DConf 2019: Shepherd's Pie Edition

[Joakim]

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 find it strange that you call documented social trends "my 
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.

Apparently not, or they wouldn't be declining.

> 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?

I'm the wrong person to ask this as I don't listen to music and 
so have never been to a popular music concert.

But your question is strange considering all my suggestions are 
about having _more_ interpersonal interaction at more locations, 
not less.

> 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.

So why not just pay for the strong contributors to come and not 
give talks? This reason is completely illogical.

On Sunday, 23 December 2018 at 11:25:23 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

I have considered doing some kind of online webinar series in the 
past. The way I've been spreading the word instead is by giving a 
talk introducing D at a handful of local tech meetups organized 
by others. When I ask people to raise their hand if they've heard 
of D- not tried or used it a lot, mind you, just _heard_ of it- I 
think maybe 1% raised their hand. I currently live in a bit of a 
technical backwater, but that's not good.

If you look at the total expenditure on DConf as currently 
organized, it probably comes to between $100k-300k, if you 
include all the travel and hotel costs for everyone. What you 
have to consider is the opportunity cost of spending that money 
elsewhere, even given that you will only get a fraction of it 
otherwise, as for many it's really a vacation or their company's 
conference budget footing the bill.

I don't think there's any way the current format, in-person talks 
at a central location, even comes close to the alternatives I've 
suggested in terms of bang-for-the-buck, whether decentralized 
without in-person talks or spending that money on more D interns 
like Razvan or Nicholas.

Of course, it's not my money to spend or decide: I've granted 
that several times. But such bad decision-making comes across as 
severe managerial incompetence to me, which affects me as a 
downstream contributor and user.

 From your flippant responses to me and aversions on the issues I 
raise, I suspect you don't take such non-technical matters very 
seriously. I get the sense generally with non-D decisions in this 
project that you just want to go the safe, conservative route: 
just follow the traditional conference format because it's known, 
ignoring the downslide I've highlighted. I don't think D can get 
very far that way: you have to take some calculated risks on 
non-D matters too, like you did when you went full open-source 
with the language.