Honestly, yours are routinely the worst presentations at DConf. Your strength as a presenter is when you dig deeply into a bunch of technical detail or present some new technical paradigm, similar to Andrei. Yet, your DConf keynotes usually go the exact opposite route and go very lightly over not very much at all. Eh, I went pretty far into the DIP 1000 material. That one had more technical examples, but I didn't think it was very well-motivated and could probably have had more detail. My feeling is that you save your best stuff for your NWCPP talks and present the baby versions at DConf. 1) Ditch in-person presentations for pre-recorded talks that people watch on their own time. Getting everybody in the same room in London to silently watch talks together is a horrible waste, that only made sense before we all had high-speed internet-connected TVs and smartphones with good cameras. Do a four-day hackathon instead, ie mostly collaboration, not passive viewing. It's very different listening to a presentation live rather than pre-recorded. There are the before and after interactions they inspire. I'm not sure how a talk is supposed to inspire anything substantive _before_ you've heard it, and pre-recorded talks watched at home would fill the same purpose after. Perhaps this is a generation gap, as I see that you and Russel are a couple decades older than me, so let me give my perspective. I've probably watched a week or two of recorded tech talks online over the last year, and maybe a couple hours in person. Invariably, I find myself wishing for a skip-ahead button on those in-person talks, like I have for the online videos. ;) I suspect there are many more like me these days than you two. 2) Rather than doing a central DConf that most cannot justify attending, do several locations, eg in the cities the core team already lives in, like Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Hong Kong, etc. This makes it cost-effective for many more people to attend, and since you'll have ditched the in-person tech talks, spend the time introducing the many more attendees to the language or have those who already know it work on the language/libraries, ie something like the current DConf hackathon. London is the most cost-effective destination for most D team members. For distributed meetings, there have been several D meetups that do what you suggest. While fun and valuable, they're not a replacement for DConf. I have never heard of a meetup doing what I suggest, ie an all-day D event with almost no in-person talks, possibly co-ordinated with other cities. I think this would be _much better_ for D than DConf. 3) Get the core team together as a separate event, either as an offline retreat or online video conference or both. I know you guys need to meet once in awhile, but it makes no sense to spend most of that in-person time at DConf staring at talks that could be viewed online later. If you ever came to one, you might see it differently. I'm not a member of the core team, so I'm not sure how that's relevant. If you just mean that I could observe how the core team is getting a lot of value out of in-person talks, I call BS. While I find it questionable to say that they couldn't easily find and recruit those people online, given that D is primarly an online project where most everything and everyone is easily available online, I see no reason why any of the changes above would stop that. There's a very clear connection between DConf and successful collaborations with industry and D developers. Why mess with success? For the chance of much more success? I'm sure there have been some fruitful collaborations and hiring at DConf. I'm saying there would likely be _even more_ with my suggestions. It seems clear to me that you, at the very least, have not engaged with the links and ideas I've been providing about why the current DConf format is broken. Your opinions would have more weight if (1) you've ever attended a DConf Perhaps but since I haven't been, you could presumably articulate what you find so great about DConf that contradicts my opinions, but you mention nothing here and your reasons elsewhere aren't too worthwhile. and (2) can point to successful instantiations of your theories. What do you consider a "theory" above: that you could have better outreach at several locations or that pre-recorded talks watched at home are a better use of valuable in-person time? I don't think that's theorizing, it's well-accepted by most everyone who knows these subjects. I started off by pointing to documented evidence of conferences going down, and popular bloggers and people who track this stuff talking about how online talks have replaced them, so it is well-known that this trend away from the old conference format is underway. I
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 14:20:08 UTC, Nicholas Wilson wrote: they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever) and technical expertise in the subject at hand. Then why don't we tweak the schedule to maximize the time spent on this stuff?! When pressed, everyone says their favorite part is what happens outside the talks... so I say we bring more of that inside the talk time too. I'd be pretty happy if we just experimented with more interactive stuff during the talks, like I proposed in my last message. We do that kind of stuff at my day job in-person retreats and it is pretty successful. (Though I'd prefer to go further away, this acts as a kind of compromise position.)
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 10:59:32 UTC, Joakim wrote: 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. You mean the one that says "I don’t know how to fix conferences"? 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. That really depends on the objective function you mean by "more value". "social networks, Slack groups, podcasts, and YouTube" are all well and good but they cannot compare (as in apples to oranges) to high-bandwidth low latency personal communication with all the people that have an interest (business, technical, whatever) and technical expertise in the subject at hand. 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. I concede that I find PL theory useless, but not all academic conferences are PL theory, and I don't think that the potential scope for more academic talks of DConf is limited to PL theory. Novel applications of D in anything from physics to bioinformatics to optimisations based on immutability to DSELs enabled by D's meta programming are all possible in an academic setting. 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. I don't doubt those numbers and perhaps the other forms of communication do lessen the need for multiple conferences per year, but there is a large difference from many to one compared to one to zero, in person communication cannot be easily replaced. Industrial sponsorship is definitely real, take a look at the side column of http://llvm.org/devmtg/2018-10/ which I went to and talked to the authors of https://github.com/wsmoses/Tapir-LLVM for potentially targeting OpenMP and other parallel runtimes with dcompute, talked to the people developing the SPIR-V target of LLVM, the list goes on. I'm going to EuroLLVM (Brussels) to continue those conversations, followed straight away by ACCU (Bristol) to give a talk about meta programming with D in the context of developing and using DCompute. Then a few weeks later I'll be going to DConf for many reasons but principally to coordinate development, deal with the gripes that have accumulated. I'll probably return home via Boston for IWOCL (OpenCL). 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, DConf has been growing in size every year it has been held, as have IWOCL and the LLVM conferences. I'm sure some topics for some conferences are declining, it may well even be an industry wide trend, but I'd bet good money that the new equilibrium will have conferences as a staple. my own preferences are irrelevant. I certainly hope not. 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? The talks together with the topic of the conference are what draw people to the conference and make it economically viable. It is a perfectly rational decision. If I was running a conference trying to turn a profit I'd probably get more applications for the available speaker slots => better quality speakers => more attendees => $$$. DCompute would not exist were it not for that reimbursement, as a poor student that made the
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On 12/23/2018 2:59 AM, Joakim wrote: I wish those organizing DConf would focus on that more. You're free to organize D meetups and conferences as you see fit. Heck, C++ has many conferences, run by different organizations with different ideas on how to do it. Nothing wrong with that. Even Andrei and I and some others put on our own C++ conference about 10 years ago.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
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.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On 12/23/2018 1:36 AM, Russel Winder wrote: If people want to have a DConf, it is not your position to tell them they cannot. No worries, we're full steam ahead on DConf 2019. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to it and seeing everybody.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 09:36:19 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Sun, 2018-12-23 at 08:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: […] This questioning of iOS is so removed from reality that it makes me question if you are qualified to comment on this matter at all. iOS is the largest consumer software platform that is still growing, as it's estimated to bring in twice the revenue of google's Play store (that doesn't count other Android app stores, but they wouldn't make up the gap): Fair enough I have no interest in iOS at all. But you must agree that you are clearly so far removed from the reality of putting on technical conferences generally, that you are not qualified to make assertions such as "conferences are a dead form". You could make various arguments for why they're still having less and less conferences, as my second link above listing them does. But to argue that iOS is not doing well is so ludicrous that it suggests you don't know much about these tech markets. Ludicrous is a good description of the entire situation in this thread. You are making assertions as though they are facts, working on the principle that if you shout long enough and loud enough, people will stop disagreeing. A classic technique. […] Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying. You simply don't want to admit it. This is just assertions with no data and thus is a religious position. And I know conferences are thriving, you just do not want to admit that. This seems to be a religious issue for you, with your bizzare assertions above, so I'll stop engaging with you now. No it is you that has faith in the death of conferences, I am involved in the reality of conferences being a relevant thing that people want to attend. Just because you do not want to go to conferences doesn't give you the right to try and stop others from doing so. If you are going to stop ranting on this, I think that will make a lot of people very happy. The idea of this email list is to announce things, not debate things. Also on the debating lists the idea is to have a collaborative not combative debate about things. That includes if some people want to do something they should be allowed to do it and not be harangued from the wings. If people want to have a DConf, it is not your position to tell them they cannot. Your statements above are so ridiculous that they refute themselves, no need for me to do so. :) As for your final ridiculous characterization that I'm "ranting/haranguing" people on this matter, I have only ever presented evidence and reasons for why the DConf format doesn't make sense. If that's "ranting" to you, it's clear you don't understand reasoned debate. In this thread, all I've asked is why all those reasons were ignored, as Mike never gave any arguments for why those reasons aren't worth heeding. Walter's response suggests he never read my suggestions or reasons in the first place. Nobody is telling "anyone they cannot," as though any of us have that power. Rather, I'm trying to figure out how this decision was made, in the face of all the reasons given and almost none given for maintaining the status quo.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On 12/22/2018 10:20 PM, Joakim wrote: Honestly, yours are routinely the worst presentations at DConf. Your strength as a presenter is when you dig deeply into a bunch of technical detail or present some new technical paradigm, similar to Andrei. Yet, your DConf keynotes usually go the exact opposite route and go very lightly over not very much at all. Eh, I went pretty far into the DIP 1000 material. 1) Ditch in-person presentations for pre-recorded talks that people watch on their own time. Getting everybody in the same room in London to silently watch talks together is a horrible waste, that only made sense before we all had high-speed internet-connected TVs and smartphones with good cameras. Do a four-day hackathon instead, ie mostly collaboration, not passive viewing. It's very different listening to a presentation live rather than pre-recorded. There are the before and after interactions they inspire. 2) Rather than doing a central DConf that most cannot justify attending, do several locations, eg in the cities the core team already lives in, like Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Hong Kong, etc. This makes it cost-effective for many more people to attend, and since you'll have ditched the in-person tech talks, spend the time introducing the many more attendees to the language or have those who already know it work on the language/libraries, ie something like the current DConf hackathon. London is the most cost-effective destination for most D team members. For distributed meetings, there have been several D meetups that do what you suggest. While fun and valuable, they're not a replacement for DConf. 3) Get the core team together as a separate event, either as an offline retreat or online video conference or both. I know you guys need to meet once in awhile, but it makes no sense to spend most of that in-person time at DConf staring at talks that could be viewed online later. If you ever came to one, you might see it differently. While I find it questionable to say that they couldn't easily find and recruit those people online, given that D is primarly an online project where most everything and everyone is easily available online, I see no reason why any of the changes above would stop that. There's a very clear connection between DConf and successful collaborations with industry and D developers. Why mess with success? It seems clear to me that you, at the very least, have not engaged with the links and ideas I've been providing about why the current DConf format is broken. Your opinions would have more weight if (1) you've ever attended a DConf and (2) can point to successful instantiations of your theories. My fundamental point is that the current DConf conference format is an outdated relic, that made sense decades ago when getting everybody together in a room in Berlin was a fantastic way to get everybody connected. With the ready availability of high-speed internet and video displays to everybody who can afford to pay the registration fee and go to London, that hoary conference format needs to be rethought for the internet age. I have no problem with anybody disagreeing with my suggestions or the reasoning behind them, but I find it flabbergasting for anyone to suggest, as Mike has above, that the old conference format still makes sense, especially given the documented evidence of it declining. People *like* conferences. You can buy a Led Zeppelin CD or spend to see them live and enjoy it with the crowd. Maybe you'll go backstage and meet & greet. Which would you rather do? BTW, another point for the presentations is that we cover the air fare and hotel expenses for the presenters. Quite a lot of people have been able to attend because of this. It's our way of giving a little bit back to strong contributors.
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
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. Yes, DConf may benefit from tutorials, workshops, BoFs, whatever, but the value it brings to the community is very real. 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. Industrial, there is project coordination, employment prospectus, business opportunities, why do you think companies sponsor conferences? They get their moneys worth out of it. Perhaps you as an individual believe that they are not cost effective for you, fine. 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?
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sun, 2018-12-23 at 08:08 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: […] > > This questioning of iOS is so removed from reality that it makes > me question if you are qualified to comment on this matter at > all. iOS is the largest consumer software platform that is still > growing, as it's estimated to bring in twice the revenue of > google's Play store (that doesn't count other Android app stores, > but they wouldn't make up the gap): Fair enough I have no interest in iOS at all. But you must agree that you are clearly so far removed from the reality of putting on technical conferences generally, that you are not qualified to make assertions such as "conferences are a dead form". > You could make various arguments for why they're still having > less and less conferences, as my second link above listing them > does. But to argue that iOS is not doing well is so ludicrous > that it suggests you don't know much about these tech markets. Ludicrous is a good description of the entire situation in this thread. You are making assertions as though they are facts, working on the principle that if you shout long enough and loud enough, people will stop disagreeing. A classic technique. […] > Yes, the proof is there: the conference is dying. You simply > don't want to admit it. This is just assertions with no data and thus is a religious position. And I know conferences are thriving, you just do not want to admit that. > This seems to be a religious issue for you, with your bizzare > assertions above, so I'll stop engaging with you now. No it is you that has faith in the death of conferences, I am involved in the reality of conferences being a relevant thing that people want to attend. Just because you do not want to go to conferences doesn't give you the right to try and stop others from doing so. If you are going to stop ranting on this, I think that will make a lot of people very happy. The idea of this email list is to announce things, not debate things. Also on the debating lists the idea is to have a collaborative not combative debate about things. That includes if some people want to do something they should be allowed to do it and not be harangued from the wings. If people want to have a DConf, it is not your position to tell them they cannot. -- Russel. === Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077 London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition
On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 06:54:26 UTC, Russel Winder wrote: On Sat, 2018-12-22 at 13:46 +, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: […] Given that this conference format is dying off, is there any explanation for why the D team wants to continue this antiquated ritual? https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era http://subfurther.com/blog/2018/01/15/the-final-conf-down/ https://forum.dlang.org/thread/ogrdeyojqzosvjnth...@forum.dlang.org […] So iOS conferences are a dying form. Maybe because iOS is a dying form? This questioning of iOS is so removed from reality that it makes me question if you are qualified to comment on this matter at all. iOS is the largest consumer software platform that is still growing, as it's estimated to bring in twice the revenue of google's Play store (that doesn't count other Android app stores, but they wouldn't make up the gap): https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-nearly-double-that-of-google-play-in-first-half-of-2018/ You could make various arguments for why they're still having less and less conferences, as my second link above listing them does. But to argue that iOS is not doing well is so ludicrous that it suggests you don't know much about these tech markets. Your evidence of the failure of the iOS community to confer is not evidence of the failure of the conference in other communities. I never said they fail to confer, I said they're doing it much less, because the format is not relevant anymore. 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. :) 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. You simply don't want to admit it. This seems to be a religious issue for you, with your bizzare assertions above, so I'll stop engaging with you now.
