On 2018-12-22 12:18:25 +0000, Mike Parker said:

> Thanks to Symmetry Investments, DConf is heading to London! We're still ironing out the details, but I've been sitting on this for weeks and, now that we have a venue, I just can't keep quiet about it any longer.

Hi, you should consider the upcoming Brexit chaos, which is expect to have a high impact on all airlines. Currently I wouldn't bet that all parties involved get things sorted out until May...

-- 
Robert M. Münch
http://www.saphirion.com
smarter | better | faster

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 17:13:06 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> We like the current format and see no need to change it at this time.

That's all it really comes down to. Y'all like it.

But the time and money COULD be put to far better use. Consider this: keep the same schedule, but the talks change from being 50 minutes of awkward power point to being:

15 minutes - the talk part. Speaker introduces the topic and proposes something for everyone to work on.

20 minutes - the conference attendees split into a few work-sized groups and do something about the proposed topic. Maybe mini-hackathon. Maybe just discuss it. Maybe toy around with the stuff. The speaker wanders around groups to help guide them as needed and see what they are talking about.

15 minutes - The speaker goes up front again to share what was learned from the groups. Open discussion is encouraged. If appropriate, an action plan is decided upon. It concludes with a feeling of accomplishment.


All topics and talk handouts and powerpoints MUST be made public ahead of time for people who want to study it and have some thoughts prepared going into it.



For example, let's look at last year's first few talks. 1, memory safety. Walter introduces the problem and the new features. The groups spend the work session actually trying the feature. Try it on your code. Try to break it. Talk about how you hate it in your little group, whatever, just get hands-on in-person.

Then, Walter could come back and demonstrate the stuff (basically the same as the second half of his old slides) for everyone - with the group's comments added. When we get to the last slide with "more work to do", the audience knows this - they might have even filed some bugs from their experience already! Hackathon work lined up.

BetterC talk? Basically ditto.


So what's the advantage here over just lecturing?

* The audience is more engaged. Many people learn more by doing than by just watching.

* The work groups can mingle a bit and maybe get to know each other and learn from each other. (I'd randomize these a little.)

* Everyone trying it together means they may be able to write bug reports, get more insight into DIPs, be prepared to review PRs since they have at least SOME experience.

* People's questions will be more refined at the end of the talk.



Pretty small tweak to the current format - and not all talks need to be the same, just a new option here - and I think it would make a lot more out of the in-person time.

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 18:47:40 UTC, Robert M. Münch wrote:
> On 2018-12-22 12:18:25 +0000, Mike Parker said:
>
>> Thanks to Symmetry Investments, DConf is heading to London! We're still ironing out the details, but I've been sitting on this for weeks and, now that we have a venue, I just can't keep quiet about it any longer.
>
> Hi, you should consider the upcoming Brexit chaos, which is expect to have a high impact on all airlines. Currently I wouldn't bet that all parties involved get things sorted out until May...

I would be happy to bet they do.  The EU and US are already agreed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46380463

On 12/22/2018 5:33 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> it's on at the exact same time as DevoxxUK 2019 which is at the
> Business Design Centre. :-(


Please inform DevoxxUK they need to shift their schedule.

On 12/22/18 10:47 AM, Robert M. Münch wrote:
> On 2018-12-22 12:18:25 +0000, Mike Parker said:
> 
>> Thanks to Symmetry Investments, DConf is heading to London! We're still ironing out the details, but I've been sitting on this for weeks and, now that we have a venue, I just can't keep quiet about it any longer.
> 
> Hi, you should consider the upcoming Brexit chaos, which is expect to have a high impact on all airlines. Currently I wouldn't bet that all parties involved get things sorted out until May...
> 

I very much doubt that Brexit will cause anything approaching choas insofar as airlines are concerned. Currently all international flights are governed by the Montreal Convention which was signed by the individual states of the EU and not the EU itself, and the ICAO which is a UN function. They will remain in force regardless of the UK's status vis-a-vis Brexit. There may be the additional annoyance of EU folks having to pass through passport control depending on the final disposition of Brexit, but that's probably it.

Chaos is a persuasion word that has zero measurable technical meaning, it's purpose is to allow your mind to fill it's space with your worst nightmares. Whenever I see it in the news I assume that the writer is ideologically opposed to whatever event the writer is describing and lacks any evidence to back up their claims.

Airlines have had years to prepare for Brexit, and humans are generally pretty good at avoiding disasters that they've know about for years. My guess is that on Brexit day you won't even notice, save having to pass through an automated passport kiosk.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: EllipticBit
import quiet.dlang.dev;

On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 at 23:00, Adam Wilson via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/22/18 10:47 AM, Robert M. Münch wrote:
> > On 2018-12-22 12:18:25 +0000, Mike Parker said:
> >
> >> Thanks to Symmetry Investments, DConf is heading to London! We're still ironing out the details, but I've been sitting on this for weeks and, now that we have a venue, I just can't keep quiet about it any longer.
> >
> > Hi, you should consider the upcoming Brexit chaos, which is expect to have a high impact on all airlines. Currently I wouldn't bet that all parties involved get things sorted out until May...
> >
>
> I very much doubt that Brexit will cause anything approaching choas insofar as airlines are concerned. Currently all international flights are governed by the Montreal Convention which was signed by the individual states of the EU and not the EU itself, and the ICAO which is a UN function. They will remain in force regardless of the UK's status vis-a-vis Brexit. There may be the additional annoyance of EU folks having to pass through passport control depending on the final disposition of Brexit, but that's probably it.
>

I do not yet know whether if I enter the UK, that I will be allowed to leave. :-)

-- 
Iain

On 12/22/2018 6:26 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
> If you don't like conferences you don't have to go. I for one am excited about being in London in May. Please don't sour it for other who think/feel like I do.

That's right. And hefting a pint with Atila is guaranteed to be a highlight of the conference! I recommend it for those who haven't had the pleasure.

That said, I think we've probably tried to cram too many presentations into the schedule. We should probably have fewer and put gaps between them for people to digest and talk about them.

Also, I try to make my presentations less "I lecture and you listen silently" to be much more interactive and engaging with you guys. I suggest others planning a presentation to also think along those lines.

Some other advantages of DConf off the top of my head, in no particular order:

1. putting a face and name to the person greatly helps working with people remotely the rest of the year

2. it's amazing how intractable, obstinate online positions just melt away when discussed in person over a beer

3. it's fun to see what other people are doing, as it's easy to miss what's important by just monitoring the n.g.

4. I regard all you folks as my friends, and it's fun to be with y'all

5. many, many collaborations have spawned from meeting like minded individuals at DConf

6. employers come to DConf looking for D developers, and many D developers have gotten jobs from them. If that isn't a win-win, I don't know what is!

On 12/22/2018 7:11 AM, Joakim wrote:
> I've never been to DConf

I suggest actually attending and seeing for yourself.

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 22:13:44 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/22/2018 6:26 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
>> If you don't like conferences you don't have to go. I for one am excited about being in London in May. Please don't sour it for other who think/feel like I do.
>
> That's right. And hefting a pint with Atila is guaranteed to be a highlight of the conference! I recommend it for those who haven't had the pleasure.

I'm sure he's fun to be around, the question is whether it's worth the cost of flying to London.

> That said, I think we've probably tried to cram too many presentations into the schedule. We should probably have fewer and put gaps between them for people to digest and talk about them.

The question is if it's worth doing in-person presentations at all.

> Also, I try to make my presentations less "I lecture and you listen silently" to be much more interactive and engaging with you guys. I suggest others planning a presentation to also think along those lines.

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.

Reading through your listed benefits of DConf below tells me you didn't read anything I wrote in the linked forum thread above from months ago, as nowhere did I say not to get people together in person at all, which is where most of your benefits come from.

Rather, I made three primary suggestions for how to get people together instead:

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.

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.

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.

> Some other advantages of DConf off the top of my head, in no particular order:
>
> 1. putting a face and name to the person greatly helps working with people remotely the rest of the year

Maybe, but only 2) above mitigates it somewhat, and is it worth the cost?

> 2. it's amazing how intractable, obstinate online positions just melt away when discussed in person over a beer

1) and 3) enable that more, 2) sacrifices that for greater outreach.

> 3. it's fun to see what other people are doing, as it's easy to miss what's important by just monitoring the n.g.

1) and 3) enable that more, 2) sacrifices it somewhat.

> 4. I regard all you folks as my friends, and it's fun to be with y'all

Is that more important than outreach and getting things done?

> 5. many, many collaborations have spawned from meeting like minded individuals at DConf

They still would with the suggestions above, just differently.

> 6. employers come to DConf looking for D developers, and many D developers have gotten jobs from them. If that isn't a win-win, I don't know what is!

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.

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.

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.

D cannot afford to be technically innovative yet lag behind on everything else, as it once was when you used no version control or issue tracker for the early years of D. Some thought needs to be put into these issues I'm pointing out with the current conference format, yet I don't see it happening.

On Saturday, 22 December 2018 at 22:15:19 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/22/2018 7:11 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> I've never been to DConf
>
> I suggest actually attending and seeing for yourself.

I've considered it several times, but could never justify the cost of flying to Berlin or wherever. I suspect there's many in my boat, hence 2) above.

On Sat, 2018-12-22 at 13:46 +0000, Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> 
[…]
> Given that this conference format is dying off, is there any explanation for why the D team wants to continue this antiquated ritual?
> 
> https://marco.org/2018/01/17/end-of-conference-era http://subfurther.com/blog/2018/01/15/the-final-conf-down/ https://forum.dlang.org/thread/ogrdeyojqzosvjnthpsi@forum.dlang.org

[…]

So iOS conferences are a dying form. Maybe because iOS is a dying form? Your evidence of the failure of the iOS community to confer is not evidence of the failure of the conference in other communities. Others have cited Rust and Go. I shall cite Python, Ruby, Groovy, Java, Kotlin, Clojure, Haskell, all of which have thriving programming language oriented conferences all over the world. Then there are the Linux conferences, GStreamer conferences, conference all about specific technologies rather than programming languages. And of course there is ACCU. There is much more evidence that the more or less traditional conference format serves a purpose for people, and are remaining very successful. Many of these conferences make good profits, so are commercially viable.

Thus I reject the fundamental premise of your position that the conference format is dying off. It isn't. The proof is there.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk