Please don't do a DConf 2018, consider alternatives

Joakim dlang at joakim.fea.st
Tue Oct 2 11:34:01 UTC 2018


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.


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