Are Tech Conferences Dead?

Let’s get our definitions and context sorted first, because sometimes one person’s good is another’s bad. Here I’m talking from the point of view of the conference participant - the developer, the architect, the engineer. Things that make an excellent conference, in my experience, include:

There are lots of conferences that tick all these boxes, including (but not exclusively; sorry if I’ve left your favourite one out here) Devoxx, code.talks, JavaZone, QCon, Øredev, NDC, and Kafka Summit. The unifying factor across all these is that they are curated and designed for the benefit and edification of their audience. It’s not a coincidence that many are led by local user groups.

But…there are other conferences that have become—or maybe always were—a commercial enterprise based around vendor sponsorship and ticket sales, with the content and audience experience playing second fiddle to whatever the sponsors want to hawk. Many "pay-to-play" talks are not always as useful as those accepted on merit alone, nor are they always as well delivered.

That’s not to say that it’s impossible for a conference to be commercially successful (from the point of view of the sponsors, marketing lead-gen, etc) whilst also providing a great experience for the audience. But, there is a significant tension that does not always play out to the benefit of those attending.

(IRL=In Real Life)

There’s a lot of justifiable excitement right now about the potential for what can be done online to replace the 🦠-forced cancellation of so many conferences. Why go to the hassle, and create such a huge carbon footprint, of flying half-way around the globe if you can do it from the comfort of your study?

I would love to see more conference-like experiences available online. There are some significant reasons for doing this:

But…there’s always a but…

People.

Interacting with people is why I travel for eight hours to speak to 100 people and then travel eight hours home again.

There’s a really good reason that the hallway track gets talked about so much. The hallway track is what people refer to when they’re talking about conversations they have in the hallway (hence the name) at a conference, between sessions, on the way to lunch, after the conference.

It more broadly covers just generally hanging out at a conference, grabbing a drink, heading to get some food, with people who are interested in the same technologies and ideas as you are—and now you’re in a place with no calls on your time other than to talk about this stuff and build relationships with other people. It’s where fun ideas are had, friendships are built, where an increased meaning to the eight hours a day we spend staring at a screen is given.

In-Person and Online are not mutually exclusive. This is not a battle to be won and lost.

There is a frenzied and important discussion going on right now in the DevRel world and beyond about if and how you can replicate the meetup and conference experience online. My hope is that more events are enabled this way (for the reasons above). But these are simply another medium through which developers can participate and engage.

In-person conferences will always be a thing because most people value the face-to-face interactions. Maybe less frequently, maybe VendorConf will end up virtual, and that’s fine - but my view (and hope) is that when the dust has settled, there will be a 'correction' in the conference 'market'.

At the heart of in-person conferences are the social interactions and the passionate programmes curated to enable people to immerse themselves over the course of a day or more in the technology, the culture, the people. These conferences are the ones that happen by the sheer will-power and dedication of the organisers, and they happened before and will happen again 🤞

So we’re two months into this new world now, and boy does it look different. Everyone’s off the road, everyone’s turning to other avenues for their content. Conferences are going online, postponing to 2021, or just cancelling entirely. O’Reilly, one of the biggest names in the tech conference space (organisers of OSCON, Strata, Velocity, etc etc) simply abandoned in-person conferences for good early on in all this.

Do I change my view on my summary above? No, and that’s not just because I’m stubborn 😉

I recently heard a really interesting talk from Lerika Mallayeva in which she talked about all the things DevGAMM had done to move their conference online and try to replicate the same great experience. It sounded brilliant. It sounded great. It sounded almost as good as being there in person. And that’s the kicker. Virtual conferences have many benefits (see above), but ultimately people are always going to want to interact in person to a greater or lesser extent. The future is going to be a hybrid approach. Thus:

In-Person and Online are not mutually exclusive. This is not a battle to be won and lost.