Is it possible to set up DConf Asia?

[Joakim]

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:13:09 UTC, 鲜卑拓跋枫 wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 10:50:52 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I coincidentally just read this blog post, that summarizes a 
>> lot of my thoughts against conferences and meetups:
>>
>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>>
>> Maybe a good first step would be a mostly online DConf geared 
>> towards Asian timezones? I could help out with arranging those 
>> online talks.
>
>
> It seems that people in different countries of Asia may live in 
> different timezone.

So do people in US and Europe, the vast majority of whom watching 
the livestream or online videos didn't attend DConf.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 12:30:49 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 11:54:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> I don't, I think it would be a huge improvement. There are 
>> very few benefits to getting people together in person in our 
>> hyperconnected age, and while "key developers in the same 
>> place" may be one of those, that excludes almost everybody 
>> else at DConf.
>
> Except it doesn't exclude anyone -- it's not just the key 
> developers.

First off, I question there's much benefit to even the key devs 
beyond communicating through email and video conferencing to iron 
things out, as Andrei indicates he does with Walter.

And Jonathan only mentioned the key devs, so that does exclude. 
As for everybody else, see below.

>> Honestly, getting everybody together in a room and having them 
>> stare straight ahead at a speaker is a blindingly stupid waste 
>> of time these days. The only advantage of everybody being 
>> together in a room is the heightened communication bandwidth, 
>> and then you all sit next to each other staring straight ahead 
>> silently. The conference format made sense when pretty much 
>> everybody attending didn't have high-speed internet and 
>> connected video displays decades ago, but they make no sense 
>> now, as that blog post notes.
>
> There are huge benefits to being there in person that extend 
> beyond the time spent listening to the talks. People congregate 
> in the lobby after hours, have three meals a day together, 
> exchange ideas, make new contacts that lead to collaborations 
> down the line... I wouldn't trade the time I've spent at the 
> four DConfs I've attended for anything and very much regret 
> missing the two I couldn't attend.

Then spend all your time doing those things: why waste the 
majority of conference time sitting through talks that you don't 
bother defending?

Here's what a "conference" in Asia or Europe or wherever should 
probably look like in this day and age:

- Have most talks prerecorded by the speaker on their webcam or 
smartphone, which produce excellent video these days with not 
much fiddling, and have a couple organizers work with them to get 
those home-brewed videos up to a certain quality level, both in 
content and presentation, before posting them online.

- Once the videos are all up, set up weekend meetups in several 
cities in the region, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangalore, 
where a few livestreamed talks may talk place if some speakers 
don't want to spend more time producing a pre-recorded talk, but 
most time is spent like the hackathon, discussing various 
existing issues from bugzilla in smaller groups or brainstorming 
ideas, designs, and libraries for the future.

This is just off the top of my head; I'm sure I'm missing some 
small details here and there, as I was coming up with parts of 
this as I wrote it, but I estimate it'd be an order of magnitude 
more productive than the current conference format while being 
vastly cheaper in total cost to all involved. Since D is not 
exactly drowning in money, it makes no sense to waste it on the 
antiquated conference format. Some American D devs may complain 
that they no longer essentially get to go on a vacation to Berlin 
or Munich- a paid vacation if their company compensates for such 
tech conferences- but that's not our problem.