Please don't do a DConf 2018, consider alternatives

[Joakim]

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 16:10:20 UTC, Johannes Loher wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 15:42:20 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 15:03:45 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
>> wrote:
>>> That is what Joakim is talking about - changing the main 
>>> event to be more like the after-hours stuff everyone loves so 
>>> much, to actually use all the time to maximize the potential 
>>> of in-person time.
>>
>> I'm talking about growing two different qualities much more, 
>> with my two suggested alternatives to the DConf format.
>>
>> 1. Ditch the talks, focus on in-person interaction. That's why 
>> I suggest having almost no talks, whether at a central DConf 
>> or not. You clearly agree with this.
>>
>> 2. Decentralize the DConf location, casting a much wider net 
>> over many more cities. Walter and Adam could rent a room and 
>> setup a Seattle DConf location, Andrei and Steven in Boston, 
>> Ali and Shammah in the bay area, and so on (only illustrative, 
>> I'm not imposing this on any of these people). Some of the 
>> money that went to renting out a large conference room in 
>> Munich can instead be spent on these much smaller rooms in 
>> each city.
>>
>> Charge some minimal fee for entrance in some locations, if 
>> that means they can spend time with W&A and to cover costs. I 
>> wouldn't charge anything more than $2 in my city for my event, 
>> as event organizers here have found that that's low enough to 
>> keep anyone who's really interested while discouraging fake 
>> RSVPs, ie those who have no intent of ever showing up but 
>> strangely sign up anyway (I know an organizer who says he had 
>> 150 people RSVP for a Meetup here and only 15 showed up).
>>
>> By keeping travel and ticket costs much lower, you invite much 
>> more participation.
>>
>> Obviously my second alternative to DConf listed above wouldn't 
>> be decentralized at all, only enabling in-person interaction 
>> at a still-central DConf.
>>
>> Mix and match as you see fit.
>
> I totally agree with you on your first point, i.e. making DConf 
> more interactive. I have had very good experiences with formats 
> like open space or barcamp. However, these formats only work if 
> people are actually willing to participate and bring in their 
> own ideas. Not having anything prepared can in rare cases lead 
> to the situation where there is a lack of things to talk about 
> (I doubt this would be the case for the D community, but it is 
> something to keep in mind).

As long as you plan ahead and compile an online list of stuff to 
work on or discuss in the weeks preceding, I don't see this being 
a problem.

> However, I must say I disagree with your second point, i.e. 
> decentralising DConf. As many people here have already 
> mentioned, DConf is about talking to people. And to me it is 
> especially important to talk to lots of different people whom I 
> otherwise don’t get the chance to talk to in person. By 
> decentralising the conference, we would limit the number of 
> different people you can get in touch with directly by a huge 
> amount.

I doubt that, it would just be different people you're talking 
to. There are probably three types of current and potential D 
users worth talking about. There's the core team, power users, 
and everybody else, ie casual or prospective users.

A central DConf caters to the first two, almost nobody from the 
largest camp, ie casual/prospective users, is flying out or 
paying $400 to attend. A decentralized DConf tries to get much 
more casual/prospective users and power users who couldn't 
justify traveling so far before, but it has two potential costs:

1. The core team may be spread out and not mostly gathered in one 
spot anymore. That is why I have suggested having them meet 
separately from DConf or at one of the DConf locations earlier in 
this thread.

2. A power user who might have paid to travel to Berlin before 
doesn't get access to the entire core team at once, someone like 
you I'm guessing. I think there's some value there, but I suspect 
it's much less than the value gained from a decentralized DConf.

> Just to use myself as an example, last Docnf I was able to talk 
> to Andrei, Walter, Mike, Ali, Jonathan, Kai and lots of others 
> and exchange ideas with them. This would not have been possible 
> with a decentralised event (except for the off chance that all 
> those people by chance attend the same local „meetup“).

Yes, but what did the D ecosystem concretely get out of it? Is it 
worth not having the hundreds of people who might have met them 
at decentralized DConf locations at Boston/SV/Seattle/Berlin not 
meeting them last year?

That's the kind of tough-minded calculation that needs to be made.

> On the other hand, I have to admit that decentralising the 
> event would open it up for a much bigger audience, which 
> definitely is a good idea. However, I would much prefer to have 
> something like a main DConf and if there are enough interested 
> people in an area who will not go to the main event, they can 
> host their own mini conference and watch streams, make their 
> own small workshops etc. This is what happens a lot at the 
> Chaos Communication Congress and it seems to work really well 
> (granted, in this case it might also be related to the limited 
> number of tickets).

Like I said in the post you're responding to, there's ways to mix 
and match the qualities I mention to various degrees.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 17:47:35 UTC, bauss wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 16:10:20 UTC, Johannes Loher 
> wrote:
>>
>> Just to use myself as an example, last Docnf I was able to 
>> talk to Andrei, Walter, Mike, Ali, Jonathan, Kai and lots of 
>> others and exchange ideas with them. This would not have been 
>> possible with a decentralised event (except for the off chance 
>> that all those people by chance attend the same local 
>> „meetup“).
>>
>
> And local decentralized meetups already existing. In fact I'm 
> co-organizing one here in Denmark.
>
> Similarily there are a lot other local meetups other places 
> around the world.

That's great, but the idea here is to turn DConf itself into a 
decentralized event.

> DConf is a great way to centralize all those meetups so you get 
> to meet people from different cultures with different views on 
> things, because whether you're aware of it or not then 
> programming is done different in every country, because each 
> country has their own technological needs, culture etc. and it 
> shapes very much around that.
>
> Ex. a banking system in America is not the same as a banking 
> system in Germany.

If each country is different, what do you gain from knowing how 
they do it, when your needs are different? Is much time really 
spent at DConf discussing: "In New Zealand, we write D this way, 
...", "Oh yeah, in Germany we write D this way, ..."? I seriously 
doubt it, and the internet is already a giant centralizing force 
in many ways.

Anyway, the question isn't how to centralize or decentralize D 
itself or how its used, which strikes me as nonsensical, but how 
can we introduce as many people to the language as cheaply as 
possible, by avoiding the high travel costs associated with a 
central DConf.

On Tuesday, 2 October 2018 at 20:29:33 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> On 10/02/2018 02:26 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> I'm sure some thought and planning is now going into the next 
>> DConf, so I'd like to make sure people are aware that the 
>> conference format that DConf uses is dying off, as explained 
>> here:
>> 
>> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era
>> 
>> People are now experimenting with what replaces conferences, 
>> we should be doing that too. I came up with some ideas in that 
>> thread:
>> 
>
> Yes, let's be a bunch of trend-chasing hipsters. Maybe we can 
> even get Portlandia to do a biopic on us.

Do you just cut-n-paste these responses from some troll website? 
;) It doesn't even make sense, there is no "trend" anybody's 
talking about chasing here. Conferences are dying and I present 
my own ideas on what we should replace them with.

Nobody has even talked about a trend we should jump on, so like 
many of the responses in this thread, it's almost as though you 
didn't even read the link or what I wrote. Oh wait, that's 
exactly what happened.