DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition

[Joakim]

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 22:13:44 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
> On 12/22/2018 6:26 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
>> If you don't like conferences you don't have to go. I for one 
>> am excited about being in London in May. Please don't sour it 
>> for other who think/feel like I do.
>
> That's right. And hefting a pint with Atila is guaranteed to be 
> a highlight of the conference! I recommend it for those who 
> haven't had the pleasure.

I'm sure he's fun to be around, the question is whether it's 
worth the cost of flying to London.

> That said, I think we've probably tried to cram too many 
> presentations into the schedule. We should probably have fewer 
> and put gaps between them for people to digest and talk about 
> them.

The question is if it's worth doing in-person presentations at 
all.

> Also, I try to make my presentations less "I lecture and you 
> listen silently" to be much more interactive and engaging with 
> you guys. I suggest others planning a presentation to also 
> think along those lines.

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.

Reading through your listed benefits of DConf below tells me you 
didn't read anything I wrote in the linked forum thread above 
from months ago, as nowhere did I say not to get people together 
in person at all, which is where most of your benefits come from.

Rather, I made three primary suggestions for how to get people 
together instead:

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.

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.

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.

> Some other advantages of DConf off the top of my head, in no 
> particular order:
>
> 1. putting a face and name to the person greatly helps working 
> with people remotely the rest of the year

Maybe, but only 2) above mitigates it somewhat, and is it worth 
the cost?

> 2. it's amazing how intractable, obstinate online positions 
> just melt away when discussed in person over a beer

1) and 3) enable that more, 2) sacrifices that for greater 
outreach.

> 3. it's fun to see what other people are doing, as it's easy to 
> miss what's important by just monitoring the n.g.

1) and 3) enable that more, 2) sacrifices it somewhat.

> 4. I regard all you folks as my friends, and it's fun to be 
> with y'all

Is that more important than outreach and getting things done?

> 5. many, many collaborations have spawned from meeting like 
> minded individuals at DConf

They still would with the suggestions above, just differently.

> 6. employers come to DConf looking for D developers, and many D 
> developers have gotten jobs from them. If that isn't a win-win, 
> I don't know what is!

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.

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.

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.

D cannot afford to be technically innovative yet lag behind on 
everything else, as it once was when you used no version control 
or issue tracker for the early years of D. Some thought needs to 
be put into these issues I'm pointing out with the current 
conference format, yet I don't see it happening.

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 22:15:19 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
> On 12/22/2018 7:11 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> I've never been to DConf
>
> I suggest actually attending and seeing for yourself.

I've considered it several times, but could never justify the 
cost of flying to Berlin or wherever. I suspect there's many in 
my boat, hence 2) above.